3 ms·

Even if it’s incompetence you can’t get better if you never realize you made a mistake.

sgt101 7y ago
I'd make a comparison with the Space Shuttle. The overall problems of the program - a massively overweight orbiter, compromises on spec, the failures of the ceramic tiles... these are examples of mistakes to learn from. Launching challenger outside of the design envelope? In a deep sense the lesson was: use the knowledge of engineers, hard won over 300 years and behave professionally. 7 people did not have to die for us to know this - we KNEW THIS ALREADY. Learning from blowing up a large company by overloading its balence sheet is equivalent to learning that sticking a fork in your eye is likely to hurt. The fact that the "learners" end up with £5m or more stuck in their bank accounts indicates that there is little or no incompetence, and frankly a gallon of bad.
- chillacy 7y ago
  > The fact that the "learners" end up with £5m or more stuck in their bank accounts indicates that there is little or no incompetence, and frankly a gallon of bad. I'm not sure it's possible to tell on a case by case basis. Certainly the incentives are not aligned, but I myself don't see the point of blaming individual actors for taking advantage when the system itself is broken. The better solution would be to align incentives (by legislation if the market won't) and you'll magically see people acting "morally" out of self interest.
mlthoughts2018 7y ago
Sure, but a lot of the folks making these mistakes inside of companies also don’t care about getting better, just getting paid. If you wanted every such type of mistake to be susceptible to crimimal or civil litigation, boy, you’d be legislating morality for one (deciding exactly when someone can value money or believe a certain risk is worthwhile), and have almost no way to enforce it (how can you prove a sincere mistake I “learned from” vs negligence I never cared about, without something like smoking gun email admissions or something?), and further no competent people will agree to do these jobs if they feel they cannot have a perfectly healthy and normal process of making mistakes without great risk someone will try to turn it into a lawsuit or criminal charges? You might say these are all matters of degree, and you just use targeted legislation to make it punishable according to specific guidelines, but it’s just a giant slippery slope, and very susceptible to political subversion for people who have the same malicious intent only operating on the regulatory or legislative side rather than in private firms. It’s a huge moral hazard problem, but one that can really only be solved by rare, upstanding management, and hardly ever by litigation.
- chillacy 7y ago
  > making these mistakes inside of companies also don’t care about getting better, just getting paid. I guess that's the problem, but at least for people who are competent today, they got there by failing and learning. > If you wanted every such type of mistake to be susceptible to crimimal or civil litigation No I don't, that's bad for all the reasons you said. Rather I'm all for letting people deal with the consequences of their decisions so that they learn over time. That's a structural change. Some examples: * Engineers who write the code should also test/debug it * UX designers should regularly see new users trying their products I haven't thought too much of the case for CEOs but I imagine it's similar. At least in the startup world CEOs with a failed company under their belt are more valued than those with no experience.

I'd make a comparison with the Space Shuttle. The overall problems of the program - a massively overweight orbiter, compromises on spec, the failures of the ceramic tiles... these are examples of mistakes to learn from. Launching challenger outside of the design envelope? In a deep sense the lesson was: use the knowledge of engineers, hard won over 300 years and behave professionally. 7 people did not have to die for us to know this - we KNEW THIS ALREADY. Learning from blowing up a large company by overloading its balence sheet is equivalent to learning that sticking a fork in your eye is likely to hurt. The fact that the "learners" end up with £5m or more stuck in their bank accounts indicates that there is little or no incompetence, and frankly a gallon of bad.

chillacy 7y ago
> The fact that the "learners" end up with £5m or more stuck in their bank accounts indicates that there is little or no incompetence, and frankly a gallon of bad. I'm not sure it's possible to tell on a case by case basis. Certainly the incentives are not aligned, but I myself don't see the point of blaming individual actors for taking advantage when the system itself is broken. The better solution would be to align incentives (by legislation if the market won't) and you'll magically see people acting "morally" out of self interest.

mlthoughts2018 7y ago

Sure, but a lot of the folks making these mistakes inside of companies also don’t care about getting better, just getting paid. If you wanted every such type of mistake to be susceptible to crimimal or civil litigation, boy, you’d be legislating morality for one (deciding exactly when someone can value money or believe a certain risk is worthwhile), and have almost no way to enforce it (how can you prove a sincere mistake I “learned from” vs negligence I never cared about, without something like smoking gun email admissions or something?), and further no competent people will agree to do these jobs if they feel they cannot have a perfectly healthy and normal process of making mistakes without great risk someone will try to turn it into a lawsuit or criminal charges? You might say these are all matters of degree, and you just use targeted legislation to make it punishable according to specific guidelines, but it’s just a giant slippery slope, and very susceptible to political subversion for people who have the same malicious intent only operating on the regulatory or legislative side rather than in private firms. It’s a huge moral hazard problem, but one that can really only be solved by rare, upstanding management, and hardly ever by litigation.

chillacy 7y ago
> making these mistakes inside of companies also don’t care about getting better, just getting paid. I guess that's the problem, but at least for people who are competent today, they got there by failing and learning. > If you wanted every such type of mistake to be susceptible to crimimal or civil litigation No I don't, that's bad for all the reasons you said. Rather I'm all for letting people deal with the consequences of their decisions so that they learn over time. That's a structural change. Some examples: * Engineers who write the code should also test/debug it * UX designers should regularly see new users trying their products I haven't thought too much of the case for CEOs but I imagine it's similar. At least in the startup world CEOs with a failed company under their belt are more valued than those with no experience.