Personal responsibility and systemic failure are different levels of abstraction.
If youâre within the system and doing horrible things while saying, â𤡠Itâs just my incentives, bro,â youâre essentially allowing the egregore to control you, letting it shove its hand up your ass and pilot you like a puppet.
At the same time, if you ignore systemic problems, youâre giving the egregore power by pretending it doesnât existâeven though itâs puppeting everyone. By doing so, youâre failing to claim your own power, which lies in recognizing your ability to work towards systemic change.
Both truths coexist:
There are those perpetuating evil by surrendering their personal responsibility to an evil egregore.
There are those perpetuating evil by letting the egregore run rampant and denying its existence.
The solution requires addressing both levels of abstraction.
Itâs interesting to figure out how to make use of this multi-level model. Especially since personal judgement and punishment/âreward (both officially and socially) IS the egregoreâholding people accountable for their actions is indistinguishable from changing their incentives, right?
In my role as Head of Operations at Monastic Academy, every person in the organization is on a personal improvement plan that addresses the personal responsibility level, and each team in the organization is responsible for process improvements that address the systemic level.
In the performance improvement weekly meetings, my goal is to constantly bring them back to the level of personal responsibility. Any time they start saying the reason they couldnât meet their improvement goal was because of X event or Y person, I bring it back. What could THEY have done differently, what internal psychological patterns prevented them from doing that, and what can they do to shift those patterns this week.
Meanwhile, each team also chooses process improvements weekly. In those meetings, my role is to do the exact opposite, and bring it back to the level of process. Any time theyâre examining a team failure and come to the conclusion âwe just need to prioritize it more, or try harder, or the manager needs to hold us to somethingâ, I bring it back to the level of process. How can we change the order or way we do things, or the incentives involved, such that itâs not dependent on any given personâs ability to work hard or remember or be good at a certain thing.
Personal responsibility and systemic failure are different levels of abstraction.
If youâre within the system and doing horrible things while saying, â𤡠Itâs just my incentives, bro,â youâre essentially allowing the egregore to control you, letting it shove its hand up your ass and pilot you like a puppet.
At the same time, if you ignore systemic problems, youâre giving the egregore power by pretending it doesnât existâeven though itâs puppeting everyone. By doing so, youâre failing to claim your own power, which lies in recognizing your ability to work towards systemic change.
Both truths coexist:
There are those perpetuating evil by surrendering their personal responsibility to an evil egregore.
There are those perpetuating evil by letting the egregore run rampant and denying its existence.
The solution requires addressing both levels of abstraction.
Itâs interesting to figure out how to make use of this multi-level model. Especially since personal judgement and punishment/âreward (both officially and socially) IS the egregoreâholding people accountable for their actions is indistinguishable from changing their incentives, right?
In my role as Head of Operations at Monastic Academy, every person in the organization is on a personal improvement plan that addresses the personal responsibility level, and each team in the organization is responsible for process improvements that address the systemic level.
In the performance improvement weekly meetings, my goal is to constantly bring them back to the level of personal responsibility. Any time they start saying the reason they couldnât meet their improvement goal was because of X event or Y person, I bring it back. What could THEY have done differently, what internal psychological patterns prevented them from doing that, and what can they do to shift those patterns this week.
Meanwhile, each team also chooses process improvements weekly. In those meetings, my role is to do the exact opposite, and bring it back to the level of process. Any time theyâre examining a team failure and come to the conclusion âwe just need to prioritize it more, or try harder, or the manager needs to hold us to somethingâ, I bring it back to the level of process. How can we change the order or way we do things, or the incentives involved, such that itâs not dependent on any given personâs ability to work hard or remember or be good at a certain thing.