Comment by ismailmaj
17 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
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?
> 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.
> Honestly, your perspective feels a little out of touch.
As does yours too me. I have been a senior manager in finance and IT at companies from $15m and a middle-manager at a mega-corp (on the senior management team of a business unit with 600 staff). I have had staff in several countries, I work with people in many more. Honestly most people want to do a good job without their boss shouting at them.
> will compete in whatever internal currency the company culture has
You seem to be agreeing with me.
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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.
Yes, that is the excuse I read for a recent accounting scandal at a listed company. However, it is a weak one. Yes their incentives have slipped from long-term shareholder value to short-term share price, and the market loves to be irrational...especially about AI and Musk.
Except only some of the market does, and the incentive can be met in other ways. Most capital is less worried about how you run the company than the returns. They worry about fundamentals, ROCE etc. If you have too much inventory, then yes you will get pushback. But encouraging your employees to be creative won't get you in trouble. This is just an excuse. I mean, being polite to your employees, having dedicated inspired staff, won't hurt your share price. I think assholes getting to be CEO is a symptom of a failing meritocracy, bad career development, focus on loyalty over ability. I think it harms the share price by lowering productivity.
But capital is conservative. Board members are chosen from a tiny select group of people who have done it before, or at least sent to the right elite schools.
When I worked in PE, the biggest thing I learnt was that PE partners (as a whole) know very little about running businesses. They only know about balance sheet fundamentals, and whether you answer their questions convincingly. They were specialists in the pissing contests, but could be easily fobbed off if your ratios were good and you met your forecast. Imitating their behavior inside the company is a choice, not an inevitability.
Sorry, a bit 'stream of consciousness' rather than a well argued response, but you seem smart enough to see what I mean.
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