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I recently went through two instances of three-full-day versions of the author’s Monday meeting, in the context of academic “research leadership”, organized by

I recently went through two instances of three-full-day versions of the author’s Monday meeting, in the context of academic “research leadership”, organized by a team of people who never wrote a single research article in their lives (let alone an actual thesis) and headed by an actual “leadership coach”. My conclusion after this nightmarish experience is that “leadership” has become a meaningless buzzword, like “freedom”: it means something at its core, and used to mean something (I guess), but its potential to be misused is so great that anyone who actually mean it should avoid using it (as for ex. I avoid using the “freedom” even if I think it’s one of the most important things in life). I also concluded that doing meaningless administrative/management work is addictive and those who engage in it will actively and constantly try not only to overemphasise their importance but also force themselves on top of those who they know are doing actual important work. This is in my opinion a form of understated and poorly understood violence, but also a natural survival instinct for those who feel themselves useless (maybe correctly) and must then fight to remain relevant at all costs. Sorry for those 1% of you out there who are actually useful and efficient leaders/managers; you know who you are and this is not for you.

jack_riminton 3y ago
Yep the gulf between proper leadership and corporate managerialism was never more apparent to me than when I left the army and did an MBA. Leaders are 'in the trenches', in a commercial environment this means they know their stuff, are putting themselves 'on the line' and are demonstrating the values and standards expected of those further down the ladder. Corporate managers are more like administrators, they dispassionately work the system for their own benefits and pay lip service to the cares and concerns of those they're meant to be leading.
- dennis_jeeves2 3y ago
  A corollary to what you put above, i.e your main point still holds: A quote attributed to Charles Bukowski here: The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence. Translates to a work place here is what happens: often when you offer competent people position of authority or power they don't take it or are extremely reluctant to take it.
  - jajko 3y ago
    I've seen it recently - a guy in extended family who is hardcore introvert to the point of being very annoying in family settings (yet leads a small team of devs) wanted a promotion and eventually got it. He got overly stressed from all the extra responsibilities, and after few months asked to move back, while everybody told me he did fine job. Here is the thing - he still wasn't ready/good fit even if at glance all seemed fine. Its not just raw skills that make you a good fit for such a role, its the whole package, and how you manage long term while not going crazy. He was simply too junior for that role, even if from whole palette of skills only confidence/'maturity' (lacking proper word here, non-native speaker) was lacking. That was enough. He will get there eventually. No point pushing hard for position that somebody may even give it to you, if it eats you alive (he kept elevated salary though... multinational corps are often weird)
  - jack_riminton 3y ago
    To be honest I don't think it's a lack of intelligence (although that can be the case). To get on the MBA you have to have reasonably high mental horsepower. It's more that in corporate machines, management are so far removed and abstracted from making things that they become administrators by default. i.e. the core job becomes tweaking the money making machine. And because everything is so complex it's almost impossible for anyone to identify which tweaks are moving the needle. And so self promotion, displays of power and competence become the de-facto measure of competency. In other words, they become politicians. "The purpose of the system, is what it does" That doesn't mean that leadership isn't necessary, it just more often comes too little too late because everyone's been busy doing nothing important.
    - ryandrake 3y ago
      > To be honest I don't think it's a lack of intelligence (although that can be the case). To get on the MBA you have to have reasonably high mental horsepower. It's more that in corporate machines, management are so far removed and abstracted from making things that they become administrators by default. Exactly. Let's not lazily tar the MBA degree itself and leave it at that: Lots of people have MBAs and aren't corporate tools. Heck, the guy sitting next to you in engineering may have an MBA. They aren't particularly rare, generally taking only 2 years to obtain, and they don't make you dumber when you graduate. The problem is with corporate execs who are running things but are not subject matter experts in what they are running. An SVP of a tech company may know nothing about tech, having managed a soup company or an auto maker in his previous job. His so-called qualification is his ability to make business pronouncements/decisions in a vacuum from the actual technical realities and constraints of the company. They are "generic leadership" professionals. These are the people, in general, who are ruining things, and they don't necessarily hold diplomas that say "MBA" on them.
m000 3y ago
> I also concluded that doing meaningless administrative/management work is addictive and those who engage in it will actively and constantly try not only to overemphasise their importance but also force themselves on top of those who they know are doing actual important work. You need to read David Graeber's "Bullshit Jobs".
- low_tech_love 3y ago
  The eye-opening part for me was that until recently I thought useless managers were simply people who wanted to help but maybe didn’t know how; that they actually tried to not get in your way but failed. Now I understand that I was completely wrong. Getting in your way, attaching their work to yours and feeding off of that is not an accident but a consistent, conscious method. Doing manager work is in many ways much easier than anything that requires creativity; not only you can schedule your work and stand by that schedule, but you also don’t have to deal with the psychological effects of failing something that you’re personally invested in. Ideally, society should differentiate between these two things and recognise that doing creative work (be it engineering, design, research, etc.) is harder and more taxing, and less predictable, and reward us accordingly. But in the country where I live (somewhere at the rich corners of Europe) there is this idea that everyone is just as important and should earn similar amounts of money, which has led to an insurmountable amount of administrative jobs and people who love them above everything else. It’s just a small leap from that to “you need to go through me first before you can do what you want”.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - pas 3y ago
    > doing creative work (be it engineering, design, research, etc.) is harder and more taxing ... for some people. and easier for others. we need both, and there's a need for balance. (and you need more careful administration in some areas and you need a lot more creativity in others. we want Boeing to be careful, but it's madness that we need paperwork for internal remodeling, etc.)
  - 3y ago
ookdatnog 3y ago
> Sorry for those 1% of you out there who are actually useful and efficient leaders/managers; you know who you are 100% of managers nodding as they read this
- ffsm8 3y ago
  True, but my gut says that there is a selection bias of people reading comments on such an article and being in that 1% Might just be in my head though.
  - vermilingua 3y ago
    Are you a manager by any chance?
    - ffsm8 3y ago
      No, but the article was dishing out quiet hard, so the worst offenders wouldn't have interacted further. At least that would've been my expectation
- ludicity 3y ago
  I recorded the first episode of a podcast to go with the blog today. It was literally while you were typing this. I made a joke (that is almost not a joke) about my N-2 rule. You can say all N managers in any organization are bad apart from two of them. Of course, managers want to assert that they're the good one (and some of them actually are), but they can't if you say one person is good, because to claim that spot would be to throw all your colleagues under the bus. But if you assert that you're one of the two good ones, then they can all claim to be one of the good ones without upsetting a specific person. This is obviously not how it works at all, but I was very proud of myself.
  - appplication 3y ago
    In the Air Force we used to get force stratified based on our peers in our performance reports. It would include things like “#1 of 15 Lts in the squadron”. Everyone had a ranking, but you only found out where you stood once a year when your performance review came out. There was a saying that I think also applies here: “Everybody knows who #1 is, and everybody thinks they’re #2”.
fuzzfactor 3y ago
>went through two instances of three-full-day versions of the author’s Monday meeting Sometimes it takes more indoctrination than others to try and convince people that the social climbers who seek leadership positions above all else can be suitable for the job. >Leadership Is A Hell Of A Drug The concept makes sense, with "leadership-seeking behavior" manifesting itself strongest in those who have the greatest (yea, bigliest) lack of natural leadership ability, and who need some kind of a "fix" to supplement this deficiency. Kind of analogous to the drug addict and their toxic drug-seeking behavior which is not only self-destructive but damaging to everyone involved in one way or another, whether apparent or hidden behind closed doors. And once they've gotten their fix they still can't perform as well as ordinary people who don't need some kind of artificial aggrandizement.
xyzzy123 3y ago
I think the situation is very much more complicated than this in the sense there is not just one way to behave, the right way to behave is situational. Good wartime leaders might be bad peacetime leaders and so on etc. Do you want high or low aggression? Guess what: it depends. I do want to suggest an option I haven't seen before which is "what if it turns out that middle management is more automatable than everything everything else"? i.e, very broad status updates are scalable with ai and it turns out middle management isn't as needed in the future as it used to be.
- andrewflnr 3y ago
  You probably don't even need AI.

jack_riminton 3y ago

Yep the gulf between proper leadership and corporate managerialism was never more apparent to me than when I left the army and did an MBA. Leaders are 'in the trenches', in a commercial environment this means they know their stuff, are putting themselves 'on the line' and are demonstrating the values and standards expected of those further down the ladder. Corporate managers are more like administrators, they dispassionately work the system for their own benefits and pay lip service to the cares and concerns of those they're meant to be leading.

dennis_jeeves2 3y ago
A corollary to what you put above, i.e your main point still holds: A quote attributed to Charles Bukowski here: The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence. Translates to a work place here is what happens: often when you offer competent people position of authority or power they don't take it or are extremely reluctant to take it.
- jajko 3y ago
  I've seen it recently - a guy in extended family who is hardcore introvert to the point of being very annoying in family settings (yet leads a small team of devs) wanted a promotion and eventually got it. He got overly stressed from all the extra responsibilities, and after few months asked to move back, while everybody told me he did fine job. Here is the thing - he still wasn't ready/good fit even if at glance all seemed fine. Its not just raw skills that make you a good fit for such a role, its the whole package, and how you manage long term while not going crazy. He was simply too junior for that role, even if from whole palette of skills only confidence/'maturity' (lacking proper word here, non-native speaker) was lacking. That was enough. He will get there eventually. No point pushing hard for position that somebody may even give it to you, if it eats you alive (he kept elevated salary though... multinational corps are often weird)
- jack_riminton 3y ago
  To be honest I don't think it's a lack of intelligence (although that can be the case). To get on the MBA you have to have reasonably high mental horsepower. It's more that in corporate machines, management are so far removed and abstracted from making things that they become administrators by default. i.e. the core job becomes tweaking the money making machine. And because everything is so complex it's almost impossible for anyone to identify which tweaks are moving the needle. And so self promotion, displays of power and competence become the de-facto measure of competency. In other words, they become politicians. "The purpose of the system, is what it does" That doesn't mean that leadership isn't necessary, it just more often comes too little too late because everyone's been busy doing nothing important.
  - ryandrake 3y ago
    > To be honest I don't think it's a lack of intelligence (although that can be the case). To get on the MBA you have to have reasonably high mental horsepower. It's more that in corporate machines, management are so far removed and abstracted from making things that they become administrators by default. Exactly. Let's not lazily tar the MBA degree itself and leave it at that: Lots of people have MBAs and aren't corporate tools. Heck, the guy sitting next to you in engineering may have an MBA. They aren't particularly rare, generally taking only 2 years to obtain, and they don't make you dumber when you graduate. The problem is with corporate execs who are running things but are not subject matter experts in what they are running. An SVP of a tech company may know nothing about tech, having managed a soup company or an auto maker in his previous job. His so-called qualification is his ability to make business pronouncements/decisions in a vacuum from the actual technical realities and constraints of the company. They are "generic leadership" professionals. These are the people, in general, who are ruining things, and they don't necessarily hold diplomas that say "MBA" on them.

m000 3y ago

> I also concluded that doing meaningless administrative/management work is addictive and those who engage in it will actively and constantly try not only to overemphasise their importance but also force themselves on top of those who they know are doing actual important work. You need to read David Graeber's "Bullshit Jobs".

low_tech_love 3y ago
The eye-opening part for me was that until recently I thought useless managers were simply people who wanted to help but maybe didn’t know how; that they actually tried to not get in your way but failed. Now I understand that I was completely wrong. Getting in your way, attaching their work to yours and feeding off of that is not an accident but a consistent, conscious method. Doing manager work is in many ways much easier than anything that requires creativity; not only you can schedule your work and stand by that schedule, but you also don’t have to deal with the psychological effects of failing something that you’re personally invested in. Ideally, society should differentiate between these two things and recognise that doing creative work (be it engineering, design, research, etc.) is harder and more taxing, and less predictable, and reward us accordingly. But in the country where I live (somewhere at the rich corners of Europe) there is this idea that everyone is just as important and should earn similar amounts of money, which has led to an insurmountable amount of administrative jobs and people who love them above everything else. It’s just a small leap from that to “you need to go through me first before you can do what you want”.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- pas 3y ago
  > doing creative work (be it engineering, design, research, etc.) is harder and more taxing ... for some people. and easier for others. we need both, and there's a need for balance. (and you need more careful administration in some areas and you need a lot more creativity in others. we want Boeing to be careful, but it's madness that we need paperwork for internal remodeling, etc.)
- 3y ago

ookdatnog 3y ago

> Sorry for those 1% of you out there who are actually useful and efficient leaders/managers; you know who you are 100% of managers nodding as they read this

ffsm8 3y ago
True, but my gut says that there is a selection bias of people reading comments on such an article and being in that 1% Might just be in my head though.
- vermilingua 3y ago
  Are you a manager by any chance?
  - ffsm8 3y ago
    No, but the article was dishing out quiet hard, so the worst offenders wouldn't have interacted further. At least that would've been my expectation
ludicity 3y ago
I recorded the first episode of a podcast to go with the blog today. It was literally while you were typing this. I made a joke (that is almost not a joke) about my N-2 rule. You can say all N managers in any organization are bad apart from two of them. Of course, managers want to assert that they're the good one (and some of them actually are), but they can't if you say one person is good, because to claim that spot would be to throw all your colleagues under the bus. But if you assert that you're one of the two good ones, then they can all claim to be one of the good ones without upsetting a specific person. This is obviously not how it works at all, but I was very proud of myself.
- appplication 3y ago
  In the Air Force we used to get force stratified based on our peers in our performance reports. It would include things like “#1 of 15 Lts in the squadron”. Everyone had a ranking, but you only found out where you stood once a year when your performance review came out. There was a saying that I think also applies here: “Everybody knows who #1 is, and everybody thinks they’re #2”.

fuzzfactor 3y ago

>went through two instances of three-full-day versions of the author’s Monday meeting Sometimes it takes more indoctrination than others to try and convince people that the social climbers who seek leadership positions above all else can be suitable for the job. >Leadership Is A Hell Of A Drug The concept makes sense, with "leadership-seeking behavior" manifesting itself strongest in those who have the greatest (yea, bigliest) lack of natural leadership ability, and who need some kind of a "fix" to supplement this deficiency. Kind of analogous to the drug addict and their toxic drug-seeking behavior which is not only self-destructive but damaging to everyone involved in one way or another, whether apparent or hidden behind closed doors. And once they've gotten their fix they still can't perform as well as ordinary people who don't need some kind of artificial aggrandizement.

xyzzy123 3y ago

I think the situation is very much more complicated than this in the sense there is not just one way to behave, the right way to behave is situational. Good wartime leaders might be bad peacetime leaders and so on etc. Do you want high or low aggression? Guess what: it depends. I do want to suggest an option I haven't seen before which is "what if it turns out that middle management is more automatable than everything everything else"? i.e, very broad status updates are scalable with ai and it turns out middle management isn't as needed in the future as it used to be.

andrewflnr 3y ago
You probably don't even need AI.