..............................of managerialism:
Managerialism is a form of political economy in which the middle-man steps in with a claim that he has some special competence, through the exercise of which new efficiencies can be realized, or some process of production or distribution can be optimized through quantitative rigor. But a funny thing then happens. His metrics easily come detached from the underlying things they are meant to track, no doubt because the incentives of the manager are tied to metrics, rather than directly to the thing. The latter orientation is characteristic of the craftsman, via the “internal rewards” and satisfactions that are intrinsic to some skilled practice (such as making good television), as opposed to the “external rewards” of money, or social position, or other goods that may be a second-order consequence of getting to be really good at something. But you can’t get good at something while focused on external rewards. You have to go deep into the practice itself.
Law's reputation as a brilliant economist rests on some pamphlets he authored a decade or so after his escape to the Continent. In his Essay on a Land Bank (c. 1703-4) and Money and Trade Considered (1705), the fugitive Scot displayed novel insights about the nature of money. Money, he said, did not derive its value from precious metals, as people like Locke believed. Rather, money was simply a yardstick of value; or, as he put it, "Money is not the Value for which Goods are exchanged, but the Value by which they are exchanged." This clever switching of the prepositions—by in place of for—amounted to a monetary revolution. In essence, he was saying that since money lacked intrinsic value it need not be backed by gold or other precious metals.
A constant theme in Law's writings is that trade depends on the circulation of credit, and that credit was "only lost by a scarcity of Money." Here Law anticipates later monetarists. He argued that prosperity could be achieved by establishing a bank that issued paper money, collateralized with land rather than gold and silver. By severing the link between money and precious metals, Law opened the possibility of a managed currency.
-Edward Chancellor, The Price of Time: The Real Story of Interest
In Ken Blanchard's book The One Minute Manager Meets the Monkey, Blanchard calls these types of situations "other people's monkey." As a leader, you must ensure you aren't accidentally taking on other people's monkeys (problems or projects). Adam was (probably unintentionally) trying to put his monkey on my back. I gave the monkey a nice pat on the head and told him to go back home.
That's the basis for transformational leadership: start with the premise that this isn't your job, it's theirs. You shouldn't be telling them how to do it because that is their role, and they own it. Instead, they should be explaining to you the best way to solve it.
-Dan Martell, Buy Back Your Time
Compensation follows autonomy.
When you need to be managed, there’s a cap on what you can earn. When you know how to create value and do it without being told, there’s no cap. This is structural, not personal.
The compensation gap isn’t about performance; it’s about autonomy.
-from this week's Farnum Street newsletter
That orientation is a spirit; a process or pattern that inhabits us, piques our interest, directs our intention, and motivates our action. What do we want to happen there, in our gardens, if and when we get it right? We may be incapable of tending the whole world, but we can manage our own small private natural spaces, and that is far from nothing.
-Jordan B. Peterson, We Who Wrestle with God
To be rich you don't need to make more money; you chiefly need to better manage the money already flowing through your hands.
. . . I experimented with a new time management strategy. Every Monday, my assistant would reset the passwords on all my social media accounts, which logged me out on each device. All week I worked without distraction. On Friday, she would send me the new passwords. I had the entire weekend to enjoy what social media had to offer until Monday morning when she would do it again.
-James Clear, Atomic Habits
. . . he concludes that one of the principles of contemporary management is to "push details down and pull credit up." That is, avoid making decisions, because they could damage your career, but then spin cover stories after that fact that interpret positive outcomes to your credit.
-Matthew B. Crawford, Shop Class as Soul Craft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work
As blogger Tim Urban describes it, your brain gets hijacked by an instant gratification monkey, who picks what's easy and fun over the hard work that needs to be done. . . .
Many people associate procrastination with laziness. But psychologists find that procrastination is not a time management problem—it's an emotional management problem. When you procrastinate, you're not avoiding effort. You're avoiding the unpleasant feelings that the activity stirs up. Sooner or later, though, you realize that you're also avoiding getting where you want to go.
-Adam Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things
Perhaps these are the ideal conditions in which Stoicism emerges: a homeland lacking strong leadership and buffeted by powerful outside forces; a ringside seat to the perils of excess and greed. It was all an early lesson that in an unpredictable world, the only thing we can really manage is ourselves — and that the space between our ears is the only territory we can conquer in any kind of certain and enduring way.
-Ryan Holiday, Lives Of The Stoics: The Art of Living from Zeno to Marcus Aurelius
Despite all the high-level concepts consultants advertise, the bread and butter of every consultant's business is undoing entropy—cleaning up the debris and weeds that grow in every organizational garden.
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One of the clearest examples of entropy in business was the gradual decay of the order imposed on the early General Motors by Alfred Sloan. In this decay, one can see the value of competent management by its absence. Indeed, you cannot fully understand the value of the daily work of managers unless one accepts the general tendency of unmanaged human structures to become less ordered, less focused, and more blurred around the edges.
-Richard P. Rumelt, Good Strategy Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters
It is astonishing what you can do when you have a lot of energy, ambition and plenty of ignorance.
The greatest real thrill that life offers is to create, to construct, to develop something useful. Too often we fail to recognize and pay tribute to the creative spirit. It is that spirit that creates our jobs. There has to be this pioneer, the individual who has the courage, the ambition to overcome the obstacles that always develop when one tries to do something worthwhile, especially when it is new and different.
Growth and progress are related, for there is no resting place for an enterprise in a competitive economy.
We must move toward a soundly based and widely distributed economic well-being. This is the 'theory of plenty' as distinguished from the 'theory of scarcity' which has dominated our recent economic thinking and politics.
Bedside manners are no substitute for the right diagnosis.
I never give orders. I sell my ideas to my associates if I can. I accept their judgment if they convince me, as they frequently do, that I am wrong. I prefer to appeal to the intelligence of a man rather than attempt to exercise authority over him.
Get the facts. Recognize the equities of all concerned. Realize the necessity of doing a better job every day. Keep an open mind and work hard. The last is most important at all. There is no short cut.
If we are all in agreement on the decision - then I propose we postpone further discussion of this matter until our next meeting to give ourselves time to develop disagreement and perhaps gain some understanding of what the decision is all about.
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