Wow, this points to some fairly shallow management skills => "It is practically impossible to fire someone for the basic reason that you don't need this role any more or there is a better person out there or just plain old "you are not doing a great job". This neuters managers..."
I am reminded of an anecdote I heard about a senior GS tech manager who joined a new company and couldn't figure out how to manage people who didn't care if their (relatively small) bonuses were withheld. That always worked at GS!
I suspect that there is a sliver of a beast in each of us - someone who just wants to tell people what to do and be obeyed, without all that annoying, time consuming explaining and convincing stuff. I've found that beast inside myself, particularly under pressure! And of course, you've been promoted to "manager" because you're obviously smarter/more inspired/harder working than others, so it's your right to command. Surely.
Simon Wardley says the next generation of manager will come from MMORPG guild leaders - people who have learned to motivate and inspire distributed teams of volunteers. It won't consist of people who think they're right to fire is their only management lever.
Reading Noam's post, I am reminded of the book 'Loonshots' (Safi Bahcall), which goes into a lot of detail about how different types of incentives the work in different types of organizations and how that impacts the capability to innovate, going as far as to whip up a formula for it (https://hbr.org/2019/03/the-innovation-equation). The formula takes scope of management as an input, because a smaller scope of management (number of people per manager) means there's more paths to promotion. Bahcall says that means working on relationships to further promotion opportunities is a better investment than working on a project's success.
Another thought is that Noam is very, very American. The view of the world that only extreme pressures and risks can give the incentives to stimulate innovation and high performance does not match my experience. Hell, even the idea that putting incentives in place that encourage employees to put in extreme amount of hours seems pretty perverse to me.
Wow, this points to some fairly shallow management skills => "It is practically impossible to fire someone for the basic reason that you don't need this role any more or there is a better person out there or just plain old "you are not doing a great job". This neuters managers..."
I am reminded of an anecdote I heard about a senior GS tech manager who joined a new company and couldn't figure out how to manage people who didn't care if their (relatively small) bonuses were withheld. That always worked at GS!
I suspect that there is a sliver of a beast in each of us - someone who just wants to tell people what to do and be obeyed, without all that annoying, time consuming explaining and convincing stuff. I've found that beast inside myself, particularly under pressure! And of course, you've been promoted to "manager" because you're obviously smarter/more inspired/harder working than others, so it's your right to command. Surely.
Simon Wardley says the next generation of manager will come from MMORPG guild leaders - people who have learned to motivate and inspire distributed teams of volunteers. It won't consist of people who think they're right to fire is their only management lever.
Reading Noam's post, I am reminded of the book 'Loonshots' (Safi Bahcall), which goes into a lot of detail about how different types of incentives the work in different types of organizations and how that impacts the capability to innovate, going as far as to whip up a formula for it (https://hbr.org/2019/03/the-innovation-equation). The formula takes scope of management as an input, because a smaller scope of management (number of people per manager) means there's more paths to promotion. Bahcall says that means working on relationships to further promotion opportunities is a better investment than working on a project's success.
Another thought is that Noam is very, very American. The view of the world that only extreme pressures and risks can give the incentives to stimulate innovation and high performance does not match my experience. Hell, even the idea that putting incentives in place that encourage employees to put in extreme amount of hours seems pretty perverse to me.