Latest Commonplace piece is about the difference between exec development and training individual contributors.
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This is one of those essays where I'm not 100% sure of the conclusions — I'll have to put it to practice before I can say for certain.
But there *does* seem to be a tension between 'handholding' ICs, and 'throwing execs into the deep end', and it seems productive to investigate.
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One thing that I'm actively chewing over: perhaps 'throwing people into the deep end' is simply a pedagogical thing, but for high potential hires.
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One thing worth thinking about here might be the two error rates. Who could have done the job and drops out? Who "passes" the training but is a bad fit? Throwing in at the deep end has a low rate of the latter but a high rate for the former. Supportive training the opposite
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This might be the right trade offs for execs vs ICs. The wrong exec can do a lot of damage, and is a huge opportunity cost. The wrong IC matters less, so it's worth giving them more of a chance
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I think what's so bizarre about Diller's approach is that it goes against all the usual common sense things I know about management. Throwing execs into the deep end imply acceptance of things going wrong. It also implies ability to fire fast. Easy to say, hard to do.
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But Diller has created so many CEO/execs/business leaders over his career that it's probably worth paying attention to him — especially the bits that go against 'common sense things I know about management'.
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I do still think the trick is the error rate tradeoff. Throw enough numbers at a process that produces a small % of amazing people and lots of failures and what you see is a process that produces lots of amazing people
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Which isn't to downplay it. Being able to reliably produce amazing people is pretty great, it's just high cost.
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