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I appreciate you pointing this out. Reminds me of a book called Obliquity where I think the author specifically mentions Boeing in a story talking about how com

I appreciate you pointing this out. Reminds me of a book called Obliquity where I think the author specifically mentions Boeing in a story talking about how companies make more money when they don't specifically focus on making money. If I recall correctly, he mentions how Boeing used to focus on making really good planes and when they did, they made a lot of money. When they shifted to focusing on profit, they started to make less money because they made worse planes. The book is a few years old but feels quite prescient.

dmix 7y ago
That's because we as a culture over-analyze and study businesses as if they are living entities that are the sum of all of it's different internal divisions/parts/stockholder-connected output, instead of fundamentally about delivering value to customers and getting back a greater amount of value in return. The universities and pop-business books has made everyone so obsessed with the business processes themselves and their management, particularly the stuff that has commonalities across various niches: finance, management culture, 'innovation', etc. But the all of the various unique fundamental value propositions are what really drives the companies, everything else is just helping deliver and execute that, but the core of the business often goes to the way-side in favour of obsessing over perfecting all of the the small processes in between. An ideal organization should put its primary business front and centre, above the various small processes which it is composed of mostly just for practical reasons of running a business. It's sometimes difficult to distinguish between the two but I do very much think that it's possible to lose sight of that distinction in the day-to-day running of things, especially once the business gets really larger and running the business itself becomes the biggest time-sink for everyone involved.
- jimkleiber 7y ago
  I agree. I think we often get too focused on the small details of life and forget the big picture. And by we I mean me as well thank you for your words
tome 7y ago
Is it this? https://www.johnkay.com/2004/01/17/obliquity/ https://www.johnkay.com/2004/01/17/obliquity/
- jimkleiber 7y ago
  Yes! That's it. I only read the first few chapters because my friend loved it and I gave it to him. However I loved those first few chapters
  - tome 7y ago
    It looks very interesting, thanks!
- acqq 7y ago
  The essay is from 2004, the whole book (240 pages) from 2010: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obliquity_(book) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obliquity_(book) And TEDxWarwick talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BoAtYL3OWU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BoAtYL3OWU
hcarvalhoalves 7y ago
Because higher-ups are incentivized to show metrics improve and get their bonus, and so called new data-driven business culture has a bias to measure whats is easy to measure, but not necessarily what’s important. E.g. we cut 50% of the cost of training this year vs. we improved the training and pilots are more efficient.
- jimkleiber 7y ago
  Ah, I find that point fascinating, that this attitude trickles down into the incentive structures, and maybe just job evaluation in general. How to measure someone's impact on an org in a way that is not a number: hours inputted, dollars saved or gained, lines of code, leads gained/lost, followers gained/lost...do you know of any examples where you think they've done it in a way that takes the bigger picture into consideration?
  - hcarvalhoalves 7y ago
    I don’t. I believe it’s fundamentally hard to measure second and third order effects too. Maybe the best one can do is just ruthlessly focus on core values, otherwise is very easy to fall into local optima.

dmix 7y ago

That's because we as a culture over-analyze and study businesses as if they are living entities that are the sum of all of it's different internal divisions/parts/stockholder-connected output, instead of fundamentally about delivering value to customers and getting back a greater amount of value in return. The universities and pop-business books has made everyone so obsessed with the business processes themselves and their management, particularly the stuff that has commonalities across various niches: finance, management culture, 'innovation', etc. But the all of the various unique fundamental value propositions are what really drives the companies, everything else is just helping deliver and execute that, but the core of the business often goes to the way-side in favour of obsessing over perfecting all of the the small processes in between. An ideal organization should put its primary business front and centre, above the various small processes which it is composed of mostly just for practical reasons of running a business. It's sometimes difficult to distinguish between the two but I do very much think that it's possible to lose sight of that distinction in the day-to-day running of things, especially once the business gets really larger and running the business itself becomes the biggest time-sink for everyone involved.

jimkleiber 7y ago
I agree. I think we often get too focused on the small details of life and forget the big picture. And by we I mean me as well thank you for your words

tome 7y ago

Is it this? https://www.johnkay.com/2004/01/17/obliquity/ https://www.johnkay.com/2004/01/17/obliquity/

jimkleiber 7y ago
Yes! That's it. I only read the first few chapters because my friend loved it and I gave it to him. However I loved those first few chapters
- tome 7y ago
  It looks very interesting, thanks!
acqq 7y ago
The essay is from 2004, the whole book (240 pages) from 2010: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obliquity_(book) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obliquity_(book) And TEDxWarwick talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BoAtYL3OWU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BoAtYL3OWU

hcarvalhoalves 7y ago

Because higher-ups are incentivized to show metrics improve and get their bonus, and so called new data-driven business culture has a bias to measure whats is easy to measure, but not necessarily what’s important. E.g. we cut 50% of the cost of training this year vs. we improved the training and pilots are more efficient.

jimkleiber 7y ago
Ah, I find that point fascinating, that this attitude trickles down into the incentive structures, and maybe just job evaluation in general. How to measure someone's impact on an org in a way that is not a number: hours inputted, dollars saved or gained, lines of code, leads gained/lost, followers gained/lost...do you know of any examples where you think they've done it in a way that takes the bigger picture into consideration?
- hcarvalhoalves 7y ago
  I don’t. I believe it’s fundamentally hard to measure second and third order effects too. Maybe the best one can do is just ruthlessly focus on core values, otherwise is very easy to fall into local optima.