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I'm working on a new theory of management. I was explaining leadership to someone and they said I should write a book about it. In the same week I was explainin

I'm working on a new theory of management. I was explaining leadership to someone and they said I should write a book about it. In the same week I was explaining another aspect and got the same response. I think management has been overcomplicated by people trying to codify it. I think MBAs and systems like EOS try to dumb everyone down to inhuman lowest-common-denominator robots. That is the main cause of the productivity crisis. That's why people leave their jobs, and magically find they are 100% more productive without a boss. No BS, and they are inspired. I think you could get further faster by being a human, being inspiring, being a leader. I think you could learn more from Nelson than whatever nasty dehumanising theory most bosses have been reading. I'm struggling to find the motivation to write up my notes (neurodiversity both helping me see the problem and stopping me do anything about it). I'm struggling to name the theory. I am struggling ( with some limited success) in noticing what I do differently. I'm also struggling with recovering from a major burnout from succeeding creating highly motivated teams in really tough organisations. I thought all along that I would be better with a collaborator watching me and noting the differences between what I do and what everyone else is doing, then interviewing me about it. Maybe I could publish bits of it, little tidbits of blogs (who would find them?) or social media videos (I really don't want to have to record and edit videos). Not sure how to get progress.

ismailmaj 9mo ago
How do you scale a more human management system when both the manager or the managee can be incompetent or malicious. I'm aware that incentives are often counterproductive or insulting for white collar workers where there are elements of creativity in the job, but I feel like to get it to work you need trust which IMO cannot be scaled to big companies like Google. FYI, I'm paraphrasing, perhaps badly "The puzzle of motivation | Dan Pink | TED". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrkrvAUbU9Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrkrvAUbU9Y
- jimnotgym 9mo ago
  Thank you for taking a moment to reply. Firstly, I have met very few malicious people in my career. Most of the really destructive people are products of their environments. It is complicated, but it is normally an incentives problem, most commonly status/ power rather than monetary. Often they have created blocking processes that the company sees as some sort of control or policing. It tends to be rather easy to change that if you are their boss. It is harder, but not impossible as a colleague. Often the application of cold hard rigorous logic, an understanding of the real controls etc. Can unstick them. I work in a 100k person company at the moment (admittedly I'm not in charge of that many of them), so I understand the problem of scale, but I would counter that the changes neede are rather subtle. I think much can be achieved by focusing on the 20 people at the top. Culture cascades. For example if you dig in over a KPI not being achieved, when someone explains that it is counterproductive, or conflicts with another KPI, how do you think they will manage their team in future?
  - ismailmaj 9mo ago
    I agree that culture cascades but leadership is not the top of the food chain, their decisions or culture is often influenced by the capital. The meta recently has been to ignore everything and only focus on maximizing the stock price, which is aligned with their incentives (stock based compensation, bonus based on stock performance) and the modern investors (money quick now). I wonder if the rotten feeling I have on management is linked to western societies moving from high trust to low trust and from patient to impatient.
    - jimnotgym 9mo ago
      Yes, that is the excuse I read for a recent accounting scandal at a listed company. However, it is a weak one. Yes their incentives have slipped from long-term shareholder value to short-term share price, and the market loves to be irrational...especially about AI and Musk. Except only some of the market does, and the incentive can be met in other ways. Most capital is less worried about how you run the company than the returns. They worry about fundamentals, ROCE etc. If you have too much inventory, then yes you will get pushback. But encouraging your employees to be creative won't get you in trouble. This is just an excuse. I mean, being polite to your employees, having dedicated inspired staff, won't hurt your share price. I think assholes getting to be CEO is a symptom of a failing meritocracy, bad career development, focus on loyalty over ability. I think it harms the share price by lowering productivity. But capital is conservative. Board members are chosen from a tiny select group of people who have done it before, or at least sent to the right elite schools. When I worked in PE, the biggest thing I learnt was that PE partners (as a whole) know very little about running businesses. They only know about balance sheet fundamentals, and whether you answer their questions convincingly. They were specialists in the pissing contests, but could be easily fobbed off if your ratios were good and you met your forecast. Imitating their behavior inside the company is a choice, not an inevitability. Sorry, a bit 'stream of consciousness' rather than a well argued response, but you seem smart enough to see what I mean.
      - ismailmaj 9mo ago
        I see your point, this reminded me of the incompetent/malicious section. Yes, leadership could do the right thing, but the right thing is difficult to measure by shareholders and can only grasped by shareholders until it is too late (Disney for example), but why would they? I agree, people are not malicious but the system currently selects for people that ignore the difficult to measure right thing to do (in SWE it’s doing the grunt platform work that no one will appreciate) and skip to things that are rewarded (cool feature tm that users hate by gives a cool slide to the CEO), it might seem like people can do both but it’s not in practice due to having limited energy. Also stream of thought answer, but I feel like we are back to the trust thing, the right thing to do is impossible to measure, so we can only hope they do it because they care about doing the right thing, but incentives punishes them and makes them scarce at the top and the only solution is to go back to a high trust society (maybe like Japan where CEOs care and the incentives are set so people are often doing the right thing).
tmaly 9mo ago
I think your post here is a good start. Sharing it in small bits rather than one big book is a better approach in my opinion.
- jimnotgym 9mo ago
  Thanks for your reply
tb8424 9mo ago
Would love to hear more about your thesis
- jimnotgym 9mo ago
  Thank you. Maybe I should restart my Substack?
chairmansteve 9mo ago
"Not sure how to get progress". Maybe make small audio recordings and get them transcribed? Or a notebook and scribble out all thoughts by hand? Just get all your thoughts out of your head onto "paper" is the first step. Don't even think about the second step yet. "The journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step". - Lao Tzu

ismailmaj 9mo ago

How do you scale a more human management system when both the manager or the managee can be incompetent or malicious. I'm aware that incentives are often counterproductive or insulting for white collar workers where there are elements of creativity in the job, but I feel like to get it to work you need trust which IMO cannot be scaled to big companies like Google. FYI, I'm paraphrasing, perhaps badly "The puzzle of motivation | Dan Pink | TED". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrkrvAUbU9Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrkrvAUbU9Y

jimnotgym 9mo ago
Thank you for taking a moment to reply. Firstly, I have met very few malicious people in my career. Most of the really destructive people are products of their environments. It is complicated, but it is normally an incentives problem, most commonly status/ power rather than monetary. Often they have created blocking processes that the company sees as some sort of control or policing. It tends to be rather easy to change that if you are their boss. It is harder, but not impossible as a colleague. Often the application of cold hard rigorous logic, an understanding of the real controls etc. Can unstick them. I work in a 100k person company at the moment (admittedly I'm not in charge of that many of them), so I understand the problem of scale, but I would counter that the changes neede are rather subtle. I think much can be achieved by focusing on the 20 people at the top. Culture cascades. For example if you dig in over a KPI not being achieved, when someone explains that it is counterproductive, or conflicts with another KPI, how do you think they will manage their team in future?
- ismailmaj 9mo ago
  I agree that culture cascades but leadership is not the top of the food chain, their decisions or culture is often influenced by the capital. The meta recently has been to ignore everything and only focus on maximizing the stock price, which is aligned with their incentives (stock based compensation, bonus based on stock performance) and the modern investors (money quick now). I wonder if the rotten feeling I have on management is linked to western societies moving from high trust to low trust and from patient to impatient.
  - jimnotgym 9mo ago
    Yes, that is the excuse I read for a recent accounting scandal at a listed company. However, it is a weak one. Yes their incentives have slipped from long-term shareholder value to short-term share price, and the market loves to be irrational...especially about AI and Musk. Except only some of the market does, and the incentive can be met in other ways. Most capital is less worried about how you run the company than the returns. They worry about fundamentals, ROCE etc. If you have too much inventory, then yes you will get pushback. But encouraging your employees to be creative won't get you in trouble. This is just an excuse. I mean, being polite to your employees, having dedicated inspired staff, won't hurt your share price. I think assholes getting to be CEO is a symptom of a failing meritocracy, bad career development, focus on loyalty over ability. I think it harms the share price by lowering productivity. But capital is conservative. Board members are chosen from a tiny select group of people who have done it before, or at least sent to the right elite schools. When I worked in PE, the biggest thing I learnt was that PE partners (as a whole) know very little about running businesses. They only know about balance sheet fundamentals, and whether you answer their questions convincingly. They were specialists in the pissing contests, but could be easily fobbed off if your ratios were good and you met your forecast. Imitating their behavior inside the company is a choice, not an inevitability. Sorry, a bit 'stream of consciousness' rather than a well argued response, but you seem smart enough to see what I mean.
    - ismailmaj 9mo ago
      I see your point, this reminded me of the incompetent/malicious section. Yes, leadership could do the right thing, but the right thing is difficult to measure by shareholders and can only grasped by shareholders until it is too late (Disney for example), but why would they? I agree, people are not malicious but the system currently selects for people that ignore the difficult to measure right thing to do (in SWE it’s doing the grunt platform work that no one will appreciate) and skip to things that are rewarded (cool feature tm that users hate by gives a cool slide to the CEO), it might seem like people can do both but it’s not in practice due to having limited energy. Also stream of thought answer, but I feel like we are back to the trust thing, the right thing to do is impossible to measure, so we can only hope they do it because they care about doing the right thing, but incentives punishes them and makes them scarce at the top and the only solution is to go back to a high trust society (maybe like Japan where CEOs care and the incentives are set so people are often doing the right thing).

tmaly 9mo ago

I think your post here is a good start. Sharing it in small bits rather than one big book is a better approach in my opinion.

jimnotgym 9mo ago
Thanks for your reply

tb8424 9mo ago

Would love to hear more about your thesis

jimnotgym 9mo ago
Thank you. Maybe I should restart my Substack?

chairmansteve 9mo ago

"Not sure how to get progress". Maybe make small audio recordings and get them transcribed? Or a notebook and scribble out all thoughts by hand? Just get all your thoughts out of your head onto "paper" is the first step. Don't even think about the second step yet. "The journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step". - Lao Tzu