Have you heard that phrase at meetings where the leadership of administrations of one form or another try to shame or cajole their staff to follow questionable paths determined as necessary by the corporate agenda? This may work in the authoritarian political and corporate setting where the threat “either you are with us or you are against us” combined with ‘we not me’ can have serious implications or ramifications for the independent thinker. Social institutions, such as high academia within Universities, public education, universal health organisations, where there is no profit in creating widgets, where the overall social good is at heart of the work, corporate authoritarian methods are resisted by the people within as methods counterproductive to the social good. In social institutions ‘we not me’ sounds like another attempt by Harvard economic theorists to apply corporate management values to social institutions. These rarely if ever work, ultimately ending in guilt tripping and blamestorming. It is astonishing and often laughable how institutions espousing the corporate mantra of the business model of individualist competitive capitalism should use collective values in support of bald individualism. Who is ‘we’? Who is ‘me’? Is it the royal we and the lonely me? 

Both ‘me’ and ‘we’ have been selectively twisted in connotation to suit those who need some form of justification for their views and efforts. It is dubiously attributed to Queen Victoria to have initially used the phrase, “We are not amused.” At present the original circumstance is not important, however the use of ‘we’ in this sense is meant to convey the intent that she spoke for a number of people in the voice of one, she, the Queen, being the embodiment of all in the ‘l’etat c’est moi’ form. This not to be trifled with individual, or small group of individuals, in today’s world is powerful and of elite standing within some form of hierarchical organisation, political or economic, reflecting an authoritarian ‘speaking for all’ relationship. It is a long step away from the meaning of the collective ‘we’ as representing all people of equal stature in a society having decided on a common vision.

As a collective ‘we’ the term ‘us’ is better, for ‘we’ has become the elitist autocratic ‘Royal we’ and not the common inclusive ‘us’. Everything about the ‘Royal we’ is exclusion, bullying, innuendo, perception and deception. It is autocratic, and no input is valued unless it is for the benefit of the ‘we’, the body corporate, the hierarchy of those whom ‘we’ should obey. In an Orwellian vein ‘we’ is often used as a means of cajoling those who believe in the democratic ‘us’ into thinking the ‘process’ is essentially democratic. Not doing, playing along or conforming to the ‘we’ is characterized as not being a part of the team (or organization), more of a hindrance than a help, as counterproductive, and therefore antithetical to the task at hand and in effect being seen as a criminal element. As an old Japanese proverb describes, “A nail that sticks up will be hammered down.”

Simplistic yet measurable ‘effort’ and ‘process’ become paramount over unmeasurable character and ultimate free choice even while espousing the qualities of the latter and downplaying the former. Knowing the flaw in this the autocrats perform superficial attempts at promoting character and choice through simple checklists and surveys with items created by those who wish to recapitulate what they desire and avoid the true difficulty in assessing the nonconformist and highly variable nature of both.

The ‘royal we’ expends vast time and effort on the propaganda of belonging, loyalty, the prescient task at hand, collaboration not cooperation (collaboration connotes a superior to inferior relationship while cooperation requires equality and the ‘royal we’ can’t have that) and the deleterious effects of not ‘buying in’ to the ‘non-negotiables’ of the ‘grand plan’ of which none but the hierarchy had input. This form of shaming propaganda is as old as humanity itself when brute force for compliance became seen as politically counterproductive to the maintenance of power and the attempts of authority at compliance. Shame is an effective, old as the hills and out of mind Adam and Eve wore clothes to hide their shame and embarrassment, means of negative emotional reinforcement of why noncompliance adversely affects the utilitarian pleasure through avoiding pain scenario within organizations large and small. Other more unoriginal and devious methods of getting what the ‘royal we’ wants becomes the order of the day. As the leading example of a then growing global trend, Thatcher’s attempt to use the ‘we’ in the name of all people in Britain was thinly disguised as instead representing her elitist neo-conservative political party values, with her firmly at the helm, and the rest of ‘us’ firmly but happily trapped below in neo-classical capitalism indebted and owning property. 
Hearing the twisted mantra ‘we not me’ is as old as Machiavelli’s notion of a ‘prince’ being both feared and loved and a recap of modern failed TINA (There Is No Alternative) of narrow minded Thatcherism that ultimately destroyed the old system and later, in turn, itself failed miserably in 2008. That says much about how well the ‘royal we’ works.
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Blamestorming, definition from Investopedia (makes sense there’d be such a thing)…
A fusion of the words “blame” and “brainstorming” which is used to describe a meeting where participants determine who is responsible for a particular problem or failure. Blamestorming is essentially the identification of a scapegoat; if the source of the problem was obvious, blamestorming would not be necessary.