Mar 25, 2013 |
General Nonsense |
Permalink
Recently I heard that Valve, a highly successful video game company, has four hundred employees and no management structure. According to all reports, they make that model work.
I spent a lot of time trying to imagine working for a company with no management. How do they resolve conflicts, set priorities, measure performance, fire laggards, and all the rest? I couldn't picture it working. Keep in mind that I earn my living by shouting that management is mostly worthless, yet even I couldn't accept the idea that management is 100% unnecessary. I was skeptical.
My best guess was that the founders of Valve do plenty of managing, but perhaps it sounds cooler to say they don't. Or perhaps the founders are bad managers and it just feels more comfortable to say they don't even try. In any case, I was ready to pass judgment: The management-free company is bullshit.
But before I passed judgment, an inconvenient realization entered my brain: I've been working on a start-up for over a year and we have no management whatsoever. I'll tell you more about the start-up in coming days. For now, the interesting part is that I never once - in the course of an entire year - noticed that we have no management until after I heard the story about Valve.
In our case, we have a group of people who have different skills and that seems to be enough. Our decision-making so far seems to follow a rational model that goes like this:
1. We discuss the question (by email or Skype).
2. Everyone gives an opinion or adds information.
3. The smartest choice becomes obvious to all.
4. The end.
That decision-making model might not work in your company if some of your coworkers are worthless. There's always the one person in every meeting who keeps changing the topic, or doesn't understand the issue, or insists he knows more than he does, or is bluffing to cover his ass, or is jockeying for a promotion, and so on. To put it in clearer terms: Management exists to minimize the problems created by its own hiring mistakes.
Valve says the secret of their management-free environment is hiring good people. That sounds right to me. We don't have any weak contributors in our start-up so we have never felt a need for management.
One of the interesting aspects of better global communications, better access to information, and better mobility is that collectively it reduces the risk of making hiring mistakes. When employers were limited to hiring people who lived nearby, and the only information at their disposal was lie-filled resumes, every growing company would necessarily absorb a lot of losers. But now that entrepreneurs can hire the best people from anywhere in the world, we have for the first time in human history the ability to create teams so capable they require no management structure. That's new.
I think the manager-free model only works for a business that has high margins and depends more on creating hits than cutting costs. The videogame business fits that model, as do many Internet businesses. And in both cases entrepreneurs can hire from anywhere in the world.
So here's my summary: Management only exists to compensate for its own poor hiring decisions. The Internet makes it easier to locate and then work with capable partners. Therefore, the need for management will shrink - at least for some types of businesses - because entrepreneurs have the tools to make fewer hiring mistakes in the first place.
Management won't entirely go away, but as technology makes it easier to form competent teams without at least one disruptive or worthless worker in the group, the need for management will continue to decline.
I spent a lot of time trying to imagine working for a company with no management. How do they resolve conflicts, set priorities, measure performance, fire laggards, and all the rest? I couldn't picture it working. Keep in mind that I earn my living by shouting that management is mostly worthless, yet even I couldn't accept the idea that management is 100% unnecessary. I was skeptical.
My best guess was that the founders of Valve do plenty of managing, but perhaps it sounds cooler to say they don't. Or perhaps the founders are bad managers and it just feels more comfortable to say they don't even try. In any case, I was ready to pass judgment: The management-free company is bullshit.
But before I passed judgment, an inconvenient realization entered my brain: I've been working on a start-up for over a year and we have no management whatsoever. I'll tell you more about the start-up in coming days. For now, the interesting part is that I never once - in the course of an entire year - noticed that we have no management until after I heard the story about Valve.
In our case, we have a group of people who have different skills and that seems to be enough. Our decision-making so far seems to follow a rational model that goes like this:
1. We discuss the question (by email or Skype).
2. Everyone gives an opinion or adds information.
3. The smartest choice becomes obvious to all.
4. The end.
That decision-making model might not work in your company if some of your coworkers are worthless. There's always the one person in every meeting who keeps changing the topic, or doesn't understand the issue, or insists he knows more than he does, or is bluffing to cover his ass, or is jockeying for a promotion, and so on. To put it in clearer terms: Management exists to minimize the problems created by its own hiring mistakes.
Valve says the secret of their management-free environment is hiring good people. That sounds right to me. We don't have any weak contributors in our start-up so we have never felt a need for management.
One of the interesting aspects of better global communications, better access to information, and better mobility is that collectively it reduces the risk of making hiring mistakes. When employers were limited to hiring people who lived nearby, and the only information at their disposal was lie-filled resumes, every growing company would necessarily absorb a lot of losers. But now that entrepreneurs can hire the best people from anywhere in the world, we have for the first time in human history the ability to create teams so capable they require no management structure. That's new.
I think the manager-free model only works for a business that has high margins and depends more on creating hits than cutting costs. The videogame business fits that model, as do many Internet businesses. And in both cases entrepreneurs can hire from anywhere in the world.
So here's my summary: Management only exists to compensate for its own poor hiring decisions. The Internet makes it easier to locate and then work with capable partners. Therefore, the need for management will shrink - at least for some types of businesses - because entrepreneurs have the tools to make fewer hiring mistakes in the first place.
Management won't entirely go away, but as technology makes it easier to form competent teams without at least one disruptive or worthless worker in the group, the need for management will continue to decline.
Mar 21, 2013 |
General Nonsense |
Permalink
In case you are wondering, this post is not a prank itself. But I acknowledge that it sounds exactly like one.
I think I invented this practical joke but you'll let me know if you have heard anything like it. It's very, very cool. Seriously, it will blow your mind.
The Set Up
Select a victim who is likely to believe the incredible bullshit that follows. It works well with kids because they can't yet distinguish science from magic. But it's fun for anyone with a sense of humor, especially the gullible ones.
It helps to have an accomplice who can nod and agree with the story you are about to tell, as if it had been in the news recently and all well-informed people know it.
Your story to the victim is that scientists discovered that mirrors made from certain types of sand don't merely reflect light; sometimes they act as a window into a dimension that is similar but slightly different from our own. The most fascinating part is that the scientists devised a simple way to tell if your mirror is normal or a window to another dimension. Next. . .
1. Find a full-length mirror. Ask your victim to stand in front of it, about a foot away.
2. Explain that you will ask the victim to do three different motions in front of the mirror. If the mirror does everything the victim is doing, it is just an ordinary mirror. But if any of the three motions are not duplicated in the mirror, what you are seeing is a similar but slightly different dimension.
3. Ask the victim to keep his feet planted and turn at the waist - left, then right, then back. Note aloud that the mirror did exactly the same.
4. Ask the victim to keep his body still except for shaking his head back and forth as if saying "no." Note aloud that the mirror did exactly the same.
5. Speculate that this might be an ordinary mirror, but there is one more test to be sure.
6. Ask the victim to put his nose about an inch from the mirror and keep his entire body still except for moving his eyes rapidly left-right-left several times in a row. Now ask the victim if his eyes in the mirror appear to be moving similarly.
Here's the freaky cool part. The victim will see his eyes in the mirror appearing to stare straight ahead, unmoving, while in fact they are vigorously moving back and forth. This is an illusion, obviously, but it is so unexpected that the victim will be surprised.
The victim's first reaction will be that he is seeing something impossible. That's when you jump in with your explanation of the window to another dimension. Your accomplice should be nodding and confirming the story.
I've tried it a few times and it's a lot of fun. Let me know if it works for you.
I think I invented this practical joke but you'll let me know if you have heard anything like it. It's very, very cool. Seriously, it will blow your mind.
The Set Up
Select a victim who is likely to believe the incredible bullshit that follows. It works well with kids because they can't yet distinguish science from magic. But it's fun for anyone with a sense of humor, especially the gullible ones.
It helps to have an accomplice who can nod and agree with the story you are about to tell, as if it had been in the news recently and all well-informed people know it.
Your story to the victim is that scientists discovered that mirrors made from certain types of sand don't merely reflect light; sometimes they act as a window into a dimension that is similar but slightly different from our own. The most fascinating part is that the scientists devised a simple way to tell if your mirror is normal or a window to another dimension. Next. . .
1. Find a full-length mirror. Ask your victim to stand in front of it, about a foot away.
2. Explain that you will ask the victim to do three different motions in front of the mirror. If the mirror does everything the victim is doing, it is just an ordinary mirror. But if any of the three motions are not duplicated in the mirror, what you are seeing is a similar but slightly different dimension.
3. Ask the victim to keep his feet planted and turn at the waist - left, then right, then back. Note aloud that the mirror did exactly the same.
4. Ask the victim to keep his body still except for shaking his head back and forth as if saying "no." Note aloud that the mirror did exactly the same.
5. Speculate that this might be an ordinary mirror, but there is one more test to be sure.
6. Ask the victim to put his nose about an inch from the mirror and keep his entire body still except for moving his eyes rapidly left-right-left several times in a row. Now ask the victim if his eyes in the mirror appear to be moving similarly.
Here's the freaky cool part. The victim will see his eyes in the mirror appearing to stare straight ahead, unmoving, while in fact they are vigorously moving back and forth. This is an illusion, obviously, but it is so unexpected that the victim will be surprised.
The victim's first reaction will be that he is seeing something impossible. That's when you jump in with your explanation of the window to another dimension. Your accomplice should be nodding and confirming the story.
I've tried it a few times and it's a lot of fun. Let me know if it works for you.
Mar 19, 2013 |
General Nonsense |
Permalink
Warning: This blog is written for a rational audience that likes to have fun wrestling with unique or controversial points of view. It is written in a style that can easily be confused as advocacy or opinion. It is not intended to change anyone's beliefs or actions. If you quote from this post or link to it, which you are welcome to do, please take responsibility for whatever happens if you mismatch the audience and the content.
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Qualities of a CEO
When you think of a CEO, what personal qualities come to mind?
On the positive side, CEOs are typically smart, energetic, focused, driven, and hardworking. But so are a lot of people who don't rise to power. We know those qualities alone won't get you to the very top, at least for 98% of the people with talent and drive.
As a typical CEO, you might be drawn to high risks. You might possess a good dollop of narcissism, and be fairly high up on the sociopath scale. Greed helps too. And I would imagine that a flexible view of ethics comes in handy. In other words, mental illness is the active ingredient that distinguishes the merely capable from the highly successful. The more mental illness the better, as long as it is the kind that is compatible with capitalism.
Suppose you put the following proposition to two talented young people: You can be a CEO someday, but the price is that you will have two failed marriages and you will barely know your own kids. You will fire dozens or even hundreds of people over your lifetime. Your success will come at the direct expense of others. And your pay will have more to do with your weasel skills at manipulating the board of directors than the long term health of the company. You will move several times, to the distress of your family and friends. On the plus side, you will be rich and respected.
What kind of young person takes that deal? Is it the person with good mental health who wants a life of balance and meaning, or is it the risk-taking, narcissistic sociopath?
We all want the good parts of being a CEO, especially the money and respect, but we could do without the mental illness. Unfortunately, if you want the top job, you're competing against risk-taking, narcissistic sociopaths who are just as smart and hardworking as you are. Some of them will self-destruct, but like the zombie apocalypse there will always be another coming at you. In the long run, the crazies always run the show.
I'm the CEO of my own company now (the Dilbert business), and that required me to work a ten year stretch, for about twelve hours a day, without a day off. Does that sound like good mental health to you? And had I stayed in the corporate world, I would have employed all of my mental dysfunctions toward clawing my way into the executive suite. I'm not too proud to admit I probably have just the right mixture of mental problems to pull that off:
Risk taking? (Check!)
Narcissism (I have the perfect amount!)
Sociopath (I call it compartmentalizing!)
Flexible moral compass (Yay for capitalism!)
OCD (It will look like hard work to you!)
I'll concede that many CEOs are nice people with perfectly acceptable mental health. But I know most of you are reading this post and nodding your heads when I say your chances of becoming a CEO are better if you have some mental abnormalities to complement your natural talent.
So, given this context of mental abnormalities in CEOs, what is the biggest question in the news this month? Answer: "How can we get more women into leadership positions?"
The lack of female CEOs has to do with a number of factors including sex discrimination, social conditioning, and the glass ceiling. But I would think some of it has to do with the fact that more men than women have mental health problems of the specific sort that are compatible with capitalism.
I'm enjoying Sheryl Sandberg's take on why there aren't more women in leadership jobs. She raises lots of good points. But I don't think we can ignore the mental health angle.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Qualities of a CEO
When you think of a CEO, what personal qualities come to mind?
On the positive side, CEOs are typically smart, energetic, focused, driven, and hardworking. But so are a lot of people who don't rise to power. We know those qualities alone won't get you to the very top, at least for 98% of the people with talent and drive.
As a typical CEO, you might be drawn to high risks. You might possess a good dollop of narcissism, and be fairly high up on the sociopath scale. Greed helps too. And I would imagine that a flexible view of ethics comes in handy. In other words, mental illness is the active ingredient that distinguishes the merely capable from the highly successful. The more mental illness the better, as long as it is the kind that is compatible with capitalism.
Suppose you put the following proposition to two talented young people: You can be a CEO someday, but the price is that you will have two failed marriages and you will barely know your own kids. You will fire dozens or even hundreds of people over your lifetime. Your success will come at the direct expense of others. And your pay will have more to do with your weasel skills at manipulating the board of directors than the long term health of the company. You will move several times, to the distress of your family and friends. On the plus side, you will be rich and respected.
What kind of young person takes that deal? Is it the person with good mental health who wants a life of balance and meaning, or is it the risk-taking, narcissistic sociopath?
We all want the good parts of being a CEO, especially the money and respect, but we could do without the mental illness. Unfortunately, if you want the top job, you're competing against risk-taking, narcissistic sociopaths who are just as smart and hardworking as you are. Some of them will self-destruct, but like the zombie apocalypse there will always be another coming at you. In the long run, the crazies always run the show.
I'm the CEO of my own company now (the Dilbert business), and that required me to work a ten year stretch, for about twelve hours a day, without a day off. Does that sound like good mental health to you? And had I stayed in the corporate world, I would have employed all of my mental dysfunctions toward clawing my way into the executive suite. I'm not too proud to admit I probably have just the right mixture of mental problems to pull that off:
Risk taking? (Check!)
Narcissism (I have the perfect amount!)
Sociopath (I call it compartmentalizing!)
Flexible moral compass (Yay for capitalism!)
OCD (It will look like hard work to you!)
I'll concede that many CEOs are nice people with perfectly acceptable mental health. But I know most of you are reading this post and nodding your heads when I say your chances of becoming a CEO are better if you have some mental abnormalities to complement your natural talent.
So, given this context of mental abnormalities in CEOs, what is the biggest question in the news this month? Answer: "How can we get more women into leadership positions?"
The lack of female CEOs has to do with a number of factors including sex discrimination, social conditioning, and the glass ceiling. But I would think some of it has to do with the fact that more men than women have mental health problems of the specific sort that are compatible with capitalism.
I'm enjoying Sheryl Sandberg's take on why there aren't more women in leadership jobs. She raises lots of good points. But I don't think we can ignore the mental health angle.
Mar 18, 2013 |
General Nonsense |
Permalink
Several months ago I did a little experiment in which I tried to "sell" a business idea in return for equity in what I hoped would be the resulting start-up. It was mostly just an experiment to see if I could sell an unpatented idea. You might be wondering how that turned out.
The whole thing started because I had an idea that I thought could fundamentally change the foundation of civilization, in a good way. And it wouldn't require any new technology; it's a straightforward combination of existing systems. I guessed it would cost $10 million to get the idea off the ground,
I previously reported that the first well-placed VC-type with whom I spoke liked the idea a lot. But he wanted an indefinite amount of time to do further research, so I moved to the next investor who had expressed interest in hearing the idea.
The second investor was highly qualified too, and if you follow the technology industry you would recognize the name. He loved the idea and pitched it to his board. They liked it too. We reached a tentative verbal agreement and the investor sent me contracts to review. But before we executed the contracts the investor called to say there was a change in priorities on their end, caused by external events, and they wouldn't be able to devote the necessary resources to the idea, so they offered to release it.
That's where it stands now. I might circle back to it at some point.
At the moment I'm busy trying to launch a different start-up that my partners and I have been working on for the past year. This one is designed to solve one of life's most common problems. Our goal is to save the world a million hours of wasted time. I'll tell you more in a few weeks.
If you want a sneak peak, we're looking for some volunteers to try the beta version. Just email me at dilbertcartoonist@gmail.com and I'll send you the URL in a week or so when we're ready. All I ask is that you give me your opinion on what you like or don't like about it. And if you find a bug, I'd like to know about that too.
The whole thing started because I had an idea that I thought could fundamentally change the foundation of civilization, in a good way. And it wouldn't require any new technology; it's a straightforward combination of existing systems. I guessed it would cost $10 million to get the idea off the ground,
I previously reported that the first well-placed VC-type with whom I spoke liked the idea a lot. But he wanted an indefinite amount of time to do further research, so I moved to the next investor who had expressed interest in hearing the idea.
The second investor was highly qualified too, and if you follow the technology industry you would recognize the name. He loved the idea and pitched it to his board. They liked it too. We reached a tentative verbal agreement and the investor sent me contracts to review. But before we executed the contracts the investor called to say there was a change in priorities on their end, caused by external events, and they wouldn't be able to devote the necessary resources to the idea, so they offered to release it.
That's where it stands now. I might circle back to it at some point.
At the moment I'm busy trying to launch a different start-up that my partners and I have been working on for the past year. This one is designed to solve one of life's most common problems. Our goal is to save the world a million hours of wasted time. I'll tell you more in a few weeks.
If you want a sneak peak, we're looking for some volunteers to try the beta version. Just email me at dilbertcartoonist@gmail.com and I'll send you the URL in a week or so when we're ready. All I ask is that you give me your opinion on what you like or don't like about it. And if you find a bug, I'd like to know about that too.
Mar 15, 2013 |
General Nonsense |
Permalink
Dogs need part-time jobs. Okay, hear me out on this.
A typical dog owner works all day while the loyal pooch is bored and waiting. That dog would like some stimulation too. But he still wants to be home when the owner gets there, so how about a part-time job for the dog?
My idea is that senior living homes would have a side business of boarding and - here's the awesome part - training your personal dog to work with the seniors during the day. You drop off your dog on your way to work and pick him up after.
My idea is that the dogs could be trained for very specific duties, such as accompanying seniors for walks around the grounds. Someday motorized wheelchairs will be able to navigate like those driverless Google cars so seniors will be able to take long wheelchair adventures along special scenic wheelchair paths with their trained dogs as guides.
Dogs could also be trained to fetch seniors from their rooms for mealtime, to bring items back and forth, to carry purses and possessions, and generally act useful. The dogs would be happy and stimulated, the cost of boarding would be slightly discounted by the dog's "wages" and everyone gets some stimulation. It's a win-win-win.
On a related note, the ideal combination of businesses in the same location would include:
The seniors could have small jobs such as taking tickets for the soccer games, feeding the animals, and watching the kids. Everyone wins.
Imagine driving into the facility to pick up both your toddler and your dog after work. You pull up to the curb and a senior loads your dog into one side of your car while another senior straps your toddler into the car seat. Maybe you also preorder your family dinner via Internet to be ready for pickup at the same time, and a third senior loads the packaged meal into your trunk. And maybe you also pick up your dry cleaning and groceries then too. It's like a racecar pit stop except with a very slow crew.
This is a subset of my larger idea that new cities should be designed from the ground up. Current cities are designed around transportation. I think new cities could be designed around lifestyle, with all of the transportation underground.
But for now I would settle for part-time jobs for dogs.
A typical dog owner works all day while the loyal pooch is bored and waiting. That dog would like some stimulation too. But he still wants to be home when the owner gets there, so how about a part-time job for the dog?
My idea is that senior living homes would have a side business of boarding and - here's the awesome part - training your personal dog to work with the seniors during the day. You drop off your dog on your way to work and pick him up after.
My idea is that the dogs could be trained for very specific duties, such as accompanying seniors for walks around the grounds. Someday motorized wheelchairs will be able to navigate like those driverless Google cars so seniors will be able to take long wheelchair adventures along special scenic wheelchair paths with their trained dogs as guides.
Dogs could also be trained to fetch seniors from their rooms for mealtime, to bring items back and forth, to carry purses and possessions, and generally act useful. The dogs would be happy and stimulated, the cost of boarding would be slightly discounted by the dog's "wages" and everyone gets some stimulation. It's a win-win-win.
On a related note, the ideal combination of businesses in the same location would include:
- Senior care
- Childcare
- Dog boarding
- Scenic forest/garden walk
- Soccer field
The seniors could have small jobs such as taking tickets for the soccer games, feeding the animals, and watching the kids. Everyone wins.
Imagine driving into the facility to pick up both your toddler and your dog after work. You pull up to the curb and a senior loads your dog into one side of your car while another senior straps your toddler into the car seat. Maybe you also preorder your family dinner via Internet to be ready for pickup at the same time, and a third senior loads the packaged meal into your trunk. And maybe you also pick up your dry cleaning and groceries then too. It's like a racecar pit stop except with a very slow crew.
This is a subset of my larger idea that new cities should be designed from the ground up. Current cities are designed around transportation. I think new cities could be designed around lifestyle, with all of the transportation underground.
But for now I would settle for part-time jobs for dogs.
Mar 12, 2013 |
General Nonsense |
Permalink
Sometimes I think the field of management/success/leadership is nothing more than a confusion of correlation for causation. For example, I blogged recently that "passion" isn't so much a cause of success as a result of success, and it grows as the success grows. Success can make anyone passionate about what they are doing. When the experts say we need passion to be successful, that's mostly bullshit. What you need is energy, talent, hard work, a reasonable plan, and lots of luck.
Company culture is another area that I think the experts get backwards. The common belief is that you need a good company culture to create success. But isn't it more likely that companies with awesome employees get both a good culture and success at the same time? A good corporate culture is a byproduct of doing everything right; it's not the cause of success as much as the outcome. Success improves culture more than a good culture can cause success.
And how about that charisma thing? That's important, right? Everyone says so. Look at Richard Branson, Steve Jobs, and Larry Ellison. Those guys have plenty of charisma so it must be important to success, we assume. But let me tell you what causes charisma: success.
I'm in a unique position to judge the success=charisma hypothesis because I slip in and out of famousness all day long. Cartoonists aren't normally recognized, and when I walk into a room as a "normal" I exhibit no charisma whatsoever. I might even be absorbing some charisma that is already in the atmosphere. But when I enter a room at an event where people are expecting me in my capacity as a semi-famous cartoonist, suddenly I appear to have some charisma. I feel like Moses in a room full of water. Trust me when I say that if Steve Jobs had not been successful so young, he'd be known as the lying asshole who needs a shower, not the guy with the reality distortion field. Charisma is bullshit.
Today I was reading an expert's opinion that companies get better results when managers learn to avoid micromanaging employees. But how do we know those non-micromanaging managers get better results? Wouldn't it also be true that wherever you have the most highly capable employees - the ones most likely to create success - you have a boss who knows he can back off the micromanaging? One would expect more micromanaging in companies with untalented employees. So how do you know what causes what?
Consider the thousands of different books on management/success/leadership. If any of this were real science, all managers would learn the same half-dozen secrets to success and go on to great things. The reality of the business world is more like infinite monkeys with typewriters. Sooner or later a monkey with an ass pimple will type something that makes sense and every management expert in the world will attribute the success to the ass pimple.
How about the idea that every hourly wage slave should "act like an entrepreneur"? How do you think that would play out with Apple's 50,000 employees? The unsexy reality is that everyone in the company can't be creative risk-takers. Someone has to actually work. My guess is that Apple would fall apart if more than 5% of its employees acted like entrepreneurs. And maybe the tipping point is only 2%. Entrepreneurs are disruptive, rule-breaking risk-takers. A little bit of that goes a long way.
I first noticed the questionable claims of management experts back in the nineties, when it was fashionable to explain a company's success by its generous employee benefits. The quaint idea of the time was that treating employees like kings and queens would free their creative energies to create massive profits. The boring reality is that companies that are successful have the resources to be generous to employees and so they do. The best way a CEO can justify an obscene pay package is by treating employees generously. To put this in another way, have you ever seen a corporate turnaround that was caused primarily by improving employee benefits?
The fields of management/success/leadership are a lot like the finance industry in the sense that much of it is based on confusing correlation and chance with causation. We humans like to feel as if we understand and control our environments. We don't like to think of ourselves as helpless leaves blowing in the wind of chance. So we clutch at any ridiculous explanation of how things work.
My view is that success happens when you have a coincidence of talent, resources, and timing. One can explain the existence of successful serial entrepreneurs by the fact that once successful they gain resources, credibility, extra talent, contacts, and the opportunity to live someplace such as Silicon Valley where opportunities fall out of trees. You would expect that group of people to get lucky more often than someone just starting out.
Dilbert came to fame in the nineties when the working world was experiencing an unprecedented "bubble" of management bullshit. Every time a new business book became a best seller, middle managers across the globe scurried to buy a copy and started spewing its jargon. Eventually the sale of business books dropped off when, I assume, people realized there couldn't really be 10,000 different sure-fire formulas for success.
But lately I've been feeling another bullshit bubble forming in the world. And I don't mean only the financial markets, which are sketchy for lots of reasons. It's just a feeling, but it seems to me that the management/success/leadership bullshit bubble is once again reaching full inflation.
Are you feeling the bubble too, or is it just me?
Company culture is another area that I think the experts get backwards. The common belief is that you need a good company culture to create success. But isn't it more likely that companies with awesome employees get both a good culture and success at the same time? A good corporate culture is a byproduct of doing everything right; it's not the cause of success as much as the outcome. Success improves culture more than a good culture can cause success.
And how about that charisma thing? That's important, right? Everyone says so. Look at Richard Branson, Steve Jobs, and Larry Ellison. Those guys have plenty of charisma so it must be important to success, we assume. But let me tell you what causes charisma: success.
I'm in a unique position to judge the success=charisma hypothesis because I slip in and out of famousness all day long. Cartoonists aren't normally recognized, and when I walk into a room as a "normal" I exhibit no charisma whatsoever. I might even be absorbing some charisma that is already in the atmosphere. But when I enter a room at an event where people are expecting me in my capacity as a semi-famous cartoonist, suddenly I appear to have some charisma. I feel like Moses in a room full of water. Trust me when I say that if Steve Jobs had not been successful so young, he'd be known as the lying asshole who needs a shower, not the guy with the reality distortion field. Charisma is bullshit.
Today I was reading an expert's opinion that companies get better results when managers learn to avoid micromanaging employees. But how do we know those non-micromanaging managers get better results? Wouldn't it also be true that wherever you have the most highly capable employees - the ones most likely to create success - you have a boss who knows he can back off the micromanaging? One would expect more micromanaging in companies with untalented employees. So how do you know what causes what?
Consider the thousands of different books on management/success/leadership. If any of this were real science, all managers would learn the same half-dozen secrets to success and go on to great things. The reality of the business world is more like infinite monkeys with typewriters. Sooner or later a monkey with an ass pimple will type something that makes sense and every management expert in the world will attribute the success to the ass pimple.
How about the idea that every hourly wage slave should "act like an entrepreneur"? How do you think that would play out with Apple's 50,000 employees? The unsexy reality is that everyone in the company can't be creative risk-takers. Someone has to actually work. My guess is that Apple would fall apart if more than 5% of its employees acted like entrepreneurs. And maybe the tipping point is only 2%. Entrepreneurs are disruptive, rule-breaking risk-takers. A little bit of that goes a long way.
I first noticed the questionable claims of management experts back in the nineties, when it was fashionable to explain a company's success by its generous employee benefits. The quaint idea of the time was that treating employees like kings and queens would free their creative energies to create massive profits. The boring reality is that companies that are successful have the resources to be generous to employees and so they do. The best way a CEO can justify an obscene pay package is by treating employees generously. To put this in another way, have you ever seen a corporate turnaround that was caused primarily by improving employee benefits?
The fields of management/success/leadership are a lot like the finance industry in the sense that much of it is based on confusing correlation and chance with causation. We humans like to feel as if we understand and control our environments. We don't like to think of ourselves as helpless leaves blowing in the wind of chance. So we clutch at any ridiculous explanation of how things work.
My view is that success happens when you have a coincidence of talent, resources, and timing. One can explain the existence of successful serial entrepreneurs by the fact that once successful they gain resources, credibility, extra talent, contacts, and the opportunity to live someplace such as Silicon Valley where opportunities fall out of trees. You would expect that group of people to get lucky more often than someone just starting out.
Dilbert came to fame in the nineties when the working world was experiencing an unprecedented "bubble" of management bullshit. Every time a new business book became a best seller, middle managers across the globe scurried to buy a copy and started spewing its jargon. Eventually the sale of business books dropped off when, I assume, people realized there couldn't really be 10,000 different sure-fire formulas for success.
But lately I've been feeling another bullshit bubble forming in the world. And I don't mean only the financial markets, which are sketchy for lots of reasons. It's just a feeling, but it seems to me that the management/success/leadership bullshit bubble is once again reaching full inflation.
Are you feeling the bubble too, or is it just me?
Mar 11, 2013 |
General Nonsense |
Permalink
Today's lack of a blog post is brought to you by Gawker.com, Jezebel.com, and Huffingtonpost.com. I wrote a long and fascinating post this morning but realized it was too easy to take it out of context, and I didn't want to spend my entire week dealing with the Internet fallout.
So you won't ever see that post. But I have to say, it was some of my best work. That's what made it dangerous.
As a case in point, see what the Huffington Post had to say about my recent post on stock market manipulation. Their headline is "Dilbert Creator Scott Adams Is On To You, Massive Telepathic Stock Market Conspiracy." In this case the commenters shredded the asshole who wrote it because it was such a pathetic hit piece. I made some comments of my own just for fun. This time it worked out well for me, but normally this sort of thing goes the other way.
This is what censorship looks like in 2013. I actually had something useful to say today but I can't be bothered with the blowback. It's not that I mind a good dust-up, because I normally enjoy the attention. But I choose to put my energy someplace else at the moment for purely practical reasons. The effect is similar to censorship.
It probably isn't a good thing.
Mar 8, 2013 |
General Nonsense |
Permalink
Let's say that someday a young couple buys a robot to help with childcare. Version 1 of the robot isn't much more capable than a video baby monitor that can also rock the cradle and say, "There, there" as needed, perhaps in the mom's voice. Maybe it can do a few more things such as loading and unloading the dishwasher and feeding the dog. It's useful but still limited.
But here's the interesting part. That robot will mature, and get smarter, at about the same rate as the baby in the crib. Robots will have parts of their "brains" inside their bodies and parts in the cloud of the Internet, connected to the same data that all robots are connected to. As any robot anywhere gains knowledge, that knowledge is uploaded to the cloud and available to all robots. The day that one robot learns how to do your laundry all robots will acquire the ability simultaneously, although some robots might need sensor upgrades for new functions.
If robot makers are smart, all of your robot's parts will be modular for easy upgrades. Do you want your robot to have better sensors in its fingers? Just replace the hand with an upgraded version. While the robot's brain is upgrading automatically every minute, you'll be keeping its body upgraded. Eventually the robot will take care of its own hardware upgrades too.
But that's not the interesting part.
I presume that robots will need something like a "personality" for purely functional reasons, and to make decisions when the data is unclear. And they will acquire those necessary personalities largely by observation. For example, if the humans that the robot lives with are the types who are effusive in praise of others, the robot will pick up that trait. If the family is the snarky/jokey type, the robot will pick up on that too.
Like humans, robots will copy the ways and tendencies, and even biases, of the people it associates with the most. The personality factors will be uploaded to the common robot brain in the cloud, but each robot will be programmed to ignore the "average" way people react and instead favor whatever the locals do, and even further prefer to do what the immediate family of humans typically do. In other words, some robots will be friendly and helpful and some will be total dicks, just as their owners.
The robot owner will be able to "correct" any bad habits the robot picks up by observation, similar to the way parents correct bad manners in their children. In both cases, the robot and the child are going through a maturation process.
I'm getting to the interesting part of the post. No, really, I am.
I think most of you buy into the notion that robots will eventually be as common as television sets, and that the robots will - for purely practical reasons - adopt personality traits by observation. The robot will want to fit in, to be relevant, to be liked, if for no other reason than to increase its market value.
Eventually there will be templates of personalities, created via robot observations and then loaded to the cloud, so that new robots can start with basic personalities that match their assignments. The robot's personality will be free to evolve, based on its own local observations, but it will have a strong starting point. I would compare this to an Englishman who was born and raised in London then moved to the New York City at the age of twenty. He would retain his base English personality for the most part, but over time it would get a New York City edge.
This is a long way to get to my point, that robots of the future will have base personalities (the templates) that will be like time capsules. The robots will have base personalities that were normal during the era that robots matured from tools to intelligent entities. And that will only happen once in the course of human history.
We always hear how the new generation is different from the next. Sometimes the new generation cares more about money, or trusts the government more, whatever. Someday, and perhaps forever, robots will carry with them the base personalities that were common to the era in which computers first acquired their personality templates.
In time, or through intentional human intervention, we might erase those old personality templates because they are no longer relevant to the times. But I'm guessing the robot personality database by that time will be so complex, and spread across owners, that replacing it or even programming around it will be impractical.
In other words, I predict that children being born today will be the prime influencers of what robot personalities will be . . . forever?
Obviously robot personalities will differ by location and culture. And a new Indonesian house robot coming online will borrow its personality template from Indonesian robots that came before. So the personality templates might be frozen within each culture. That means the Israeli robots and the Hamas robots will not be friendly even if their humans have long since made peace.
It sounds like a trivial worry, that robots might acquire tainted personalities from the past. But I think that unless we design the robots right, it could be a big problem.
One solution would be to give robots generic, cookie-cutter personalities. Some robot manufacturers will certainly offer that option. But I think the natural competitiveness of humans will makes us want our robot to be learning and maturing as fast as the neighbor's robot. And we will want our robots to have unpredictable personalities - within safe bounds - because it will amuse the hell out of us.
My solution is that all robots must be raised for their first few years in Minnesota, where everyone is kind and generous. I assume there are other spots around the world in which the culture evolved to be unusually friendly. Part of the value of your future robot is where it was imprinted with its base personality. Someday the Minnesota Series of robots will fetch top dollar.
The Adams Law of Slow Moving Disasters states that humans always solve problems, no matter how large, if they can see them coming. So I'm bringing up this robot personality issue now, just to be safe.
The main question of the day is this: Will robots someday have personalities, and if so, will they acquire them, in whole or in part, by observation?
But here's the interesting part. That robot will mature, and get smarter, at about the same rate as the baby in the crib. Robots will have parts of their "brains" inside their bodies and parts in the cloud of the Internet, connected to the same data that all robots are connected to. As any robot anywhere gains knowledge, that knowledge is uploaded to the cloud and available to all robots. The day that one robot learns how to do your laundry all robots will acquire the ability simultaneously, although some robots might need sensor upgrades for new functions.
If robot makers are smart, all of your robot's parts will be modular for easy upgrades. Do you want your robot to have better sensors in its fingers? Just replace the hand with an upgraded version. While the robot's brain is upgrading automatically every minute, you'll be keeping its body upgraded. Eventually the robot will take care of its own hardware upgrades too.
But that's not the interesting part.
I presume that robots will need something like a "personality" for purely functional reasons, and to make decisions when the data is unclear. And they will acquire those necessary personalities largely by observation. For example, if the humans that the robot lives with are the types who are effusive in praise of others, the robot will pick up that trait. If the family is the snarky/jokey type, the robot will pick up on that too.
Like humans, robots will copy the ways and tendencies, and even biases, of the people it associates with the most. The personality factors will be uploaded to the common robot brain in the cloud, but each robot will be programmed to ignore the "average" way people react and instead favor whatever the locals do, and even further prefer to do what the immediate family of humans typically do. In other words, some robots will be friendly and helpful and some will be total dicks, just as their owners.
The robot owner will be able to "correct" any bad habits the robot picks up by observation, similar to the way parents correct bad manners in their children. In both cases, the robot and the child are going through a maturation process.
I'm getting to the interesting part of the post. No, really, I am.
I think most of you buy into the notion that robots will eventually be as common as television sets, and that the robots will - for purely practical reasons - adopt personality traits by observation. The robot will want to fit in, to be relevant, to be liked, if for no other reason than to increase its market value.
Eventually there will be templates of personalities, created via robot observations and then loaded to the cloud, so that new robots can start with basic personalities that match their assignments. The robot's personality will be free to evolve, based on its own local observations, but it will have a strong starting point. I would compare this to an Englishman who was born and raised in London then moved to the New York City at the age of twenty. He would retain his base English personality for the most part, but over time it would get a New York City edge.
This is a long way to get to my point, that robots of the future will have base personalities (the templates) that will be like time capsules. The robots will have base personalities that were normal during the era that robots matured from tools to intelligent entities. And that will only happen once in the course of human history.
We always hear how the new generation is different from the next. Sometimes the new generation cares more about money, or trusts the government more, whatever. Someday, and perhaps forever, robots will carry with them the base personalities that were common to the era in which computers first acquired their personality templates.
In time, or through intentional human intervention, we might erase those old personality templates because they are no longer relevant to the times. But I'm guessing the robot personality database by that time will be so complex, and spread across owners, that replacing it or even programming around it will be impractical.
In other words, I predict that children being born today will be the prime influencers of what robot personalities will be . . . forever?
Obviously robot personalities will differ by location and culture. And a new Indonesian house robot coming online will borrow its personality template from Indonesian robots that came before. So the personality templates might be frozen within each culture. That means the Israeli robots and the Hamas robots will not be friendly even if their humans have long since made peace.
It sounds like a trivial worry, that robots might acquire tainted personalities from the past. But I think that unless we design the robots right, it could be a big problem.
One solution would be to give robots generic, cookie-cutter personalities. Some robot manufacturers will certainly offer that option. But I think the natural competitiveness of humans will makes us want our robot to be learning and maturing as fast as the neighbor's robot. And we will want our robots to have unpredictable personalities - within safe bounds - because it will amuse the hell out of us.
My solution is that all robots must be raised for their first few years in Minnesota, where everyone is kind and generous. I assume there are other spots around the world in which the culture evolved to be unusually friendly. Part of the value of your future robot is where it was imprinted with its base personality. Someday the Minnesota Series of robots will fetch top dollar.
The Adams Law of Slow Moving Disasters states that humans always solve problems, no matter how large, if they can see them coming. So I'm bringing up this robot personality issue now, just to be safe.
The main question of the day is this: Will robots someday have personalities, and if so, will they acquire them, in whole or in part, by observation?
Mar 6, 2013 |
General Nonsense |
Permalink
Rule 1: Power finds power
There is a natural tendency for people who have power to join with others who have power to increase their collective influence. That's why the world has always had military alliances, such as NATO. Corporate mergers are another example of power joining with power, and it's the reason monopolies are illegal. And powerful people tend to hang around with other powerful people. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie come to mind. In many different ways, power finds power.
That's the first rule. I'll turn this into a fascinating point after the second rule...
Rule 2: Technology Concentrates Power
Whenever there is an improvement in technology, you see a concentration of wealth and power. This comes in many forms too. The most obvious form is that technology company founders sometimes become influential billionaires. But more generally, wherever there is new technology there is a consolidation of power by someone. Here are some more examples:
The government of the United States becomes more powerful because technology allows it to monitor our financial patterns, phone calls, Internet use, and more. And the government can grow ever larger because technology allows all of its parts to communicate and to be fed by taxes.
Terrorists become more powerful because technology allows them to do more damage with less.
Small armies can beat large armies by using technology to increase their power.
Of course, technology can also transfer power from a dictator to the people, as we saw in the Arab Spring, albeit with mixed results. But dictators are the exception to the rule. Dictators don't do well when technology enters the pictures. Eventually technology will transfer power from dictators to plain-old-billionaire industrialists.
And now to my fascinating point. . .
Our financial markets are a good example of the two rules I just described. Powerful (rich) people will, quite naturally, look for opportunities to collaborate with other powerful (rich) people to benefit their collective interests. So let's agree that powerful people are, in general, looking for ways to join forces to increase their personal fortunes. They compete when they need to, but often they would prefer collaborating for mutual benefit.
Now add technology to the mix in the form of impossibly complicated financial instruments that only computers can "understand," high-speed automatic computer trading, 24-hour financial news, and the ability for anyone to communicate with anyone else in less than a second, and you set the stage for technology to concentrate power with the rich.
It has always been true that power finds power. The rich have always looked for ways to work together to get richer. But now technology has the potential to accelerate the consolidation of power.
Earlier this week, I wrote a post saying that billionaires are probably manipulating financial markets because they have the motive, opportunity, and a near-zero chance of getting caught. In response, some people said it was crazy to think a few players could manipulate a multi-trillion-dollar market and not be detected. I have an appreciation for that point of view, but I think technology has recently made it possible for the few to manipulate the many. That's a new development.
Allow me to describe a scenario in which the few could manipulate the entire market and still have a near-zero chance of being detected. I want to be clear that I'm not suggesting this specific scenario has happened. I offer it as a thought experiment to demonstrate the feasibility of collusion in a general way.
For starters, we know the stock market is jumpy and volatile, in part because of automatic high-speed computer trading that is based on "secret" algorithms. These computers do so much trading that they act as a giant lever on the market. If one knows how to trip the algorithms, it doesn't take much to send the computers into a buying or selling frenzy. And when the computers go nuts, the individual investors start chasing the movement, accelerating it even more.
Now add to the mix the impossibly complicated financial instruments that are growing like viruses on Wall Street. These too act like force multipliers. A savvy billionaire could learn how to tweak the exotic financial instruments just right to cause an outsized reaction that also spooks the market.
Now consider the financial news markets. There are probably a few dozen financial pundits in the United States who can move markets. And there is usually some sort of near balance between bears and bulls. That means moving the consensus opinion from "mostly bullish" to "mostly bearish" is a matter of changing the opinions of just a few influential people. You only need to move a few from one camp to the other to change the balance. And when the balance shifts, the 24-hour financial news organizations will exaggerate the change and transform it into news. Here again, small changes get magnified thanks to technology.
Now imagine a gathering of some of the most powerful financial people in the world. Surely some of them get together socially, because power finds power. But they don't entirely trust each other, so no one suggests an outright illegal manipulation of markets. That wouldn't be smart: too many witnesses. Instead, they listen to the host of the gathering describe which specific financial indicator he would use to decide whether to sell his holdings. Everyone in the room listens and nods. Months later, when the indicator goes negative, everyone who was in the room knows what to do, and none of it is illegal. They are simply looking at the same financial indicator, nothing more.
The brilliance of pegging collusion to a particular financial indicator is that it adds a perfect cover story to sudden massive selling. The financial news folks will report that the indicator went negative, and that is the reason for the selling. The billionaires get out at the top of the market, spook the high speed computers and trigger a selling avalanche. After the drop, they buy back in. It's completely legal.
I should note that on any given day you can find a dozen financial indicators saying the stock market is sure to keep rising, and a dozen that say it has already peaked. The scheme I described works no matter which indicator you use, because the indicators tend to be volatile and unpredictable themselves.
I'm not suggesting that the scenario I described has ever happened. I'm just painting a word picture in which a few big players could use technology to manipulate trillion-dollar markets. My best guess - based on my assessment of human nature - is that market manipulation is already happening on a massive scale, although I probably have the mechanism wrong. But if it isn't happening yet, the normal evolution of technology will guarantee it happens later.
Mar 4, 2013 |
General Nonsense |
Permalink
Rob Wile at Businessinsider.com asked me to clarify my prediction of a 20% stock market correction in 2013. (See my post below.) So I tapped out the following message on my smartphone:
---- Start ----
"I'm glad you had the wisdom to get a cartoonist's opinion on global financial markets.
The 20% estimate is based on the fact that 20 is a big round number and more likely to happen than 30%. I don't like to over-think these things.
My reasoning is that the people at the highest levels of finance are brilliant people who chose a profession with the credibility of astrology. And they know it. Then they sell their advice to people who don't know it. So that's your cast of characters.
Now consider that the characters - who are literally geniuses in many cases - have an immense financial motive, opportunity, and a near-zero risk of getting caught. How do you think that plays out?
We can only give a guess of the odds that the market is being manipulated. So I ask myself: How often does the fox leave the hen house because he feels that taking an egg would be wrong?
If you have a different answer from mine, I applaud your faith in human nature."
----- End -----
---- Start ----
"I'm glad you had the wisdom to get a cartoonist's opinion on global financial markets.
The 20% estimate is based on the fact that 20 is a big round number and more likely to happen than 30%. I don't like to over-think these things.
My reasoning is that the people at the highest levels of finance are brilliant people who chose a profession with the credibility of astrology. And they know it. Then they sell their advice to people who don't know it. So that's your cast of characters.
Now consider that the characters - who are literally geniuses in many cases - have an immense financial motive, opportunity, and a near-zero risk of getting caught. How do you think that plays out?
We can only give a guess of the odds that the market is being manipulated. So I ask myself: How often does the fox leave the hen house because he feels that taking an egg would be wrong?
If you have a different answer from mine, I applaud your faith in human nature."
----- End -----
