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An authoritarian culture, however, can get work done much quicker while staying with a razor-sharp focus. The whole "democratic" decision-making process takes t

An authoritarian culture, however, can get work done much quicker while staying with a razor-sharp focus. The whole "democratic" decision-making process takes time and leads to a sequence of decisions spread throughout the time domain, which, taken together, might lead to a suboptimal result compared to what might be achieved by following the steps of an "enlightened benevolent dictator".

bitwize 6y ago
The problem with that is that dictators usually fail to be sufficiently enlightened or benevolent.
- teatree 6y ago
  Somehow China has been an outlier to this norm, so far.
  - ben_w 6y ago
    Enlightened in the sense I think it’s meant here, but not benevolent.
  - solarkraft 6y ago
    It significantly depends on who you are. Uyghurs and Falung Gong practicioners would probably disagree.
  - GlennS 6y ago
    I disagree, China seems to fit right into the pattern. Mao became undisputed leader. His purges were bad enough that the party decided to implement a 10 year term limit. Xi removed that limit, and now China is swinging slowly towards authoritarianism. We're still in the early years of his rule at this point. Wait till he makes a mistake and his grip starts slipping, then he will see enemies everywhere. When someone makes themselves ruler for life, it tells you that their character is not suitable for that position, because they lack the humility to hand over their work to a successor. Because they've decided they can't trust other people's motives and competence.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
  The closest to an enlightened, benevolent dictator in modern times I think is Lee Kuan Yew.
pjc50 6y ago
> enlightened benevolent dictator These are extremely hard to find, and anyone who thinks of themselves as one is missing at least one of those properties.
dugmartin 6y ago
The problem is that due to the Peter principle (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle) the people making the decisions are not competent to make them.
- danaris 6y ago
  While this is certainly true, I've felt for a long time that the Peter principle is missing something very important: "Doing the work," "managing the people doing the work," and "making the decisions about what work should be done" are not simply three ascending levels of expertise in one domain. They are three completely different domains. All good so far; the Peter principle takes this into account. Someone who's good at "doing" gets promoted to "managing", and doesn't have that skillset, and gets stuck there. But it's also true in reverse. Just because a particular person is not good (or, more generally, less good than the best) at "doing", that doesn't mean they'd be bad at "managing". And just because someone is not good at "managing" doesn't mean they'd be bad at "deciding". So you've got people who are good at working being promoted to manager, people who are good at working and managing being promoted to decider (which, I admit, is a bit more likely to work out than the others)—or, in many cases, people who were simply hired as managers being promoted to deciders—and then people who are good at managing or deciding, but only OK at working stuck at the worker level forever, unable to use their skills to help make things better.
  - bcrosby95 6y ago
    A more visible medium where you see this happen is in sports. Average players can go on to become great coaches or even managers.
SuoDuanDao 6y ago
There is certainly a reason many cultures gravitate towards authoritarianism, focus is an important quality of productive teams and authoritarianism increases focus. However, too much focus relative to the complexity of the task at hand is never good, because focus requires ignoring some things. I would theorize that the more complex the task a team is working on, the less authoritarian it can afford its culture to be.
- bluetomcat 6y ago
  I have experience as a programmer in both worlds, and there are certainly pros and cons with each culture. In an Eastern-European "authoritarian" (Bulgarian) setting, you are given tasks with not much room for interpretation and are expected to deliver a tangible "no-bullshit" result within a reasonable time frame. Not much time is spent on meetings, you don't want to ask too many questions, praise is won by delivering a technically-efficient solution which doesn't question the business intents and preconceptions of management. In a North-Western European setting, everything is questionable and debatable, sometimes at irritating levels. Fairly incompetent people are raising their voice on insignificant matters and the decision-making debate changes direction quite sporadically. By everyone focusing too much on the business side, what you get is a technically-mediocre product which solves many problems to many people, but doesn't have much value as an integral part.
fsloth 6y ago
"An authoritarian culture, however, can get work done much quicker while staying with a razor-sharp focus." Disagree. A team can be coached to commit to a common goal. A dysfunctional authoritarian culture is probably faster than a dysfunctional democracy, for sure. But then you are comparing which broken system is less broken, not what would be the optimal setup. Take a sports team. They are not micromanaged. They are given a common task, a common strategy, guidance, but in the field they are alone.
- wott 6y ago
  > Take a sports team. They are not micromanaged. They are given a common task, a common strategy, guidance, but in the field they are alone. They are more and more micromanaged. * Training has become the land of measuring and controlling each detail, and has expanded into controlling your whole life as much as possible. * Before the game, with more and more accurate and often static tactics. Don't you act another way or it means disobeying and the bench is near. * During the game. Hardly 15 seconds go by without the coach (or the coaches) yelling orders at 1 or 2 players. Now there are even real-time data collecting and analyses, sometimes from sensors. Perhaps the worst example of micro-management is cycling, where I am pretty sure that the only directeur sportif's dream not yet fulfilled is to be able to radio-command electrodes implanted in riders' muscles. They already get the position of almost everybody in the pack in almost real-time, they get radio-communicated real-time speed, power, heartbeat sensors measurements and two-way audio communication with each rider of the team. For now they have to do with giving imperative orders through each rider's earpiece (so the reaction can be delayed or the order not quite obeyed), otherwise managers would be computer game players. And silly (sometimes collective) punishments for those who dared disobey when they felt the orders were stupid are not uncommon: even though it means losing chances on that day or the next, the manager has one priority: showing who the boss is.
gilbetron 6y ago
> An authoritarian culture, however, can get work done much quicker while staying with a razor-sharp focus Only for relatively simple situations with a relatively known process for solving - which is the opposite of most software dev, although that seems to be changing in some ways.
jerf 6y ago
"An authoritarian culture, however, can get work done much quicker while staying with a razor-sharp focus." Only in the extreme short term. In the medium term, the dictator inevitably ends up severed from reality by the inability of (true) data to flow back up to the authority, which results in their decisions becoming increasingly suboptimal over time. This is the pragmatic argument in favor of free speech, really. If for the sake of argument we ignore moral and philosophical issues, the reason why free speech is important is that in its absence information does not properly flow back up to the authorities. Free information flow does not guarantee proper functioning of the system, but impeded information flow guarantees improper functioning. If your authority dictates the use of 4-inch long bolts in a place where there's only 2 inches of clearance, and nobody in the organization has the ability to feed back to the authority that information, the only possible outcomes are bad ones. This all compounds, too; the next dictate from the authority won't be able to take into account the fact that in order to fit the 4-inch bolt in, a new hole was cut in some vital structure that shouldn't be there, and some new bad decision will be made to add load to this structure, which will cause other effects. The authority ends up living in a fantasy land. Note how this toy example seated entirely in engineering-space doesn't have any moral or philosophical component, and yet it is already sufficient to cause a bad outcome even in pure engineering terms. Moral and philosophical issues can cause yet more problems, but they'll be arriving to a space already broken. It also doesn't matter for my purposes why the information can't flow back up to the authority. Even a well-meaning, "enlightened" dictator can end up in this situation by sheer inability to process the incoming information. The dictator may be the nicest, most well-meaning person in human history full of compassion and love and every other virtue you care to name, and they'll still break things if they insist on authoritarianism.
- andybak 6y ago
  > In the medium term, the dictator inevitably ends up severed from reality by the inability of (true) data to flow back up to the authority, which results in their decisions becoming increasingly suboptimal over time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNAFU_Principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNAFU_Principle
whatshisface 6y ago
You're conflating the "do what they say" aspect of authority with the "drive them off a cliff without saying anything, when they tell you to drive forwards" aspect of authoritarianism. Too many times have I heard people say, "yes we know this isn't what he wants, and yes, we know that he would change his orders if we provided him with the information only we have, but he told us to do this and nobody will be able to blame us for the resulting fallout."
systemBuilder 6y ago
Only certain types of work and usually very mundane work can be done with authoritarian culture. Note that creative people do not enjoy working in an authoritarian regime. Universities are an example of an anti authoritarian organization where creativity often flourishes.

bitwize 6y ago

The problem with that is that dictators usually fail to be sufficiently enlightened or benevolent.

teatree 6y ago
Somehow China has been an outlier to this norm, so far.
- ben_w 6y ago
  Enlightened in the sense I think it’s meant here, but not benevolent.
- solarkraft 6y ago
  It significantly depends on who you are. Uyghurs and Falung Gong practicioners would probably disagree.
- GlennS 6y ago
  I disagree, China seems to fit right into the pattern. Mao became undisputed leader. His purges were bad enough that the party decided to implement a 10 year term limit. Xi removed that limit, and now China is swinging slowly towards authoritarianism. We're still in the early years of his rule at this point. Wait till he makes a mistake and his grip starts slipping, then he will see enemies everywhere. When someone makes themselves ruler for life, it tells you that their character is not suitable for that position, because they lack the humility to hand over their work to a successor. Because they've decided they can't trust other people's motives and competence.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
The closest to an enlightened, benevolent dictator in modern times I think is Lee Kuan Yew.

pjc50 6y ago

> enlightened benevolent dictator These are extremely hard to find, and anyone who thinks of themselves as one is missing at least one of those properties.

dugmartin 6y ago

The problem is that due to the Peter principle (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle) the people making the decisions are not competent to make them.

danaris 6y ago
While this is certainly true, I've felt for a long time that the Peter principle is missing something very important: "Doing the work," "managing the people doing the work," and "making the decisions about what work should be done" are not simply three ascending levels of expertise in one domain. They are three completely different domains. All good so far; the Peter principle takes this into account. Someone who's good at "doing" gets promoted to "managing", and doesn't have that skillset, and gets stuck there. But it's also true in reverse. Just because a particular person is not good (or, more generally, less good than the best) at "doing", that doesn't mean they'd be bad at "managing". And just because someone is not good at "managing" doesn't mean they'd be bad at "deciding". So you've got people who are good at working being promoted to manager, people who are good at working and managing being promoted to decider (which, I admit, is a bit more likely to work out than the others)—or, in many cases, people who were simply hired as managers being promoted to deciders—and then people who are good at managing or deciding, but only OK at working stuck at the worker level forever, unable to use their skills to help make things better.
- bcrosby95 6y ago
  A more visible medium where you see this happen is in sports. Average players can go on to become great coaches or even managers.

SuoDuanDao 6y ago

There is certainly a reason many cultures gravitate towards authoritarianism, focus is an important quality of productive teams and authoritarianism increases focus. However, too much focus relative to the complexity of the task at hand is never good, because focus requires ignoring some things. I would theorize that the more complex the task a team is working on, the less authoritarian it can afford its culture to be.

bluetomcat 6y ago
I have experience as a programmer in both worlds, and there are certainly pros and cons with each culture. In an Eastern-European "authoritarian" (Bulgarian) setting, you are given tasks with not much room for interpretation and are expected to deliver a tangible "no-bullshit" result within a reasonable time frame. Not much time is spent on meetings, you don't want to ask too many questions, praise is won by delivering a technically-efficient solution which doesn't question the business intents and preconceptions of management. In a North-Western European setting, everything is questionable and debatable, sometimes at irritating levels. Fairly incompetent people are raising their voice on insignificant matters and the decision-making debate changes direction quite sporadically. By everyone focusing too much on the business side, what you get is a technically-mediocre product which solves many problems to many people, but doesn't have much value as an integral part.

fsloth 6y ago

"An authoritarian culture, however, can get work done much quicker while staying with a razor-sharp focus." Disagree. A team can be coached to commit to a common goal. A dysfunctional authoritarian culture is probably faster than a dysfunctional democracy, for sure. But then you are comparing which broken system is less broken, not what would be the optimal setup. Take a sports team. They are not micromanaged. They are given a common task, a common strategy, guidance, but in the field they are alone.

wott 6y ago
> Take a sports team. They are not micromanaged. They are given a common task, a common strategy, guidance, but in the field they are alone. They are more and more micromanaged. * Training has become the land of measuring and controlling each detail, and has expanded into controlling your whole life as much as possible. * Before the game, with more and more accurate and often static tactics. Don't you act another way or it means disobeying and the bench is near. * During the game. Hardly 15 seconds go by without the coach (or the coaches) yelling orders at 1 or 2 players. Now there are even real-time data collecting and analyses, sometimes from sensors. Perhaps the worst example of micro-management is cycling, where I am pretty sure that the only directeur sportif's dream not yet fulfilled is to be able to radio-command electrodes implanted in riders' muscles. They already get the position of almost everybody in the pack in almost real-time, they get radio-communicated real-time speed, power, heartbeat sensors measurements and two-way audio communication with each rider of the team. For now they have to do with giving imperative orders through each rider's earpiece (so the reaction can be delayed or the order not quite obeyed), otherwise managers would be computer game players. And silly (sometimes collective) punishments for those who dared disobey when they felt the orders were stupid are not uncommon: even though it means losing chances on that day or the next, the manager has one priority: showing who the boss is.

gilbetron 6y ago

> An authoritarian culture, however, can get work done much quicker while staying with a razor-sharp focus Only for relatively simple situations with a relatively known process for solving - which is the opposite of most software dev, although that seems to be changing in some ways.

jerf 6y ago

"An authoritarian culture, however, can get work done much quicker while staying with a razor-sharp focus." Only in the extreme short term. In the medium term, the dictator inevitably ends up severed from reality by the inability of (true) data to flow back up to the authority, which results in their decisions becoming increasingly suboptimal over time. This is the pragmatic argument in favor of free speech, really. If for the sake of argument we ignore moral and philosophical issues, the reason why free speech is important is that in its absence information does not properly flow back up to the authorities. Free information flow does not guarantee proper functioning of the system, but impeded information flow guarantees improper functioning. If your authority dictates the use of 4-inch long bolts in a place where there's only 2 inches of clearance, and nobody in the organization has the ability to feed back to the authority that information, the only possible outcomes are bad ones. This all compounds, too; the next dictate from the authority won't be able to take into account the fact that in order to fit the 4-inch bolt in, a new hole was cut in some vital structure that shouldn't be there, and some new bad decision will be made to add load to this structure, which will cause other effects. The authority ends up living in a fantasy land. Note how this toy example seated entirely in engineering-space doesn't have any moral or philosophical component, and yet it is already sufficient to cause a bad outcome even in pure engineering terms. Moral and philosophical issues can cause yet more problems, but they'll be arriving to a space already broken. It also doesn't matter for my purposes why the information can't flow back up to the authority. Even a well-meaning, "enlightened" dictator can end up in this situation by sheer inability to process the incoming information. The dictator may be the nicest, most well-meaning person in human history full of compassion and love and every other virtue you care to name, and they'll still break things if they insist on authoritarianism.

andybak 6y ago
> In the medium term, the dictator inevitably ends up severed from reality by the inability of (true) data to flow back up to the authority, which results in their decisions becoming increasingly suboptimal over time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNAFU_Principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNAFU_Principle

whatshisface 6y ago

You're conflating the "do what they say" aspect of authority with the "drive them off a cliff without saying anything, when they tell you to drive forwards" aspect of authoritarianism. Too many times have I heard people say, "yes we know this isn't what he wants, and yes, we know that he would change his orders if we provided him with the information only we have, but he told us to do this and nobody will be able to blame us for the resulting fallout."

systemBuilder 6y ago

Only certain types of work and usually very mundane work can be done with authoritarian culture. Note that creative people do not enjoy working in an authoritarian regime. Universities are an example of an anti authoritarian organization where creativity often flourishes.