- STOP -Steps To Overcome Powerful 13 09 2025
We are all familiar with hierarchy and the sticks and carrot approach used to enforce order. However, in successful organisations there is an effective bottoms-up communication method that keeps the higher ranks in check and ensures the interest of the lower ranks is not ignored. It is interesting to see that the bottoms-up approach evolved very early in human history to enable the objective of cooperative ventures to be realised. The acronym STOP, i.e. Steps To Overcome Powerful uses five techniques that prevails today as it did in human groups thousands of years ago.
GOSSIP: When higher ranks take the lower ranks for granted and disrespect them, the gossip whispers begin by ridiculing the offender. Today, access to audio-visual medium combined with internet for mass circulation has made mimes an effective weapon, by taking the voice of the oppressed heard wide and clear. You don’t have to look beyond the ‘pappu’ and ‘fekhu’ jibes in India or the global Donald mime factory to realize how effective it is against even the most powerful today.
CRITICISM: When oppression continues, whispering gossips grow louder into frontal criticism. Initially heard in the periphery, it gradually moves center-stage to confront the ruling elite. It requires courage to criticize the powerful, which is both a challenge and an opportunity. The one who seizes this opportunity and voices the opinion of the masses emerges a leader.
DISOBEDIENCE: When criticism fails to redress the situation, it calls for action. In the last century, disobedience as a public protest movement against the powerful was used twice effectively. First, in the Indian fight against British for Independence, and later in the 1960s by Dr. Martin Luther King as American Civil Rights Movement. Closer home sulking children can be seen using it by throwing tantrums to get their way.
EXIT: If all the earlier avenues of gossip, criticism, and disobedience fail the only option left is to exit the group and create a parallel group to co-exist with or challenge the ruling elite. This course is often met with hostility by the ruling elite who want it suppressed within or outside their organisation. In commercial organisations, exits are the most effective means of communicating dissent with the leadership.
MURDER: When even the exit route is blocked or is not viable, the last option of violence opens up. In the animal kingdom, the strong overpowers the weak and rules. The weak have no option but to bid their time and wait for the alpha male to age and overpower the weakened leader. But in human societies a major change occurred with the advent of weapons, spears and arrows at first, and later guns and rifles. Weapons gave the desperate members of oppressed group the means to overpower the strong. With spears, arrows, guns and rifles, they could attack the strong from a distance and had a better chance of success. Murder came with social sanctions and stringent punishment when caught and remains the last resort for the oppressed as seen in Nepal in the past week.
Not just in polity, but in all other social and business organisations too, these means of protest thrive, though the last option of murder is rarely used. For the discerning leader, STOP is a good safety valve, showing them a mirror to correct and redeem themselves. But do they?
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