🐈

There is also a trade off between being compelling and being coherent. With less coherence there's more room for error and a grander vision to sell since the listeners will fill in the detail. But it can dangerously get close to woo or irrationality.

If the coherency is too high however, it just reads like an overly detailed recipe or PRD. It's not compelling because the imagination has been squeezed out of it.

Increasing technical ability of the group increases coherency. Planning for the future is easier. Either hire higher or drop the dead weight. But if what the group needs is to be compelling, then this increased coherency makes the problem worse.

the "problem" here isn't that the team isn't "growing". The story isn't going anywhere. There's no room for "growth" "I'm a firefighter, I fight fires." isn't a growth story b/c each new fire is just the new villain of the week.

This is a *critical* story but still... from a plot perspective, this only works for childish plots like that for power rangers. "I'm a firefighter, I fight fires but one day want to be a VC." on the other hand is "moving up in the world"

All companies are part of a growth story due to expectations from shareholders. Tech companies often have a lot of growth expectations so have to generate a lot of "compelling" even at the cost of "coherency" (Theranos/Magic Leap)

Other companies still need to grow as well, but the growth expectations are smaller. The story doesn't have to have 100 twists that logically resolve and win as a horror/drama/comedy/romance hybrid.

This can be visualized like the train "Snowpiercer". The "world" has to move. If it stops it dies.

Each company has a bunch of people betting on it to reach certain milestones at certain times. If the expectations are met, the story feels coherent (ppl inside the company are happy), otherwise the entire system is "whipped" to urge it to go faster.

The whipping urges the company to strive for a more powerful story which in turn requires each sub-system to cascade forwards its individual stories. This naturally incentivizes critical functions to minimize to a bare minimum. this is going "lean" for max acceleration.

younger people tend to be more compelling b/c they naturally have this desire to climb as high as they can. the danger for them is joining a cult, a high tower that is not built properly and collapses. (think of a cult as psychic architecture) (cult in the negative sense)

there is lack of "coherency" in the story. The plans to build the tower of babel were "Just stack new bricks on the bottom bricks."

If the story pressure is small, one might say this isn't a problem. Top speed isn't important. However...the lack of this forward energy means that there's no "acceleration". Also, since there's no forward energy to reign back, there's no "deceleration" either.

What "agile" means then is the ability to accelerate and decelerate in sync with turns so that the company moves through the landscape with efficiency and gracefulness. Even the most skillful strategy will fail if you're stuck at one speed.

So... based on these scientific findings. A company should be run like a japanese anime. The hot-heated youth should be increasingly challenged by godlike senior figures. The youth push forward while the senpai pull backwards.

The system can be felt as having "tensegrity". It's under tension, but also has potential energy that can be used to accelerate or decelerate. It is "balanced" because of this constant tension unlike pseudo-balance which is "dead" and static.

so... pretend your team is like an anime and move the plot forward making sure it's inline with the theme and expectations of your company. as a manager you should also be expected to be able to kill characters off if necessary