As usual, the descriptive part is good, the prescriptive part is suspect. Extraordinary progress is only achieved when extraordinary people end up in charge and have the power to control things. Basically “You cannot bullshit Steve Jobs”. Sometimes “Steve Jobs” can be a group of people, like in the Manhattan project, or the Apollo program. Where the feedback on one’s performance comes from achieving the stated goals, not (just) from how good you are with people.
One of the linked articles states that to make extraordinary progress, one needs to hire “Great connected people” and give them the freedom and finances to work on their passion, while removing the bureaucratic obstacles. It’s not quite the Steve Jobs theory, but close. The same article also describes, time and again, how the results were achieved by either subverting or bypassing the existing bureaucracy. There is no way to reform it, there is no point in trying. The elected government is no better: these are people who optimize electability, not progress. The best one can do in absence of a severe crisis, when existing bureaucratic rules can be suspended, is to reduce the barriers for the great people wanting to do great things to work outside the existing bureaucracy. Elon Musk could not have achieve what he has in land- and space-transportation in, say, medicine, if his goal was to “cure cancer” or something, instead of going to Mars. Mostly because he would be thwarted at every step by the well-meaning yet stifling regulations.
Avoid the bureaucracy, don’t try to reform it, if you want to get anything done.
I think the problem is that sometimes Steve Jobs happens by accident, but it is difficult to make him happen on purpose. Yes, the old method of hiring people optimizes for some other purpose than hiring the most competent. But the priors are high that the new method will also optimize for some other purpose—maybe we can’t immediately tell how exactly, if we never tried the new method, but after it is used for a few months, people will find their ways.
There are many ideas that sound nice and are supposed to work in theory. Then it turns out that democracy somehow does not produce the optimal outcomes for citizens, dictatorship of the proletariat does not produce the optimal outcomes for workers, corporations do not produce the optimal outcomes for the shareholders… Moloch always finds its way.
What could possibly go wrong with “the minister will appoint experts”? Maybe the next minister will always fire the previous one’s experts and replace them with new ones, so no longer project ever gets completed. Or maybe there will be a rule against firing the old experts (e.g. you can only add new ones, but each one stays there for 20 years), and then you will have new and old experts working together, disagreeing with each other, and nothing gets done and everyone blames the other side. If you are looking forward to your favorite party’s minister appointing their experts, you should also shiver at the thought of the opposite party’s minister appointing their experts and giving them the same power. Maybe a politician you respect will unexpectedly choose some snake oil salesman as an expert. Or maybe the nominations of experts will need to be anounced in advance, in which case the ministers will settle for non-controversial experts over the competent ones. Etc.
The libraries are definitely a good idea. A friend of mine worked for London city hall. They had an exciting new computerised mathematical model to calculate where transport links were bad and the computer produced them a proposal for a new bus route. At a glance the route made perfect sense, and they couldn’t understand how that bus route didn’t already exist, its value was so obvious at a glance. They started setting the bus route up, then a load of people wrote letters of complaint saying they didn’t want busses full of poorer people going past their posh houses, and these complaint letters killed the project. Only much later did they learn that substantially the same bus route had been shot down by the same objections on 2 or 3 previous occasions. A department historian could have told them they were repeating history, so they had a better idea to expect that obstacle.
This would seem to be such a common roadblock in any urban centre that I’m surprised nobody in your friend’s department asked if that was why the bus route didn’t exist already.
What could possibly go wrong with “the minister will appoint experts”? Maybe the next minister will always fire the previous one’s experts and replace them with new ones, so no longer project ever gets completed.
I don’t think that’s a good summary of the issue. Even the US system does have experts like Kiesinger that serve multiple administrations and have power when the ruling party changes.
As usual, the descriptive part is good, the prescriptive part is suspect. Extraordinary progress is only achieved when extraordinary people end up in charge and have the power to control things. Basically “You cannot bullshit Steve Jobs”. Sometimes “Steve Jobs” can be a group of people, like in the Manhattan project, or the Apollo program. Where the feedback on one’s performance comes from achieving the stated goals, not (just) from how good you are with people.
Let’s call this the “Steve Jobs theory”.
That seemed like it was almost the thesis (of DC as described by the “OP”). Did the post seem off to you relative to the ‘Steve jobs theory’?
One of the linked articles states that to make extraordinary progress, one needs to hire “Great connected people” and give them the freedom and finances to work on their passion, while removing the bureaucratic obstacles. It’s not quite the Steve Jobs theory, but close. The same article also describes, time and again, how the results were achieved by either subverting or bypassing the existing bureaucracy. There is no way to reform it, there is no point in trying. The elected government is no better: these are people who optimize electability, not progress. The best one can do in absence of a severe crisis, when existing bureaucratic rules can be suspended, is to reduce the barriers for the great people wanting to do great things to work outside the existing bureaucracy. Elon Musk could not have achieve what he has in land- and space-transportation in, say, medicine, if his goal was to “cure cancer” or something, instead of going to Mars. Mostly because he would be thwarted at every step by the well-meaning yet stifling regulations.
Avoid the bureaucracy, don’t try to reform it, if you want to get anything done.
I think the problem is that sometimes Steve Jobs happens by accident, but it is difficult to make him happen on purpose. Yes, the old method of hiring people optimizes for some other purpose than hiring the most competent. But the priors are high that the new method will also optimize for some other purpose—maybe we can’t immediately tell how exactly, if we never tried the new method, but after it is used for a few months, people will find their ways.
There are many ideas that sound nice and are supposed to work in theory. Then it turns out that democracy somehow does not produce the optimal outcomes for citizens, dictatorship of the proletariat does not produce the optimal outcomes for workers, corporations do not produce the optimal outcomes for the shareholders… Moloch always finds its way.
What could possibly go wrong with “the minister will appoint experts”? Maybe the next minister will always fire the previous one’s experts and replace them with new ones, so no longer project ever gets completed. Or maybe there will be a rule against firing the old experts (e.g. you can only add new ones, but each one stays there for 20 years), and then you will have new and old experts working together, disagreeing with each other, and nothing gets done and everyone blames the other side. If you are looking forward to your favorite party’s minister appointing their experts, you should also shiver at the thought of the opposite party’s minister appointing their experts and giving them the same power. Maybe a politician you respect will unexpectedly choose some snake oil salesman as an expert. Or maybe the nominations of experts will need to be anounced in advance, in which case the ministers will settle for non-controversial experts over the competent ones. Etc.
1. The libraries idea could be useful.
2. If no idea works “perfectly”, then:
the best option is not the perfect option, but the best option.
The solution isn’t in just the idea, but something else. Execution, learning and adapting...
3. Can competence be measured?
The libraries are definitely a good idea. A friend of mine worked for London city hall. They had an exciting new computerised mathematical model to calculate where transport links were bad and the computer produced them a proposal for a new bus route. At a glance the route made perfect sense, and they couldn’t understand how that bus route didn’t already exist, its value was so obvious at a glance. They started setting the bus route up, then a load of people wrote letters of complaint saying they didn’t want busses full of poorer people going past their posh houses, and these complaint letters killed the project. Only much later did they learn that substantially the same bus route had been shot down by the same objections on 2 or 3 previous occasions. A department historian could have told them they were repeating history, so they had a better idea to expect that obstacle.
This would seem to be such a common roadblock in any urban centre that I’m surprised nobody in your friend’s department asked if that was why the bus route didn’t exist already.
I don’t think that’s a good summary of the issue. Even the US system does have experts like Kiesinger that serve multiple administrations and have power when the ruling party changes.