4 ms·

in a large company, if the main products are management politics, as you say, a capable critical thinker ought to be able to dominate that game, instead of focu

by dingbat 10y ago

in a large company, if the main products are management politics, as you say, a capable critical thinker ought to be able to dominate that game, instead of focusing on relatively unimportant priorities like "shipping". if someone tends to get marginalized, by definition that means they are ineffective at "getting things done".

bsder 10y ago
> in a large company, if the main products are management politics, as you say, a capable critical thinker ought to be able to dominate that game, instead of focusing on relatively unimportant priorities like "shipping". Um, they do exactly that? Upper managers are notorious for spending most of their time playing politics and very little time delivering product.
- dingbat 10y ago
  person i was responding to was defining "critical thinkers" as the ones who get sidelined and punished for challenging the status quo and focusing on priorities that are secondary (in fact not even secondary, #4, #5) to the purported main product of large companies, which is political gamesmanship. so, alleged "critical thinkers" in this context are just the frustrated losers who think they are the one who get things done (which everyone thinks of themselves), but who actually focus on the wrong things to get done, while also rendering themselves ineffective even in that effort.
  - ACow_Adonis 10y ago
    You're definition of "get things done" is Orwellian in its inanity... Edit: as per your notion that critical thinkers should apparently just play the game better, rather than...I don't know...think critically/critique it. Are we even talking the same language?
    - dingbat 10y ago
      please read the comments i am responding to. the comment i am responding to is positing that in large companies, the main product is political game-playing (i do not necessarily believe that this is true), stating that delivering and shipping what people typically think of as "product" is #4 and #5 at best (again, i think that is a distorted generalization). at the same time, the comment i am replying to posits that "critical thinkers" are the effective people in an organization who are really the ones who get things done. at the same time stating that these people who get things done are sidelined, punished and rendered ineffective by the organization. at the same time stating that these same people are the ones who are focused on low-priority items in that organization. i agree with you, taken together, those statements are rather inane.. not only that but also wildly inconsistent, an ironic example of sloppy critical thinking. i do not know where you get the impression that critical thinkers "should" play the game better. i am stating the obvious (which apparently isnt), that you would expect truly effective critical thinkers to be very good at focusing on the main priority within an organization, which based on the definitions defined by the previous commentor, is not "shipping product", but rather playing the game better. i disagree with that conclusion, but it is a consistent conclusion that follows assumptions that i also think are flawed. in fact, assuming the negative assumptions about large organizations are valid, truly effective critical thinkers in such an organization would be able to see thru typical "mission statements" about delivering great product and service yada yada ... and instead focus on the accumulation of individual power and influence, if that is the main purpose of any human group. "the true organization man is the one who is most skeptical [aka critically thinking] about the organization"... or something like that. anyway, critical thinking and emotionalism (bitterness and resentment about the unfairness of it all) would seem to be mutually opposed.
      - TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
        You're confusing critical thinking with Machiavellianism. Actually you're confusing a lot of things. Your two penultimate paragraphs directly contradict each other.
        dingbat 10y ago
        critical thinking and Machiavellianism are orthogonal. if you read the comments i am responding to, you'd see that those comments are the ones which are making the assumption that critical thinkers are non-Machiavellian, which is just as inane as the idea that critical thinking should be Machiavellian in nature. perhaps the problem is that for most people it is more emotionally satisfying to believe themselves as non-Machiavellian critical thinkers, thus confusing the two as related somehow. consider two fundamental properties of critical thinking: asking the right questions, and objectivity. in a large organization that was defined (not by me) as having politics and power-playing as the main priority, then the person who thinks they are "getting things done" as long as those "things" do not involve icky political managerial dynamics ("selling my soul"), never thinking to question their own personal biases of "just because i like to put my head down and work on shipping product, is that the right thing to get done?", would seem to in fact not be engaging in critical thinking at all. again, my reply is responding to (not supporting) the nonsensical proposition that critical thinkers (as ill-defined by other commentors) are more effective than Machiavellian actors, even as they are supposedly marginalized (aka rendered ineffective) within large organizations. i can understand why that line of thinking is confusing, because it is.
adekok 10y ago
Or, someone who enjoys getting things done can move to another company, where the management goals are aligned with the corporate goals. Sometimes I don't want to sell my soul.
crdoconnor 10y ago
>in a large company, if the main products are management politics, as you say, a capable critical thinker ought to be able to dominate that game There's often no point. The main currencies of corporate politics are power, fealty, loyalty, power in numbers and image. You can use your critical thinking to spin a good story but building coalitions takes time and demonstrating loyalty takes time. In a company on a downward trend is investing that time worth it? Probably not. Is it worth it if your best quality is that you're a reliable kiss ass? Maybe. If shipping is priority #5 you'd likely do better getting out and moving to a company where it's #1 or #2 where critical thinking skills are more directly rewarded and you don't have to spend 5 years kissing the ring of an idiot boss in order to win political arguments.

by dingbat 10y ago

bsder 10y ago

> in a large company, if the main products are management politics, as you say, a capable critical thinker ought to be able to dominate that game, instead of focusing on relatively unimportant priorities like "shipping". Um, they do exactly that? Upper managers are notorious for spending most of their time playing politics and very little time delivering product.

dingbat 10y ago
person i was responding to was defining "critical thinkers" as the ones who get sidelined and punished for challenging the status quo and focusing on priorities that are secondary (in fact not even secondary, #4, #5) to the purported main product of large companies, which is political gamesmanship. so, alleged "critical thinkers" in this context are just the frustrated losers who think they are the one who get things done (which everyone thinks of themselves), but who actually focus on the wrong things to get done, while also rendering themselves ineffective even in that effort.
- ACow_Adonis 10y ago
  You're definition of "get things done" is Orwellian in its inanity... Edit: as per your notion that critical thinkers should apparently just play the game better, rather than...I don't know...think critically/critique it. Are we even talking the same language?
  - dingbat 10y ago
    please read the comments i am responding to. the comment i am responding to is positing that in large companies, the main product is political game-playing (i do not necessarily believe that this is true), stating that delivering and shipping what people typically think of as "product" is #4 and #5 at best (again, i think that is a distorted generalization). at the same time, the comment i am replying to posits that "critical thinkers" are the effective people in an organization who are really the ones who get things done. at the same time stating that these people who get things done are sidelined, punished and rendered ineffective by the organization. at the same time stating that these same people are the ones who are focused on low-priority items in that organization. i agree with you, taken together, those statements are rather inane.. not only that but also wildly inconsistent, an ironic example of sloppy critical thinking. i do not know where you get the impression that critical thinkers "should" play the game better. i am stating the obvious (which apparently isnt), that you would expect truly effective critical thinkers to be very good at focusing on the main priority within an organization, which based on the definitions defined by the previous commentor, is not "shipping product", but rather playing the game better. i disagree with that conclusion, but it is a consistent conclusion that follows assumptions that i also think are flawed. in fact, assuming the negative assumptions about large organizations are valid, truly effective critical thinkers in such an organization would be able to see thru typical "mission statements" about delivering great product and service yada yada ... and instead focus on the accumulation of individual power and influence, if that is the main purpose of any human group. "the true organization man is the one who is most skeptical [aka critically thinking] about the organization"... or something like that. anyway, critical thinking and emotionalism (bitterness and resentment about the unfairness of it all) would seem to be mutually opposed.
    - TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
      You're confusing critical thinking with Machiavellianism. Actually you're confusing a lot of things. Your two penultimate paragraphs directly contradict each other.
      - dingbat 10y ago
        critical thinking and Machiavellianism are orthogonal. if you read the comments i am responding to, you'd see that those comments are the ones which are making the assumption that critical thinkers are non-Machiavellian, which is just as inane as the idea that critical thinking should be Machiavellian in nature. perhaps the problem is that for most people it is more emotionally satisfying to believe themselves as non-Machiavellian critical thinkers, thus confusing the two as related somehow. consider two fundamental properties of critical thinking: asking the right questions, and objectivity. in a large organization that was defined (not by me) as having politics and power-playing as the main priority, then the person who thinks they are "getting things done" as long as those "things" do not involve icky political managerial dynamics ("selling my soul"), never thinking to question their own personal biases of "just because i like to put my head down and work on shipping product, is that the right thing to get done?", would seem to in fact not be engaging in critical thinking at all. again, my reply is responding to (not supporting) the nonsensical proposition that critical thinkers (as ill-defined by other commentors) are more effective than Machiavellian actors, even as they are supposedly marginalized (aka rendered ineffective) within large organizations. i can understand why that line of thinking is confusing, because it is.

adekok 10y ago

Or, someone who enjoys getting things done can move to another company, where the management goals are aligned with the corporate goals. Sometimes I don't want to sell my soul.

crdoconnor 10y ago

>in a large company, if the main products are management politics, as you say, a capable critical thinker ought to be able to dominate that game There's often no point. The main currencies of corporate politics are power, fealty, loyalty, power in numbers and image. You can use your critical thinking to spin a good story but building coalitions takes time and demonstrating loyalty takes time. In a company on a downward trend is investing that time worth it? Probably not. Is it worth it if your best quality is that you're a reliable kiss ass? Maybe. If shipping is priority #5 you'd likely do better getting out and moving to a company where it's #1 or #2 where critical thinking skills are more directly rewarded and you don't have to spend 5 years kissing the ring of an idiot boss in order to win political arguments.