Effort shock is detail shock is reality shock. Many things that seem like they’d be really cool to have done turn out to require way more effort, patiently wrangling more way detail than you realized was involved, than you’re willing to invest.https://twitter.com/vgr/status/1289586376887824384 …
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So one of the reasons I'm thinking about this is that work at abstract levels, like management and leadership, suffers from a lack of natural detail. A manager can't be a detail-oriented to the same degree as a mechanic because social reality has a lot less natural detail
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I think the way great managers and leaders become great is by creating a world of detail for themselves that is comparable to the natural detail environment that accompanies individual contributor work. Those who fail to do this fail at their jobs.
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The thing is, the "domain" of leaders/managers is other people, and people are not things. If you bring "thing" like detail orientation to people, you'll come across as creepy/stalkery. You don't want to obsess over people the way you might over a car engine.
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Some aspects do carry over. Attentive listening, empathy, individualization, are "detail orientation" in relationship mode, but it's fundamentally limited by the fact that the other person is a PERSON with boundaries beyond which they reserve details for themselves.
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If the point is not clear: if you don't like the way a rug looks, you can adjust it so it is exactly right on the floor. If you don't like the way someone's hair looks, you can't go around adjusting it.
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So with people-work, while the principle of "reality has a surprising level of detail" holds, that detail is not yours to work with generally speaking.
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But otoh, doing good mindful work and investing satisfying effort requires *some* domain of demanding detail to work with. This is why so many managers get tempted into bullshit work -- it creates the faux-detail the mind demands out of process bureaucracy stuff.
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But *good* managers and leaders otoh, find a way to be usefully and deeply detail oriented without either being creepy about personal boundaries OR getting sucked into bullshit work.
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Technology and finance are functional domains where it is possible to craft a "managerial detail" domain that fits this prescription. It is possible to be very detail oriented in both functions without working at the hands-on "object level"
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This is one reason why I tend to trust tech and finance leaders more. There's a there there to what they do if they're good at it. By contrast, sales leaders for eg. are typically creepy if they're good. They're usually turn people into things in order to produce a detail domain.
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Micromanagement is also a symptom of this syndrome. Which needs a name. Something like "The no-there-there problem of people work: the lack of default potential for a satisfying universe of detail in people work and how people cope with it"
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Went down this bunnytrail via the
@artofgig post I just wrote on leverage... there's a leverage vs. detail tradeoff in work that can kill you.https://twitter.com/artofgig/status/1288943229887365120?s=20 …Show this thread -
Hmm... I think there's a fundamental tradeoff between leverage (in the effort multiplier sense rather than debt sense) and detail orientation. Leverage spreads the same amount of detail over more area, creating fragility.
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End of conversation
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