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Comment by jimnotgym

16 days ago

I'm working on a new theory of management. I was explaining leadership to someone and they said I should write a book about it. In the same week I was explaining another aspect and got the same response. I think management has been overcomplicated by people trying to codify it. I think MBAs and systems like EOS try to dumb everyone down to inhuman lowest-common-denominator robots. That is the main cause of the productivity crisis.

That's why people leave their jobs, and magically find they are 100% more productive without a boss. No BS, and they are inspired.

I think you could get further faster by being a human, being inspiring, being a leader. I think you could learn more from Nelson than whatever nasty dehumanising theory most bosses have been reading.

I'm struggling to find the motivation to write up my notes (neurodiversity both helping me see the problem and stopping me do anything about it). I'm struggling to name the theory. I am struggling ( with some limited success) in noticing what I do differently. I'm also struggling with recovering from a major burnout from succeeding creating highly motivated teams in really tough organisations.

I thought all along that I would be better with a collaborator watching me and noting the differences between what I do and what everyone else is doing, then interviewing me about it.

Maybe I could publish bits of it, little tidbits of blogs (who would find them?) or social media videos (I really don't want to have to record and edit videos). Not sure how to get progress.

18 comments

jimnotgym

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ismailmaj  16 days ago

How do you scale a more human management system when both the manager or the managee can be incompetent or malicious.

I'm aware that incentives are often counterproductive or insulting for white collar workers where there are elements of creativity in the job, but I feel like to get it to work you need trust which IMO cannot be scaled to big companies like Google.

FYI, I'm paraphrasing, perhaps badly "The puzzle of motivation | Dan Pink | TED". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrkrvAUbU9Y

  • jimnotgym  16 days ago

    Thank you for taking a moment to reply.

    Firstly, I have met very few malicious people in my career. Most of the really destructive people are products of their environments. It is complicated, but it is normally an incentives problem, most commonly status/ power rather than monetary. Often they have created blocking processes that the company sees as some sort of control or policing. It tends to be rather easy to change that if you are their boss. It is harder, but not impossible as a colleague. Often the application of cold hard rigorous logic, an understanding of the real controls etc. Can unstick them.

    I work in a 100k person company at the moment (admittedly I'm not in charge of that many of them), so I understand the problem of scale, but I would counter that the changes neede are rather subtle. I think much can be achieved by focusing on the 20 people at the top. Culture cascades. For example if you dig in over a KPI not being achieved, when someone explains that it is counterproductive, or conflicts with another KPI, how do you think they will manage their team in future?

    • saarp  16 days ago

      > Firstly, I have met very few malicious people in my career.

      Few people are openly malicious. That doesn't mean they are altruistic or motivated by some concept of "greater good". Most people will go along with the general sentiment though their actions are typically focused on their own benefit. This makes a lot of sense.

      Honestly, your perspective feels a little out of touch. If you had some private conversations with individual contributors at multiple levels of your organization, you may get a different perspective. In my experience, most "leadership" is about maximizing the leader's personal gain. They are running their own company within the company and will compete in whatever internal currency the company culture has. This is why incentives are difficult.

      Perhaps the simplest way to manage is to a P/L and employee retention. So long as those are healthy, the group is healthy.

      5 replies →

    • ismailmaj  16 days ago

      I agree that culture cascades but leadership is not the top of the food chain, their decisions or culture is often influenced by the capital.

      The meta recently has been to ignore everything and only focus on maximizing the stock price, which is aligned with their incentives (stock based compensation, bonus based on stock performance) and the modern investors (money quick now).

      I wonder if the rotten feeling I have on management is linked to western societies moving from high trust to low trust and from patient to impatient.

      4 replies →

chairmansteve  11 days ago

"Not sure how to get progress".

Maybe make small audio recordings and get them transcribed?

Or a notebook and scribble out all thoughts by hand?

Just get all your thoughts out of your head onto "paper" is the first step. Don't even think about the second step yet.

"The journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step". - Lao Tzu