I think this is a fantastically clear analysis of how power and politics work, that made a lot of things click for me. I agree it should be shorter but honestly every part of this is insightful. I find myself confused even how to review it, because I don’t know how to compare this to how confusing the world was before this post. This is some of the best sense-making I have read about how governmental organizations function today.
There’s a hope that you can just put the person who’s most obviously right in charge. This post walks through the basic things that would break, and explains some reasons he is in an advantageous position relative to the person in charge (because Zvi can just optimize for being right, whereas the person in charge has to handle politics and leadership). It then walks through how the internals of power actually work, what sort of person is selected for (and shapes themselves to be), and also some counterintuitive reasons why it might work to put an outsider in charge (because the status quo is always right, and if handled well it would soon become the status quo).
Somehow the post could be better, it’s hard for me to see the whole picture at once, because the post discusses a number of separate dynamics all occurring at the same time in an organization. Nonetheless I give this a +9.
I think this is a fantastically clear analysis of how power and politics work, that made a lot of things click for me. I agree it should be shorter but honestly every part of this is insightful. I find myself confused even how to review it, because I don’t know how to compare this to how confusing the world was before this post. This is some of the best sense-making I have read about how governmental organizations function today.
There’s a hope that you can just put the person who’s most obviously right in charge. This post walks through the basic things that would break, and explains some reasons he is in an advantageous position relative to the person in charge (because Zvi can just optimize for being right, whereas the person in charge has to handle politics and leadership). It then walks through how the internals of power actually work, what sort of person is selected for (and shapes themselves to be), and also some counterintuitive reasons why it might work to put an outsider in charge (because the status quo is always right, and if handled well it would soon become the status quo).
Somehow the post could be better, it’s hard for me to see the whole picture at once, because the post discusses a number of separate dynamics all occurring at the same time in an organization. Nonetheless I give this a +9.