The Gervais Principle says that when an organization is run by Sociopaths, it inevitably devolves into infighting and politics that the sociopaths use to make decisions, and then blame them on others. What this creates is a misaligned organization—people aren’t working towards the same thing, and therefore much wasted work goes towards undoing what others have done, or assigning blame to someone that isn’t yourself. Organizations with people that aren’t aligned can sometimes luck into good outcomes, especially if the most skilled players (the most skilled sociopaths) want them to. They aren’t necessarily dead players, but they’re running on borrowed time—borrowed for the usefulness to the sociopaths.
Dead organizations are those that are run by Rao’s clueless (or less commonly, by Rao’s losers, in which case you have a Bureaucracy that outlived its’ founder). They can’t do anything new because they’re run by people that can’t question the rulesets they’re in. As a clueless leading a dead organization, one effective strategy seems to be to accept the memes around you unquestioningly and really executing on them. The most successful people in Silicon valley make their own rules, but the next tier are the people who take the memes of Silicon Valley and follow them unquestioningly. This is how organizations enter Mythic Mode—they believe in the culture around them so much that they channel the god of that culture, and are able to attract funding, customers, results etc purely through the resulting aura.
LESS BAD ORGANIZATIONS
The Gervais Principle says that when an organization is run by Sociopaths, it inevitably devolves into infighting and politics that the sociopaths use to make decisions, and then blame them on others. What this creates is a misaligned organization—people aren’t working towards the same thing, and therefore much wasted work goes towards undoing what others have done, or assigning blame to someone that isn’t yourself. Organizations with people that aren’t aligned can sometimes luck into good outcomes, especially if the most skilled players (the most skilled sociopaths) want them to. They aren’t necessarily dead players, but they’re running on borrowed time—borrowed for the usefulness to the sociopaths.
Dead organizations are those that are run by Rao’s clueless (or less commonly, by Rao’s losers, in which case you have a Bureaucracy that outlived its’ founder). They can’t do anything new because they’re run by people that can’t question the rulesets they’re in. As a clueless leading a dead organization, one effective strategy seems to be to accept the memes around you unquestioningly and really executing on them. The most successful people in Silicon valley make their own rules, but the next tier are the people who take the memes of Silicon Valley and follow them unquestioningly. This is how organizations enter Mythic Mode—they believe in the culture around them so much that they channel the god of that culture, and are able to attract funding, customers, results etc purely through the resulting aura.
Running Good Organizations
Framing the Gervais principle in terms of Kegan:
Losers—Kegan 3
Clueless—Kegan 4
Sociopaths—Kegan 4.5
To run a great organization, the first thing you need is to be lead not by a socipath, but someone who is Kegan 5. Then you need sociopath repellent.
Short Form Feed is getting too long. I’ll write more on good organizations at some point soon.