3 ms·

How is it "no big deal" for some companies to get a new CEO and catastrophic for others? It probably doesn't satisfy, but isn't one answer to this question: "B

How is it "no big deal" for some companies to get a new CEO and catastrophic for others? It probably doesn't satisfy, but isn't one answer to this question: "Because there are countless convoluted variables"? This would depend on the outgoing CEO, the incoming CEO, every key employee, the state of the company, the company's sector, the state of the economy, etc. I guess you're looking for consistent rules of thumb, but is it possible that there are too many factors for their to be any good rules of thumb?

ChuckMcM 11y ago
Having joined IBM which has a process for everything (including evolving management, and making changes at the top) which was very very different than Sun which was evolution by attrition (for example once Ed Zander figured out that Scott McNealy wasn't going to give him a shot at being CEO he went to Motorola) which was different than NetApp where some positional changes (CEO) seemed managed while others (CTO and VP Eng) did not. And then there are processes like military command or the US Constitution which have their own components. For example you can't run for the office "Speaker of the house" in the US Congress you have to be voted into it by a set of peers who are all nominally eligible for the job. Similarly with Pope, anyone in the College of Cardinals can be elected as I understand it. Not so much for Dali Lama though. Organizations are only as strong as the people who make them up, but creating tools to manage that set of people for the greater good of the organization, that is an interesting question. How do you quell damaging voices while amplifying the voice of people making forward progress? Countries are the same way, monarchies can fail suddenly with the coronation of a bad monarch, but democracies tend to survive such games. Rome had been around for centuries but as more and more power congealed into a single individual it became more and more unstable. It is like you have to walk into a room where anyone else can get you removed, and still get stuff done.
- solipsism 11y ago
  How to design robust organizations at scale. And how to quantify the stability and robustness of a given organization. I agree, it's an interesting topic. At the nation-state scale, it could be that we don't have enough data points. And to take the question to its extreme, it's hard to answer what kind of life-forms/civilizations might be likely to become space faring (or even intelligent) with N=1.

ChuckMcM 11y ago

Having joined IBM which has a process for everything (including evolving management, and making changes at the top) which was very very different than Sun which was evolution by attrition (for example once Ed Zander figured out that Scott McNealy wasn't going to give him a shot at being CEO he went to Motorola) which was different than NetApp where some positional changes (CEO) seemed managed while others (CTO and VP Eng) did not. And then there are processes like military command or the US Constitution which have their own components. For example you can't run for the office "Speaker of the house" in the US Congress you have to be voted into it by a set of peers who are all nominally eligible for the job. Similarly with Pope, anyone in the College of Cardinals can be elected as I understand it. Not so much for Dali Lama though. Organizations are only as strong as the people who make them up, but creating tools to manage that set of people for the greater good of the organization, that is an interesting question. How do you quell damaging voices while amplifying the voice of people making forward progress? Countries are the same way, monarchies can fail suddenly with the coronation of a bad monarch, but democracies tend to survive such games. Rome had been around for centuries but as more and more power congealed into a single individual it became more and more unstable. It is like you have to walk into a room where anyone else can get you removed, and still get stuff done.

solipsism 11y ago
How to design robust organizations at scale. And how to quantify the stability and robustness of a given organization. I agree, it's an interesting topic. At the nation-state scale, it could be that we don't have enough data points. And to take the question to its extreme, it's hard to answer what kind of life-forms/civilizations might be likely to become space faring (or even intelligent) with N=1.