8 ms·

Power struggles among nice people

157 points by rammy1234 4y ago

thwayunion 4y ago
> Further, note the importance of impulse control in the most effective senior leaders. An alternative pattern of traits identified by McClelland was 1) a high need for power, 2) a low need for affiliation, and 3) a low degree of impulse control, which he called "conquistador syndrome." [17] Leaders who exhibit this pattern may enjoy some success, but their self-aggrandizing displays of power limit their effectiveness at senior levels, as McClelland and his colleague David Burnham concluded in a summary of their research It may limit their effectiveness, but that doesn't mean they can't win. There is no shortage of extremely visible role models who exhibit "conquistador syndrome", and their influence across society is creating a cohort of small business owners and professional people managers I've started calling the "petty bourgeoisie" -- members of the upper middle and lower upper classes who are, well, petty. As a direct result of these personalities winning out time and time again, American society is starting to develop a distinct "Après moi, le déluge" feel.
- leetrout 4y ago
  I am glad it isn't just me. I feel like it has gotten worse in the past 4-5 years but it could just be me getting older and getting tired of the bullshit.
  - HPsquared 4y ago
    It's really hard to discern societal trends for this reason, when every individual and observer goes through constant change themselves.
- api 4y ago
  They seem to often be successful when the goal is to disrupt or compete with a very moribund but entrenched industry. A few recent examples: Travis Kalanick vs the Taxi medallion cartel, Elon Musk vs a space industry that stopped innovating after Apollo (and to a lesser extent getting EVs over the adoption hump), Steve Jobs 2.0 (the return) vs ugly beige box PCs. In all cases you have industries very set in their ways dominated by strong but stolid and conservative personalities and a lot of innovation being held back. All the conquistador really has to do is gallop in and show what is possible. They have to execute well enough to do that. It doesn’t have to be excellence, but it often looks like excellence against a backdrop of mediocrity. Take SpaceX for example. Old school NASA in the 50s and 60s or Lockheed Skunk Works in the same era were far more innovative. SpaceX looks superhuman today against the backdrop of an industry that had totally gone out to pasture. Apple paired good industrial design with what is basically a polished consumer grade analog of a Linux desktop and looked revolutionary against ugly metal cans and chunky laptops running Windows. The iPhone was a bit higher on the innovation scale but also wasn’t wholly original, but damn did it cook when compared to flip phones. But when you get past that disruption phase the conquistadors often fall down. We don’t get to see how Jobs would fare today because the torch was passed to Tim Cook, a solid operator. Musk is floundering with Tesla now that the EV market is full of strong competitors and it remains to be seen if SpaceX will hold it together. Kalanick’s Uber is a money bonfire but people still love it because Taxis suck.
  - duhast 4y ago
    Can you give me some examples of SpaceX innovations that disrupted the industry? Here are some of my issues with SpaceX marketing: 1) Cost to NASA/DoD seems to be similar to ULA. 2) SpaceX continues to fly expandable boosters for missions above LEO and for heavier payloads. Reusable boosters have lower lift and range and require extensive refurbishment between missions. Upper stage is not reusable. 3) SpaceX hasn't flown a single mission into deep space or Mars despite this being the stated goal of the company. In the same time, others have flown multiple rockets to Mars and to other planets. We have multiple rovers roaming the surface of Mars and satellites orbiting other planes all while SpaceX has contributed nothing to these efforts. I personally see SpaceX contributions to the industry are mostly incremental: 1) Booster reusability to LEO and for light payloads. 3) Human rated capsule for space station resupply missions. 3) High quality video content from launches. 4) Increased interest in space exploration at the expense of unrealistic expectations in relation to cost and timelines.
    - varjag 4y ago
      It takes a lot of mental gymnastics to call booster reusability "incremental".
      - duhast 4y ago
        Care to elaborate?
      - hef19898 4y ago
        Depends on how much demand for those low orbit launches there is. A non-zero portion of those launches is Starlink, so basically in-house demand. Yes, I'd call that incremental. Which doesn't mean it is not impressive, because it is. The main point so, IMHO, is that prices for comparable launches are not so much cheaper using SpaceX. Kind of like those Ryan Air 19.99 tickets. Sure, there are some, but on average the price difference is much smaller than people think.
        TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
- cycomanic 4y ago
  I have another theory. I'd argue more people are getting attention/becoming famous because of monetary success, i.e. being rich (and I don't have a good theory why that is). The assholes/jerks aspire much more for attention and thus are much more visible. The ease of getting attention nowadays also plays a significant role.
  - thwayunion 4y ago
    I think it's something else. After all, people with large amounts of capital having attention and power is not new; the world's dominant economic and political system has been grounded in an ideology of capital for at least half a century, and in the Anglo world far longer.
    - WalterBright 4y ago
      > the world's dominant economic and political system has been grounded in an ideology of capital for at least half a century As opposed to what less dominant but still significant systems?
      - thwayunion 4y ago
        > As opposed to what less dominant but still significant systems? The cold war ended roughly half a century ago; I'm rounding. (To be clear: no love lost for the soviet system, but "an ideology of capital" it decidedly wasn't.)
        WalterBright 4y ago
        The USSR's economy still revolved around money and allocating money. It was just the government allocating it rather than individuals.
        varjag 4y ago
        And in our Soviet passports we all had "No True Scotsmen" under "nationality".
- daniel-cussen 4y ago
koeng 4y ago
> McClelland found that people who possessed this combination of traits were most likely to obtain senior leadership positions, ultimately outpacing those who merely had a high need for achievement. [14] This seems almost like a tautology. If people aim to get what they want, obviously people who want power will get senior positions (Ie, power). This power almost entirely lies on the back of those who seek achievement (because they want to do things), while those in senior positions reap the benefits. In a way, it seems like the article is saying “if you want to be powerful, want power”
- bjornsing 4y ago
  This. Sadly a lot of HR people don’t seem to realize this. McClelland has therefore become the source of motivated reasoning for putting the power hungry in charge, to the detriment of many organizations.
  - varjag 4y ago
    Where does HR puts people in charge?
    - bjornsing 4y ago
      Everywhere? Or perhaps this more of a European or even Swedish phenomenon? Here HR have a lot of sway in recruitment processes, both external and international. I guess it stems from their role as the interpreters of various personality tests and the like.
      - varjag 4y ago
        HR doesn't get to pick the management (or most other roles for that matter), they are essentially secretaries to see that the legal framework is followed. Yes even in Europe (I'm in Norway).
        bjornsing 4y ago
        HR has had strong opinions about who to hire in several recruitment processes where I’ve been the hiring manager. It’s true that the final decision is typically made by the hiring manager, but in my experience the power dynamic is not as simple as you portray it.
rektide 4y ago
Someone linked a good long while back a model of corporate development, which started at a "happy warrior" phase of making stuff, relatively uncontested & unchecked, & phased deeper & deeper into conservative just holding market & personal power. Thats more a macro-picture, where-as this focuses aroumd the micro-, the person, but I feel like perhaps somewhat there's a relationship, in that the environmemt shapes the possible behaviors. I've tried to find it a couple times but searching for "happy warrior" lands me nowhere, whatever permutations I try to add.
- sogen 4y ago
  Interested in reading that article. Do you by chance have it saved in your favorites?
  - rektide 4y ago
    Found it! It's Burton Klein's classifications of the firm. https://scottlocklin.wordpress.com/2021/02/17/planning-of-invention-part-1-burton-klein-and-dynamic-economics/ https://scottlocklin.wordpress.com/2021/02/17/planning-of-in... It is a bit absurd what a decay there is here, from obviously good to increasingly conservative & closed models. But this discussion on power struggles was excellent yet lacked some of the larger context of what mode the business at large operates in, & Klein here had some semi-interesting if pointed ideas to get us thinking about modes of thr firm. Unfortunately Scott- who is covering this has been pretty highly insensitive & crude repeatedly. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6116063 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6116063 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29393152 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29393152
    - sogen 4y ago
      Thanks!
- nelsondev 4y ago
  Not what you mentioned, but somewhat similar. The stages of group development of forming, storming, norming, performing, adjourning. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuckman%27s_stages_of_group_development https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuckman%27s_stages_of_group_...
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
roenxi 4y ago
This article commits a grievous offence - it doesn't define "nice people". I suspect from context it is a tautology - nice people are the people who are uncomfortable with power struggles. There are lots of good people who are extremely comfortable with power struggles right from the get go. There are no advantages to avoiding power. One of the big lessons in politics is people will sometimes roll in and mess up your life and it never mattered how much of a threat you were. Avoiding power struggles doesn't let people avoid the consequences. Similarly, avoiding struggles is also bad. If you can't resist someone taking your power, then you don't have any. It is nuanced and it is important to be selective in which battles to fight but there will always be some. If you do want to be a bystander, you still have a responsibility to make sure that power goes to people with a grow-the-pie mindset and not people who only understand wealth destruction or wealth transfer. If wealth-destroyers gain power, you won't be spared.
- thwayunion 4y ago
  There are also bad people who are uncomfortable with power struggles. But in the context of the article, I suspect that the most important definition of "nice" is probably "pays me for executive coaching". The term isn't defined because "I am nice" is an axiom, "I can do what I need to get what I want" is the desired conclusion, and the article provides some motivated reasoning for getting from A to B.
- bjornsing 4y ago
  What you’re describing is essentially power as a means to an end (e.g. value creation). There’s nothing wrong with that in my book. But the OP (or McClelland who is cited in the OP) is more about power as an end in itself. That’s something very different, and IMHO very detrimental.
- throwaway742 4y ago
  What if I don't have any wealth?
  - roenxi 4y ago
    If they get out of control? Traditionally, starvation. Possibly civil unrest. Some combination of the two. Sri Lanka banned fertiliser the other month, in a tea-snorted-through-the-nose decision. Bad time to be poor in Sri Lanka. If sane people don't try to keep control, that is the sort of decision making that happens.
yomritoyj 4y ago
I think this is an increasing problem as 'liberalism' becomes the official ideology of the elite, so that everyone pays lip-service to 'non-hierarchical' values and overt displays of power are looked down on. Power struggles and self-aggrandizement then go underground and are covered in extra layers of hypocrisy and doublespeak. Those who don't catch on, lose.

157 points by rammy1234 4y ago

> Further, note the importance of impulse control in the most effective senior leaders. An alternative pattern of traits identified by McClelland was 1) a high need for power, 2) a low need for affiliation, and 3) a low degree of impulse control, which he called "conquistador syndrome." [17] Leaders who exhibit this pattern may enjoy some success, but their self-aggrandizing displays of power limit their effectiveness at senior levels, as McClelland and his colleague David Burnham concluded in a summary of their research It may limit their effectiveness, but that doesn't mean they can't win. There is no shortage of extremely visible role models who exhibit "conquistador syndrome", and their influence across society is creating a cohort of small business owners and professional people managers I've started calling the "petty bourgeoisie" -- members of the upper middle and lower upper classes who are, well, petty. As a direct result of these personalities winning out time and time again, American society is starting to develop a distinct "Après moi, le déluge" feel.

leetrout 4y ago
I am glad it isn't just me. I feel like it has gotten worse in the past 4-5 years but it could just be me getting older and getting tired of the bullshit.
- HPsquared 4y ago
  It's really hard to discern societal trends for this reason, when every individual and observer goes through constant change themselves.
api 4y ago
They seem to often be successful when the goal is to disrupt or compete with a very moribund but entrenched industry. A few recent examples: Travis Kalanick vs the Taxi medallion cartel, Elon Musk vs a space industry that stopped innovating after Apollo (and to a lesser extent getting EVs over the adoption hump), Steve Jobs 2.0 (the return) vs ugly beige box PCs. In all cases you have industries very set in their ways dominated by strong but stolid and conservative personalities and a lot of innovation being held back. All the conquistador really has to do is gallop in and show what is possible. They have to execute well enough to do that. It doesn’t have to be excellence, but it often looks like excellence against a backdrop of mediocrity. Take SpaceX for example. Old school NASA in the 50s and 60s or Lockheed Skunk Works in the same era were far more innovative. SpaceX looks superhuman today against the backdrop of an industry that had totally gone out to pasture. Apple paired good industrial design with what is basically a polished consumer grade analog of a Linux desktop and looked revolutionary against ugly metal cans and chunky laptops running Windows. The iPhone was a bit higher on the innovation scale but also wasn’t wholly original, but damn did it cook when compared to flip phones. But when you get past that disruption phase the conquistadors often fall down. We don’t get to see how Jobs would fare today because the torch was passed to Tim Cook, a solid operator. Musk is floundering with Tesla now that the EV market is full of strong competitors and it remains to be seen if SpaceX will hold it together. Kalanick’s Uber is a money bonfire but people still love it because Taxis suck.
- duhast 4y ago
  Can you give me some examples of SpaceX innovations that disrupted the industry? Here are some of my issues with SpaceX marketing: 1) Cost to NASA/DoD seems to be similar to ULA. 2) SpaceX continues to fly expandable boosters for missions above LEO and for heavier payloads. Reusable boosters have lower lift and range and require extensive refurbishment between missions. Upper stage is not reusable. 3) SpaceX hasn't flown a single mission into deep space or Mars despite this being the stated goal of the company. In the same time, others have flown multiple rockets to Mars and to other planets. We have multiple rovers roaming the surface of Mars and satellites orbiting other planes all while SpaceX has contributed nothing to these efforts. I personally see SpaceX contributions to the industry are mostly incremental: 1) Booster reusability to LEO and for light payloads. 3) Human rated capsule for space station resupply missions. 3) High quality video content from launches. 4) Increased interest in space exploration at the expense of unrealistic expectations in relation to cost and timelines.
  - varjag 4y ago
    It takes a lot of mental gymnastics to call booster reusability "incremental".
    - duhast 4y ago
      Care to elaborate?
    - hef19898 4y ago
      Depends on how much demand for those low orbit launches there is. A non-zero portion of those launches is Starlink, so basically in-house demand. Yes, I'd call that incremental. Which doesn't mean it is not impressive, because it is. The main point so, IMHO, is that prices for comparable launches are not so much cheaper using SpaceX. Kind of like those Ryan Air 19.99 tickets. Sure, there are some, but on average the price difference is much smaller than people think.
      - TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
cycomanic 4y ago
I have another theory. I'd argue more people are getting attention/becoming famous because of monetary success, i.e. being rich (and I don't have a good theory why that is). The assholes/jerks aspire much more for attention and thus are much more visible. The ease of getting attention nowadays also plays a significant role.
- thwayunion 4y ago
  I think it's something else. After all, people with large amounts of capital having attention and power is not new; the world's dominant economic and political system has been grounded in an ideology of capital for at least half a century, and in the Anglo world far longer.
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    > the world's dominant economic and political system has been grounded in an ideology of capital for at least half a century As opposed to what less dominant but still significant systems?
    - thwayunion 4y ago
      > As opposed to what less dominant but still significant systems? The cold war ended roughly half a century ago; I'm rounding. (To be clear: no love lost for the soviet system, but "an ideology of capital" it decidedly wasn't.)
      - WalterBright 4y ago
        The USSR's economy still revolved around money and allocating money. It was just the government allocating it rather than individuals.
        varjag 4y ago
        And in our Soviet passports we all had "No True Scotsmen" under "nationality".
daniel-cussen 4y ago

koeng 4y ago

> McClelland found that people who possessed this combination of traits were most likely to obtain senior leadership positions, ultimately outpacing those who merely had a high need for achievement. [14] This seems almost like a tautology. If people aim to get what they want, obviously people who want power will get senior positions (Ie, power). This power almost entirely lies on the back of those who seek achievement (because they want to do things), while those in senior positions reap the benefits. In a way, it seems like the article is saying “if you want to be powerful, want power”

bjornsing 4y ago
This. Sadly a lot of HR people don’t seem to realize this. McClelland has therefore become the source of motivated reasoning for putting the power hungry in charge, to the detriment of many organizations.
- varjag 4y ago
  Where does HR puts people in charge?
  - bjornsing 4y ago
    Everywhere? Or perhaps this more of a European or even Swedish phenomenon? Here HR have a lot of sway in recruitment processes, both external and international. I guess it stems from their role as the interpreters of various personality tests and the like.
    - varjag 4y ago
      HR doesn't get to pick the management (or most other roles for that matter), they are essentially secretaries to see that the legal framework is followed. Yes even in Europe (I'm in Norway).
      - bjornsing 4y ago
        HR has had strong opinions about who to hire in several recruitment processes where I’ve been the hiring manager. It’s true that the final decision is typically made by the hiring manager, but in my experience the power dynamic is not as simple as you portray it.

rektide 4y ago

Someone linked a good long while back a model of corporate development, which started at a "happy warrior" phase of making stuff, relatively uncontested & unchecked, & phased deeper & deeper into conservative just holding market & personal power. Thats more a macro-picture, where-as this focuses aroumd the micro-, the person, but I feel like perhaps somewhat there's a relationship, in that the environmemt shapes the possible behaviors. I've tried to find it a couple times but searching for "happy warrior" lands me nowhere, whatever permutations I try to add.

sogen 4y ago
Interested in reading that article. Do you by chance have it saved in your favorites?
- rektide 4y ago
  Found it! It's Burton Klein's classifications of the firm. https://scottlocklin.wordpress.com/2021/02/17/planning-of-invention-part-1-burton-klein-and-dynamic-economics/ https://scottlocklin.wordpress.com/2021/02/17/planning-of-in... It is a bit absurd what a decay there is here, from obviously good to increasingly conservative & closed models. But this discussion on power struggles was excellent yet lacked some of the larger context of what mode the business at large operates in, & Klein here had some semi-interesting if pointed ideas to get us thinking about modes of thr firm. Unfortunately Scott- who is covering this has been pretty highly insensitive & crude repeatedly. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6116063 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6116063 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29393152 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29393152
  - sogen 4y ago
    Thanks!
nelsondev 4y ago
Not what you mentioned, but somewhat similar. The stages of group development of forming, storming, norming, performing, adjourning. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuckman%27s_stages_of_group_development https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuckman%27s_stages_of_group_...

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

roenxi 4y ago

This article commits a grievous offence - it doesn't define "nice people". I suspect from context it is a tautology - nice people are the people who are uncomfortable with power struggles. There are lots of good people who are extremely comfortable with power struggles right from the get go. There are no advantages to avoiding power. One of the big lessons in politics is people will sometimes roll in and mess up your life and it never mattered how much of a threat you were. Avoiding power struggles doesn't let people avoid the consequences. Similarly, avoiding struggles is also bad. If you can't resist someone taking your power, then you don't have any. It is nuanced and it is important to be selective in which battles to fight but there will always be some. If you do want to be a bystander, you still have a responsibility to make sure that power goes to people with a grow-the-pie mindset and not people who only understand wealth destruction or wealth transfer. If wealth-destroyers gain power, you won't be spared.

thwayunion 4y ago
There are also bad people who are uncomfortable with power struggles. But in the context of the article, I suspect that the most important definition of "nice" is probably "pays me for executive coaching". The term isn't defined because "I am nice" is an axiom, "I can do what I need to get what I want" is the desired conclusion, and the article provides some motivated reasoning for getting from A to B.
bjornsing 4y ago
What you’re describing is essentially power as a means to an end (e.g. value creation). There’s nothing wrong with that in my book. But the OP (or McClelland who is cited in the OP) is more about power as an end in itself. That’s something very different, and IMHO very detrimental.
throwaway742 4y ago
What if I don't have any wealth?
- roenxi 4y ago
  If they get out of control? Traditionally, starvation. Possibly civil unrest. Some combination of the two. Sri Lanka banned fertiliser the other month, in a tea-snorted-through-the-nose decision. Bad time to be poor in Sri Lanka. If sane people don't try to keep control, that is the sort of decision making that happens.

yomritoyj 4y ago

I think this is an increasing problem as 'liberalism' becomes the official ideology of the elite, so that everyone pays lip-service to 'non-hierarchical' values and overt displays of power are looked down on. Power struggles and self-aggrandizement then go underground and are covered in extra layers of hypocrisy and doublespeak. Those who don't catch on, lose.