Conversation

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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I suspect that coming across as creepy/stalkier is not really a limit on the detail-orientation of the social domain (management, sales, and other kinds of influencing). It’s just a sign someone is bad at that domain.
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Consider the kind of very high-resolution detail-orientation that a novelist brings to conceiving and depicting a well-drawn character. There are certainly some managers and salespeople who carry around an equally deep but unspoken model of the people they are working with.
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Ie if your best idea for satisfying the urge for detail in your job leading a 1000 person org is to learn everyone's names and their kids names and birthdays... chances are you suck deeply at your job and should be fired.
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I agree with that example. I guess I’m arguing that human character is a “deep detail domain” which is off-limits for direct discussion but which effective influencers exploit indirectly. This is opposed to “shallow detail domain” which is ineffective.
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Of course, it’s hardly the case that every MBA is Marcel Proust delicately perceiving every tremor of their teams emotional health. So this argument has its limits! IME the management domain has less depth-of-detail. Not sure about quantity of detail. I’m still mulling on it.
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I think the big trick is developing strong intuitions without the benefit of intrusive levels of information access. This means basically being great a psychological induction across people. A pattern you saw in one person showing signs of emerging in another.
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Yes. But I do suspect most people just leak information constantly and copiously through every pore of their skins. The challenge is finding the imagination and dispassion and interest to interpret it, rather than getting access to more of it.
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