I can see the ” irrationally obstinate and arrogant” bureaucrats and “aggressive conformers” at one junction, and I can see evangelist Eagle Scouts and perfectionist fixers at the other junction.
Steve Jobs seems to be a classic second-junction type.
It does seem like these are two mostly unrelated skills—leadership, teamwork, and time management on one hand, and vision, creativity, and drive on the other. They don’t really oppose each other except in the general sense that both sets take a long time to learn to do well. There are enough examples of people that are both, or neither, that these don’t seem to be a very useful way of carving up reality.
I think they do. Not in the “never shall they mix” kind of sense, but I would argue that these types form discernible separate clusters in the psychological space.
Anyone got any actual evidence one way or the other?
(My own prejudices are in the direction of the two things genuinely being opposed, on handwavy grounds to do with creativity being partly a matter of having relatively inactive internal censors, which might be bad for efficiency on routine tasks. But I don’t have much faith in those prejudices.)
I was thinking 4 quadrant. Horizontal axis is competence, vertical axis is professional vs. auteur.
Steve Jobs was something of an auteur who eventually began to really piss off the people he had once successfully led and inspired. After his return to Apple, he had clearly gained some more permanent teamwork and leadership skills, which is good, but was still pretty dogmatic about his vision and hard to argue with.
The most competent end of the professional quadrant probably includes people more like Jamie Dimon, Jack Welch, or Mitt Romney. Professional CEOs who you could trust to administrate anything, who topped their classes (at least in Romney’s case), but who don’t necessarily stand for any big idea.
This classification also corresponds to Foxes and Hedgehogs—Many Small Ideas vs. One Big Idea / Holistic vs. Grand Framework thinking.
But it is not a true binary; people who have an obsessing vision can learn to play nice with others. People who naturally like to conform and administrate can learn to assert a bold vision. If Stanley Kubrick is the film example of an Auteur—an aggravating genius—and J.J. Abrams is the professional—reliable and talented but mercenary and flexible, there are still people like Martin Scorsese who people love to work with and who define new trends in their art.
So maybe junction is a good way to think of it, but there are extraordinarily talented and important people who seem to have avoided learning from the other side too.
Do you think it’s a circle?
I can see the ” irrationally obstinate and arrogant” bureaucrats and “aggressive conformers” at one junction, and I can see evangelist Eagle Scouts and perfectionist fixers at the other junction.
Steve Jobs seems to be a classic second-junction type.
It does seem like these are two mostly unrelated skills—leadership, teamwork, and time management on one hand, and vision, creativity, and drive on the other. They don’t really oppose each other except in the general sense that both sets take a long time to learn to do well. There are enough examples of people that are both, or neither, that these don’t seem to be a very useful way of carving up reality.
I think they do. Not in the “never shall they mix” kind of sense, but I would argue that these types form discernible separate clusters in the psychological space.
Anyone got any actual evidence one way or the other?
(My own prejudices are in the direction of the two things genuinely being opposed, on handwavy grounds to do with creativity being partly a matter of having relatively inactive internal censors, which might be bad for efficiency on routine tasks. But I don’t have much faith in those prejudices.)
I was thinking 4 quadrant. Horizontal axis is competence, vertical axis is professional vs. auteur.
Steve Jobs was something of an auteur who eventually began to really piss off the people he had once successfully led and inspired. After his return to Apple, he had clearly gained some more permanent teamwork and leadership skills, which is good, but was still pretty dogmatic about his vision and hard to argue with.
The most competent end of the professional quadrant probably includes people more like Jamie Dimon, Jack Welch, or Mitt Romney. Professional CEOs who you could trust to administrate anything, who topped their classes (at least in Romney’s case), but who don’t necessarily stand for any big idea.
This classification also corresponds to Foxes and Hedgehogs—Many Small Ideas vs. One Big Idea / Holistic vs. Grand Framework thinking.
But it is not a true binary; people who have an obsessing vision can learn to play nice with others. People who naturally like to conform and administrate can learn to assert a bold vision. If Stanley Kubrick is the film example of an Auteur—an aggravating genius—and J.J. Abrams is the professional—reliable and talented but mercenary and flexible, there are still people like Martin Scorsese who people love to work with and who define new trends in their art.
So maybe junction is a good way to think of it, but there are extraordinarily talented and important people who seem to have avoided learning from the other side too.