2 ms·

I agree with everything you've said so I won't add to it. There is an interesting anecdote that I love. Some number of years ago there used to be a show called

by snarf21 10y ago

I agree with everything you've said so I won't add to it. There is an interesting anecdote that I love. Some number of years ago there used to be a show called EcoChallenge. It was made by Marc Burnett but before Survivor. It was simply an adventure race but no politics and no contrived voting. Each team of 4 must be co-ed. There is a starting point, there is a stopping point and there are way stations along the way. Simply go from start to end hitting the way stations. Everything else was left up to the teams. The one big twist is that you can't win unless ALL of the team hits each way point. Teams are allowed to race 24x7. One of the last years it was on tv, a team of navy seals bombed out and a team of 3 playboy playmates went further then they did. The team that won (from NZ) had a sick teammate and spent two days nursing their teammate into passable health. They loaded up all that person's gear split 1.3x, 1.3x, 1.3x, 0x and set off. They rocketed past all of the other teams and won by over a day. This is what real success looks like. A determined team laser focused on the exact same goal and doing whatever it takes to get there.

devonkim 10y ago
A bit more on topic, I was asked to read a book on leadership and teamwork that's a bit of a cliche these days but Coach Wooden's Leadership Game Plan for Success covers a lot of these ideas specifically in a sports context. A lot of leadership texts revolve around sports out of sheer ubiquity in subject matter among business leaders culturally but beyond some pop sociology type of research I really don't pay much attention to them in a business setting. Why? In much of the world of software, day-to-day work is not a race against a competing team towards the exact same goal as much as it is a race against oneself and against market inertia whether that may be the default mode of failure or convergence to an equilibrium point that needs to be readjusted as the team discovers the hidden rules of a game. In fact, a lot of business is probably a lot closer to something more sadistic and cruel in gross mechanics like from Takashi Miike's 2014 As the Gods Will (and the manga of the same) - arbitrary filters where the rules are very clear only until after people have died. Some stages test raw individual skills while others test cooperation. And in some cases it didn't actually matter if you had either of those because "luck" is the bigger factor (the fact few in practice agree upon these slack variables to achieving business success shows how random things are for survivorship moreso than controllable factors like skill and effort)

by snarf21 10y ago

devonkim 10y ago

A bit more on topic, I was asked to read a book on leadership and teamwork that's a bit of a cliche these days but Coach Wooden's Leadership Game Plan for Success covers a lot of these ideas specifically in a sports context. A lot of leadership texts revolve around sports out of sheer ubiquity in subject matter among business leaders culturally but beyond some pop sociology type of research I really don't pay much attention to them in a business setting. Why? In much of the world of software, day-to-day work is not a race against a competing team towards the exact same goal as much as it is a race against oneself and against market inertia whether that may be the default mode of failure or convergence to an equilibrium point that needs to be readjusted as the team discovers the hidden rules of a game. In fact, a lot of business is probably a lot closer to something more sadistic and cruel in gross mechanics like from Takashi Miike's 2014 As the Gods Will (and the manga of the same) - arbitrary filters where the rules are very clear only until after people have died. Some stages test raw individual skills while others test cooperation. And in some cases it didn't actually matter if you had either of those because "luck" is the bigger factor (the fact few in practice agree upon these slack variables to achieving business success shows how random things are for survivorship moreso than controllable factors like skill and effort)