The idea that someone can just be better at doing the actual job doesn’t parse for them.
That’s not what the quote said. The quote said that the difference between a general manager and a vice-president is not one due to abilities.
There’s another quote which suggests that there’s a belief in are skill differences:
he himself may get done in by his boss’s errors, and, perhaps more important, other managers will view with the gravest suspicion a subordinate who withholds crucial information from his boss even if they think the boss is a nincompoop.
The first quote seems be due to the fact that it’s very hard to actually measure the skill differences. If you make good long-term decisions for the company that pay five or seven years down the road, it’s difficult to reward you for those if you stay three or four years in your position.
In an environment where skill differences can’t be measured in a way on which you can base promotion decisions you get people engaging in behavior that signals a hard work ethic because you can make your promotion decisions based on the willingness to signal.
The context of the second quote gives me three instinctual reactions.
1. One can reasonably hold the belief that everyone makes mistakes and that the boss lacks crucial feedback/information if you don’t give it to them. And the point here is that you get blamed for the failure of your boss regardless of whose fault that is because that’s how blame works, it travels downward.
2. There are different kinds of belief and they interact in strange ways; you can hold ‘ability is constant’ in one sense while still thinking your boss is an idiot.
3. There is the belief that some people are idiots, and your boss might be one of them—the negative selection part of skill is real, it’s just that there’s no positive selection.
For the first quote, I agree that this quote in particular only makes this claim for relatively high levels (I’m not sure what ‘general manager’ means exactly, except in sports where it generally means the level of management just below the owners/top, above the manager, who has assistant managers). So good note—I was relying on my full experience of the book and it would be better if I’d provided stronger direct evidence. I quickly scanned to see if I pulled any other quotes that said the same thing about lower ranks, it seems like I didn’t, but that message was repeated by a number of interviewees, many of whom did not isolate such high skill levels. And of course, restricting it to the two levels below the top does not make it much less insane.
That’s not what the quote said. The quote said that the difference between a general manager and a vice-president is not one due to abilities.
There’s another quote which suggests that there’s a belief in are skill differences:
The first quote seems be due to the fact that it’s very hard to actually measure the skill differences. If you make good long-term decisions for the company that pay five or seven years down the road, it’s difficult to reward you for those if you stay three or four years in your position.
In an environment where skill differences can’t be measured in a way on which you can base promotion decisions you get people engaging in behavior that signals a hard work ethic because you can make your promotion decisions based on the willingness to signal.
The context of the second quote gives me three instinctual reactions.
1. One can reasonably hold the belief that everyone makes mistakes and that the boss lacks crucial feedback/information if you don’t give it to them. And the point here is that you get blamed for the failure of your boss regardless of whose fault that is because that’s how blame works, it travels downward.
2. There are different kinds of belief and they interact in strange ways; you can hold ‘ability is constant’ in one sense while still thinking your boss is an idiot.
3. There is the belief that some people are idiots, and your boss might be one of them—the negative selection part of skill is real, it’s just that there’s no positive selection.
For the first quote, I agree that this quote in particular only makes this claim for relatively high levels (I’m not sure what ‘general manager’ means exactly, except in sports where it generally means the level of management just below the owners/top, above the manager, who has assistant managers). So good note—I was relying on my full experience of the book and it would be better if I’d provided stronger direct evidence. I quickly scanned to see if I pulled any other quotes that said the same thing about lower ranks, it seems like I didn’t, but that message was repeated by a number of interviewees, many of whom did not isolate such high skill levels. And of course, restricting it to the two levels below the top does not make it much less insane.