3 ms·

this is the gervais principle

• mjburgess 4y ago
  Same phenomenon, slightly different analysis. The gervais-style analysis mystifies some of the issues it describes. The heart of the group dynamics is "leader vs follower", "rutheless vs clueless" and "transactional vs passionate". A startup is largely "passionate rutheless leaders", it grows to include "transactional ruthless followers" (its-just-ajob), then to "passionate clueless followers" (middle-management). At this phase its highly stable... you hire in "passionate rutheless followers" (ie., more actual workers)... who also need more middle-management... and at somepoint this becomes unbalanced due to poor executive incentives. That gives you your large population of "passionate clueless followers" (ie., middle-management), and the death of the productive phase of corp. action, into a more rent-seeking (or death) phase. In gervais, "losers become sociopaths" in a mystifying way; and likewise the "clueless" population is inexplicably unpromotable. My breakdown, for example, clarifies why: the "clueless" population never become rutheless-leadrs as they arent leaders at all. They're followers. I think muddling "transactional" dispositions with "rutheless" ones also mystifies the issue, under gervais, the "noble sociopath" is hard to explain. Really, its that they're both passionate (internally motivated) and rutheless. --- NB., rough definitions: "leader vs follower" (I command vs. I am commanded), "rutheless vs clueless" (success requires it vs. virtue requires it) and "transactional vs passionate" (external-reward vs. intrinstic-reward).
  • neutronicus 4y ago
    "Passionate ruthless leaders" also aren't guaranteed to stay that way as the company gets more established.