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As a self-identified cowboy, I must point out that the article doesn’t cover the downsides of cowboys. For example: - a cowboy trying to disrupt an established

by mft_ 2y ago

As a self-identified cowboy, I must point out that the article doesn’t cover the downsides of cowboys. For example: - a cowboy trying to disrupt an established system (for the best of motives) may cause a big bubble of additional work, stress, discontent, etc., in the process - given a likely predisposition to action, a Cowboy may also sometimes lack the experience/oversight to spot reasons why the system is as it is, and miss downsides or unintended consequences of their disruption —- Also, there are also many, many times that you would want a system and ‘drones’ to be in charge - like anything involving detail with life-changing downsides. Y’know, things like radiotherapy administration, airliner QA, pharmaceutical production, etc. As such, changing the nomenclature to be less negative about the group of people who do important but routine work would help discussion and dissemination of this concept. Maybe “disruptor” and “deliverer” might work better? (We should also note that this is a subset/simplification of Belbin’s team roles…)

adampk 2y ago
It does mention that, it calls that out specifically. As you grow, it’s tempting to fix every issue using the ‘cowboy’ method. It’s fast. It’s efficient. It leads to good results. But the number of things that need a cowboy fix grow exponentially, and cowboy fixes only ever fix that one thing, while system fixes fix future issues too. As you adapt from cowboy to drone, it’s easy to skew too much to one side or the other. No matter how good your systems are, sometimes stuff just needs to get done pronto. But sometimes you need to take a step back and trust that the system you built will do its job, and trying to jump in to speed things up will only make everything worse.
econ 2y ago
You have to cultivate your inner drone and look at the work from both perspectives. Sometimes you have to make the construction drawing after building the house then pretend you did it the other way round. :)
Brian_K_White 2y ago
"the article doesn’t cover the downsides of cowboys" Yes it does. It matches both sides negatives and positives step for step from beginning to end. This remark is sort of fascinating.
- mft_ 2y ago
  It covers why relying only on cowboys might be a problem in the context of a startup that is scaling in the penultimate paragraph; that's it. But this concept is too broad (and interesting) to only apply to a scaling startup. So I was thinking beyond this narrow focus - to the downsides of cowboys in other situations or contexts. I didn't explain this sufficiently.
  - Brian_K_White 2y ago
    Cowboy critiques start in the 4th paragraph, not the penultimate. Could even say the 2nd though not by name yet, so let's say 4th. 1st: Intro. Does lean cowboy, admiring what a cowboy does while merely stating what a system does. drone +0.5 cowboy +1 2nd: Positive aspects of systems. Doesn't mention cowboys by name but last sentence does describe negative effect of cowboy by saying "not that". drone +1 3rd: Positive aspects of cowboy. Notably shorter than 2nd. cowboy +1 4th: Negatives of both drone & cowboy. Why each does not respect the other, from the individuals perspective. drone -1 cowboy -1 5th: Positives of both from a small business owner perspective. drone +1 cowboy +1 6th: Cowboy incompatiblity with growth. cowboy -1 7th: Summary, positives of both, negatives of both, both are necessary to some degree at dofferent times in different contexts. drone -1+1 cowboy -1+1 total drone +1.5 cowboy +1 Huh, Cowboy actually gets an entire paragraph dedicated to nothing but the negatives of cowboy (6th), and no matching paragraph dedicated to nothing but the negatives of systems. Even the intro leaning cowboy positive doesn't cancel 6th out since it's not dedicated to negatives of systems, it only says positive things of both, but is more positive to cowboy. And everything else cancels out. In total, it's actually more critical of cowboys than systems.

by mft_ 2y ago

adampk 2y ago

It does mention that, it calls that out specifically. As you grow, it’s tempting to fix every issue using the ‘cowboy’ method. It’s fast. It’s efficient. It leads to good results. But the number of things that need a cowboy fix grow exponentially, and cowboy fixes only ever fix that one thing, while system fixes fix future issues too. As you adapt from cowboy to drone, it’s easy to skew too much to one side or the other. No matter how good your systems are, sometimes stuff just needs to get done pronto. But sometimes you need to take a step back and trust that the system you built will do its job, and trying to jump in to speed things up will only make everything worse.

econ 2y ago

You have to cultivate your inner drone and look at the work from both perspectives. Sometimes you have to make the construction drawing after building the house then pretend you did it the other way round. :)

Brian_K_White 2y ago

"the article doesn’t cover the downsides of cowboys" Yes it does. It matches both sides negatives and positives step for step from beginning to end. This remark is sort of fascinating.

mft_ 2y ago
It covers why relying only on cowboys might be a problem in the context of a startup that is scaling in the penultimate paragraph; that's it. But this concept is too broad (and interesting) to only apply to a scaling startup. So I was thinking beyond this narrow focus - to the downsides of cowboys in other situations or contexts. I didn't explain this sufficiently.
- Brian_K_White 2y ago
  Cowboy critiques start in the 4th paragraph, not the penultimate. Could even say the 2nd though not by name yet, so let's say 4th. 1st: Intro. Does lean cowboy, admiring what a cowboy does while merely stating what a system does. drone +0.5 cowboy +1 2nd: Positive aspects of systems. Doesn't mention cowboys by name but last sentence does describe negative effect of cowboy by saying "not that". drone +1 3rd: Positive aspects of cowboy. Notably shorter than 2nd. cowboy +1 4th: Negatives of both drone & cowboy. Why each does not respect the other, from the individuals perspective. drone -1 cowboy -1 5th: Positives of both from a small business owner perspective. drone +1 cowboy +1 6th: Cowboy incompatiblity with growth. cowboy -1 7th: Summary, positives of both, negatives of both, both are necessary to some degree at dofferent times in different contexts. drone -1+1 cowboy -1+1 total drone +1.5 cowboy +1 Huh, Cowboy actually gets an entire paragraph dedicated to nothing but the negatives of cowboy (6th), and no matching paragraph dedicated to nothing but the negatives of systems. Even the intro leaning cowboy positive doesn't cancel 6th out since it's not dedicated to negatives of systems, it only says positive things of both, but is more positive to cowboy. And everything else cancels out. In total, it's actually more critical of cowboys than systems.