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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Oh I agree with this, 100%. The next interesting question, I think, once you accept that some form of 'throw into the deep end' is high cost: what is the system he's built around this practice that is able to tolerate such failures?
(That's the systems thinker in me speaking. The business operator in me is saying: 'actually, I think half of the game is his judgment of people'. So the costs are high, but lower than you might expect.)
Pity that judgment is tacit. 🙃
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There's also a possibility that he's actually excellent at training people and "throwing people into the deep end" just means that he throws them in and mentors the hell out of them the entire way.
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