Any organization needs a reason to stay together. Reasons like profit or safety. Many organizations don't have profit sharing or the profit sharing doesn't amount to much, and is not a big motivator. On the other extreme are organizations like nations or gangs that provide protection from the `other'. In the middle is where most of us live, and organizations try to appeal to us by exaggerating the significance of the reward they can offer or the punishment they can impose.
Overall, I think managing individuals is often about undermining individuals. Making the organization robust to perturbation of a given set of employees without asking why it is that employees would be so inclined to cause a perturbation. Also, it is expensive to invest in career development, and I argue the trend toward building teams is in part just a cost saving measure. A `team' is just code for a preference (by management) for particular personality trait -- extraversion. People that feel energized or just reassured by the presence of others as opposed to those people that may find the ongoing needs of others a drain and a distraction on their attention. If one can select such a set of people that don't expect intellectually challenging work, or a greater purpose (intrinsic motivation) for what they do, or ongoing escalations in salary or bonuses, isn't that just perfect for the people at the top? The value of the team for this sort of team member _is_ the team. There's no grand idea that makes them get up in the morning (or fail to), they just want to be around their friends. So long as the members of the team are adequately competent, the work of the organization will continue, if perhaps not in a Elon Musk / Steve Jobs sort of fabulous way and life will go on. -----Original Message----- From: Friam [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of ?glen? Sent: Wednesday, October 26, 2016 1:21 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Memo To Jeff Bezos: The Most Productive Workers Are Team Players, Not Selfish Individualists | The Evolution Institute I particularly liked this part: > Attributed to the once technical director of Real Madrid, Arrigo Sacchi, is > an insightful quote on this recruitment model “Today’s football [soccer] is > about managing the characteristics of individuals…The individual has trumped > the collective. But it’s a sign of weakness. It’s reactive, not proactive”. > It seems that Sacchi saw in soccer the same thing that Muir discovered in his > experiments 12 years earlier; teams constructed to function as a collective > are the ones that will enhance the qualities of the individuals within it and > prosper. On 10/26/2016 12:17 PM, Nick Thompson wrote: > A little nudge to you libertarians out there from your favorite > Bleeding heart liberal: > > https://evolution-institute.org/article/memo-to-jeff-bezos-the-most-pr > oducti > ve-workers-are-team-players-not-selfish-individualists/?source=tvol -- ␦glen? ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
