Hmm, I still don’t completely understand. Is it the tendency of organisations to develop an ideological attachment to achieving vague goals that have become the purpose of the organisation such that they can no longer be questioned without this being seen as an attack on the organisation or, at best a flaw in your understanding?
So if I’m imagining how this could come about, the person or group of people who found an organisation (or who are otherwise early leadership before the culture crystallises), have certain opinions about how it should operate. These founding figures have reasons why they believe these principles to be important, but over time these principles are detached from these reasons and become free floating principles, just like traditions in broader society. Obviously, there are reasons given as to why these principles are important, but only in the same way that religion has apologetics. This is where vagueness helps. It is much easier to defend values like diversity, innovation or customer focus in the abstract, than any specific implementation or policy prescription that comes out of it.
Since the culture is now entrenched, those who dislike it tend to leave or even not apply in the first place, as opposed to the earlier stages when it might have been possible to change the mind of the founders. Any change to the values could disrupt entrenched interests, such as managers who want to keep their projects going or departments that want to maintain headcount. Further, individuals have invested time and effort in being good at talking the corporate language. Attempting to clarify any of the vagueness would be incredibly disruptive. So the stability of vagueness forms a Schelling point for the most established factions.
Further, the vagueness provides individual departments or groups more freedom to make themselves look good than if the goal was more locked down. For example, it is much easier to demonstrate progress on diversity or show off projects related to innovation, than to demonstrate progress along a specific axis.
Anyway, just using this comment to “think aloud”, as I’m still somewhat uncertain about this term.
To answer your first question: I’m not sure. First, I’m not sure goals are necessarily the focal point, although losing sights of the real goals is certainly a potent symptom of Ra.
I haven’t thought much about how these beliefs arise, but I haven’t felt very compelled to seek for a complicated explanation besides the usual biases. Saying we’re the best will usually be met with approval. And the more “reasonable doubt” that this might not be the case, the more it becomes necessary to affirm this truth not to break the narrative.
You seem to imagine pure founders and then a degradation of values, but very often the founders are not immune to this problem, or are in fact its very cause. Even when the goals are pretty clear—such as in a startup, where it could be to break even at first—people adopt false tribal beliefs. The bullshit can manifest itself in many places: what they say of their company culture, hiring practices, etc.
That being said, I’m not sure my own understanding of the matter matches that of the original author. But it certainly immediately pattern-matched to something I found to be a very salient characteristic of many organizations.
Hmm, I still don’t completely understand. Is it the tendency of organisations to develop an ideological attachment to achieving vague goals that have become the purpose of the organisation such that they can no longer be questioned without this being seen as an attack on the organisation or, at best a flaw in your understanding?
So if I’m imagining how this could come about, the person or group of people who found an organisation (or who are otherwise early leadership before the culture crystallises), have certain opinions about how it should operate. These founding figures have reasons why they believe these principles to be important, but over time these principles are detached from these reasons and become free floating principles, just like traditions in broader society. Obviously, there are reasons given as to why these principles are important, but only in the same way that religion has apologetics. This is where vagueness helps. It is much easier to defend values like diversity, innovation or customer focus in the abstract, than any specific implementation or policy prescription that comes out of it.
Since the culture is now entrenched, those who dislike it tend to leave or even not apply in the first place, as opposed to the earlier stages when it might have been possible to change the mind of the founders. Any change to the values could disrupt entrenched interests, such as managers who want to keep their projects going or departments that want to maintain headcount. Further, individuals have invested time and effort in being good at talking the corporate language. Attempting to clarify any of the vagueness would be incredibly disruptive. So the stability of vagueness forms a Schelling point for the most established factions.
Further, the vagueness provides individual departments or groups more freedom to make themselves look good than if the goal was more locked down. For example, it is much easier to demonstrate progress on diversity or show off projects related to innovation, than to demonstrate progress along a specific axis.
Anyway, just using this comment to “think aloud”, as I’m still somewhat uncertain about this term.
To answer your first question: I’m not sure. First, I’m not sure goals are necessarily the focal point, although losing sights of the real goals is certainly a potent symptom of Ra.
I haven’t thought much about how these beliefs arise, but I haven’t felt very compelled to seek for a complicated explanation besides the usual biases. Saying we’re the best will usually be met with approval. And the more “reasonable doubt” that this might not be the case, the more it becomes necessary to affirm this truth not to break the narrative.
You seem to imagine pure founders and then a degradation of values, but very often the founders are not immune to this problem, or are in fact its very cause. Even when the goals are pretty clear—such as in a startup, where it could be to break even at first—people adopt false tribal beliefs. The bullshit can manifest itself in many places: what they say of their company culture, hiring practices, etc.
That being said, I’m not sure my own understanding of the matter matches that of the original author. But it certainly immediately pattern-matched to something I found to be a very salient characteristic of many organizations.