Edit: Meant to post this on the Thresholding post. Now have realized that post is only allowing paid comments, so I’ll leave it here I guess.
This is very well done and matches my experience on the inside of a few major bureaucracies. But from the other side.
The issue here is the potential weaponization of this in many workplaces. Trump is simultaneously a great example because he has mafia boss instincts, but he’s not a typical case because of his unique status in several areas.
In a workplace that, totally hypothetically, doesn’t meaningfully punish incompetence but does punish anyone deemed to have engaged in behavior that is found upsetting, then boy have you set up your incentives wrong to have a high-performance culture. It becomes considered unprofessional to straightforwardly point out errors made by others, or do anything that could be found upsetting by someone. Managers have incentives to avoid bad feelings, paperwork, and HR risks.
In other words, empowering people to be upset for nearly unbounded reasons and presumed inherent justification for complaints is disastrous if you care about organizational health and talent management because you’ve rewarded gaming the system from the other direction. I do not have a clever label for this, but it’s a recognized phenomenon. Well, I guess it’s part of “cancel culture” writ large or perhaps puritanism.
Likewise, if someone with power decides they have it out for you for whatever reason, then any potential infraction can be documented and the book thrown at you once enough material is obtained, even if the infractions were mostly imagined and not outside what is normally accepted. The only real defense here against the Eye of Sauron is having top cover, because proving inconsistent enforcement is usually very hard. This is basically just “having a target on your back” and is a classic in the genre of moral mazes and abuse of power.
If you combine the two phenomena above with “zero-defect culture,” then you have a recipe for risk aversion and safetyism for anyone trying to get ahead. This can result in a reinforcing cycle too, as baselines are reset and those talented at wielding the weaponry advance in power (especially for orgs that can’t fail from ceasing to satisfy paying customers).
Any reasonably complex set of rules is going to have endless opportunity for exploitation. For instance, if a cop follows you driving you’ll almost always do some minor infraction that justifies a stop because there are so many rules that are easy to slightly break, and we give cops a lot of latitude to interpret things. Similarly, the IRS could find infractions from nearly anyone if they wanted because almost no one is consistently tracking personal cash transactions.
So be on the lookout for Thresholding, but also ~reverse any advice you hear and beware of the opposite.
So the old “feedback sandwich” is… mahi; mahu; mahi.
Nice piece; I’m looking forward to the book.
Edit: Meant to post this on the Thresholding post. Now have realized that post is only allowing paid comments, so I’ll leave it here I guess.
This is very well done and matches my experience on the inside of a few major bureaucracies. But from the other side.
The issue here is the potential weaponization of this in many workplaces. Trump is simultaneously a great example because he has mafia boss instincts, but he’s not a typical case because of his unique status in several areas.
In a workplace that, totally hypothetically, doesn’t meaningfully punish incompetence but does punish anyone deemed to have engaged in behavior that is found upsetting, then boy have you set up your incentives wrong to have a high-performance culture. It becomes considered unprofessional to straightforwardly point out errors made by others, or do anything that could be found upsetting by someone. Managers have incentives to avoid bad feelings, paperwork, and HR risks.
In other words, empowering people to be upset for nearly unbounded reasons and presumed inherent justification for complaints is disastrous if you care about organizational health and talent management because you’ve rewarded gaming the system from the other direction. I do not have a clever label for this, but it’s a recognized phenomenon. Well, I guess it’s part of “cancel culture” writ large or perhaps puritanism.
Likewise, if someone with power decides they have it out for you for whatever reason, then any potential infraction can be documented and the book thrown at you once enough material is obtained, even if the infractions were mostly imagined and not outside what is normally accepted. The only real defense here against the Eye of Sauron is having top cover, because proving inconsistent enforcement is usually very hard. This is basically just “having a target on your back” and is a classic in the genre of moral mazes and abuse of power.
If you combine the two phenomena above with “zero-defect culture,” then you have a recipe for risk aversion and safetyism for anyone trying to get ahead. This can result in a reinforcing cycle too, as baselines are reset and those talented at wielding the weaponry advance in power (especially for orgs that can’t fail from ceasing to satisfy paying customers).
Any reasonably complex set of rules is going to have endless opportunity for exploitation. For instance, if a cop follows you driving you’ll almost always do some minor infraction that justifies a stop because there are so many rules that are easy to slightly break, and we give cops a lot of latitude to interpret things. Similarly, the IRS could find infractions from nearly anyone if they wanted because almost no one is consistently tracking personal cash transactions.
So be on the lookout for Thresholding, but also ~reverse any advice you hear and beware of the opposite.
ETA on the book? I want to buy it
Maybe 12-18mo for me to finish the draft, alas.
I’m sure it will be worth the wait