Work, etc

https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/ulterior-motives/201404/why-having-the-choice-do-nothing-is-so-important

This lesson would resonate in Gore Associates, our preferred org style. In GA noone has a boss, leaders need to recruit followers per task, employees find / create their own work, decide on what to do themselves.

http://thirdwaveiscoming.blogspot.be/2012/05/fabric-of-creativity.html

The obvious conclusion from GA’s method  is if someone told an employee to do something, they could say no, confirming the first article. The fact that this is such a useful advice should not actually be that surprising. People mostly know what they can or cannot do, so when they sign up for something (or not), there is probably a reason. But then how would an employee push themselves, unless nudged? The motivation for that can easily come from the need to impress ones peers. Or growing. Wanting to be useful. Or whatever. If none of that is there, well, then why was person X hired at all?

Management tools: all you need is a flippin todo.md and backlog.md file per person, ppl write task in these (todo for immediate ones backlog for others) with some rough estimation on those tasks. Check those two files  in to Github (a source code management tool). If mgmt wants to see pretty diagrams, they can pull from these files for each employee and construct whatever they need.

The reason for this advice is, defining, writing down tasks need to be local to the problem and the people involved, and flow naturally. One cannot, should not do things for two, three level above themselves.

The key to innovation, to any invention is small pieces doing their little thing whose “combined action” handles non-linearity (the world). The act of “combining” cannot effect the act of “doing” for that piece, any piece. If swaths of employees need to “learn” how to create tasks, to use some tool so three levels up can breathe easier, this is the wrong approach.

Little neurons in a neural net don’t give a shit about 10 levels above or below, they only care what happens one level before them, and after them, and what they are focused on. But stack many layers on top of each other, the whole thing can recognize faces.  But the behavior of a single neuron in a stack of 10, or 100 does not change. This relation between small and the large is the key to everything. The answer to every question in universe. 42!

Mind you, the division I am talking about is not a linear division and linear combination - it takes true skill being able to divide something into pieces which when combined, act non-linearly. I once saw a robot, its programming was, if one leg got stuck the one opposite to it would be lifted and pushed little more - or something like this… The simplest reactive coding you can imagine. Once you let this thing go, the way the robot walked was quite shocking, it seemed it knew where to go, as if it was looking ahead.

Or in a previous post I shared the trick scientist Hans Bethe used to calculate the square of 48. Here is our trick: high-school math (x-y)^2 = x^2 - 2xy + y^2. Take x=50, and y=2, you end up (50-2)^2 meaning 48^2. That is the goal, but representing it through that simple equation, Bethe ends up with simple multiplications and additions on the right handside, such as 50^2, -4*50, or +4.  That part anyone can do in their head. Here are little individual pieces , they go into simple additions, multiplication operation… They are combined  non-linearly through the nature of the problem, through the structure that wraps the little pieces, which they are not aware of, but now we have emergent behaviour can handle much more complexity.

For an employee, in the small, there is the task. Those todos, tasks comes out of a complex dance between the interested party, between the knowledgeable party, maybe a customer, etc. Once it is clear what needs to happen, everyone included in that discussion knows the extent of it. It is immaterial for that info to be prettified so that some third party sees prettier boxes. Or employee having to act differently because some distant part of the ecosystem.

Reviews

Any kind of additional structure employees would rather not do, is shit. The favorites of HR in that sense are development goals that are prepared by the employeee, filed away as soon as it is done, unless extra paper is needed at the shitter. With GA model since company trusts employees to be self-motivated, development goals are unnecessary. Checking is necessary of course, but that kind of review by the employees peers annually is enough, that can happen without much paperwork or “planning” ahead. Peers simply get together, and rate the person involved.