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> They're not all-perfect gods. In reality, most successful people are one trick ponies. They caught lightning in a bottle once early on that boosted their care

by gyomu 1y ago

> They're not all-perfect gods. In reality, most successful people are one trick ponies. They caught lightning in a bottle once early on that boosted their careers but that doesn't mean they're still relevant and correct with their decision making today. I don't think that characterization is quite right either. I'm a big fan of Brian Eno's "scenius" phrasing: > A few years ago I came up with a new word. I was fed up with the old art-history idea of genius - the notion that gifted individuals turn up out of nowhere and light the way for all the rest of us dummies to follow. I became (and still am) more and more convinced that the important changes in cultural history were actually the product of very large numbers of people and circumstances conspiring to make something new. I call this ‘scenius’ - it means ‘the intelligence and intuition of a whole cultural scene’. Extremely successful people benefit from the scenius within which they get to operate. But as that context changes and evolves over time, they fail to recreate their earlier wild successes - not because they lost any of their skills (although that can also happen), but because the skills aren't sufficient, and the deep, layered conditions that enabled those wild successes just aren't there anymore.

lttlrck 1y ago
That a great idea, perhaps it is not just cultural. Look at the Solvay Conference. That's a lot of lightning in a bottle all at once. Though it's beyond me to articulate it, perhaps that was also cultural.
bigyabai 1y ago
I could believe that this happens at Apple if it wasn't for the executive veto that pushed stuff like the Touch Bar and Butterfly Keyboard to consumers. It sounds less like "very large numbers of people" conspiring, and more like a select few conspirators hand-picking the contributions they think would sell well.
kristianc 1y ago
I think there is something in that. Certainly the world of work does seem to pivot between rewarding people that “do the work” and those that “do the work around the work” but separate themselves from actual execution. 2021-2 was peak middle manager froth, and were on a swing toward more operator led now. Usually middle management “present the work upwards” types dominate though.

by gyomu 1y ago

lttlrck 1y ago

That a great idea, perhaps it is not just cultural. Look at the Solvay Conference. That's a lot of lightning in a bottle all at once. Though it's beyond me to articulate it, perhaps that was also cultural.

bigyabai 1y ago

I could believe that this happens at Apple if it wasn't for the executive veto that pushed stuff like the Touch Bar and Butterfly Keyboard to consumers. It sounds less like "very large numbers of people" conspiring, and more like a select few conspirators hand-picking the contributions they think would sell well.

kristianc 1y ago

I think there is something in that. Certainly the world of work does seem to pivot between rewarding people that “do the work” and those that “do the work around the work” but separate themselves from actual execution. 2021-2 was peak middle manager froth, and were on a swing toward more operator led now. Usually middle management “present the work upwards” types dominate though.