the more actual freedom people have, the harder and less rewarding managing or leading people becomes, so fewer people want to do it, and of those who do, most only want to appear to be doing it because the rewards of the theater are almost as high as the rewards of doing it
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makes me think I should teach an MPBA course. Master of Pretend Business Administration
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At some point, management/leadership becomes a net negative thing no matter how much you're paid. That's the zero lower bound, like zero interest rates, at which anarchy takes over.
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When effective interest rates are positive, cost of capital is nonzero so it pays to acquire and hold low-cost capital when you can get it. When it is effectively zero, there is no point holding it. When it's negative, you want to dump it.
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Same with people. Interest rate = rate of freedom accumulation. If it's high enough, people will submit to some coercive management today to acquire more freedom tomorrow. If it is zero, there is no real upside to managing or being managed.
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People are most creative with autonomy and most efficient acting in synchronization so the ideal manager is a conductor of an orchestra
Narrator: very few people have the talent to be conductors
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to make members of an orchestra generally you need to coerce kids to learn a musical instrument against their will, so not exactly the best origin for a metaphor... kids who get into orchestra music aren't exactly the high freedom types
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Harder? Yes maybe.
Less rewarding? Hard no.
Mentoring and coordinating leaders is much more rewarding than ordering and managing followers.
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Managing people who have no choice but to be there is easy mode. Managing people so they'll *want* to be there is hard mode. People good at it probably avoid corporate environments as much as possible.
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"Reinventing Organizations" talks about this and it's quite an enjoyable read, posits at least within companies (perhaps also society) that we can eventually transition into organizational model with no managers and almost everyone is more content, even the former managers





