I am fascinated by this general area of consideration... the struggle
between individual and collective. This study doesn't seem to tell us
much we didn't already know... for example, that it is easy to craft a
flawed experiment where what you thought you were optimizing (metabolic
egg production) is only part of the story and a secondary trait
(aggression) was being selected for unintentionally. Any of us who
have lived or worked in a "collective" environment (or read a Dilbert
Cartoon?) have experienced this.
I was *once* a raging individualist/Libertarian who wanted to believe
that the prime unit of survival was the individual, followed by the
nuclear family, followed by the clan, etc.! As I have aged, two things
have overcome some of that: 1) I'm getting old and in (more) need of the
support of others, there are fewer and fewer things I can (or want to?)
do for myself (alone); 2) I've lived a life where I've experienced a
range of ways of being and I see how happy some people are *because*
they are part of a healthy collective (not as i had imagined in the
past, *in spite of* it!)
This is naturally pretty anecdotal and roughly a sample of one, but
since it is *my* experience, I believe in it's relevance and veracity.
While we might have a wide spread of natures, experiences and conditions
on this list, I would propose that many here have a bit of both
tendencies... high enough, individualistic abilities and interests to
become technologists (or choose the technological realm to conduct your
work), but also enough social skills/tolerance/preference to function
within one kind of institution or another. We all have our stereotypes
about academia or government or industry to judge that one kind of
institution or the other is "better" or "worse" than the others about
this, but my experience is that they are more similar than different by
most measures.
I raised my daughters to have a strong element of my individuality/loner
mentality and I feel (because I'm a doting father) that for the most
part I succeeded. I also gave them enough exposure (acute example:
Public School System) to "systems" that would demand out of and train
them for a certain amount of compliance. I didn't do this because I
was afraid they would fail or starve if they weren't socialized, I did
it because despite some of my own feral tendencies, I believe that we
are herd/pack/tribe animals and for the most part ARE happier in one
kind of milieu or another. One is a PhD Virologist who is well
ensconced in the systems of bioresearch in the US (often to her chagrin)
but has the individualism to pursue grants on her own, to work long
hours on hard problems virtually nobody else can even talk to her about
,etc. The other has broken out of a string of administrative assistant
jobs over 1.5 decades to start her own cross-fit gym and paleo-nutrition
consultancy. This requires equal amounts of individual
ability/motivation and herd instinct (else she wouldn't have adopted the
CrossFit(tm) brand and the Paleo appelation)...
I now only work in *very* small teams, roughly 1-3, and usually where I
am either in charge of the work scope/strategy or I am the eager support
for a singular individual whose abilities I signficantly defer to. At
LANL, I lead teams up to 6-8 in contexts of up to 30 or more on the same
larger "project" and it was always a stressor for me. I didn't enjoy
deciding "what is best" for that many other people, even when their
instincts/affect and the organizational model entirely supported me in
that. So my tenure in those roles was usually limited and always
self-terminated when I got too mired in those feelings (3-7 years).
I deeply appreciate those who are good "outliers" on this spectrum...
those individualists who really can "pull it off" every time... the
protaganists of Robert A. Heinlein's novels, etc. And on the other
end, I really respect those who manage to put themselves almost entirely
subservient to a system and yet maintain significant personal volition
and creativity. If I could live my life again, with what I know, I
would probably attempt to apprehend that full spectrum and find ways to
engage all the way across it throughout my life.
It might seem like a total non-sequitor, but I just listened to Terry
Gross interview Leonard Cohen about his new album: "You Want it Darker"
and his experience of living as a Monk in a Zen Monastery for years. I
think the example he represents in the extrema of writing his own
poems/songs quite uniquely and seemingly in isolation to mixing it up
both "on Boogie Street" as one song references, but also in the Monastery.
Mumble, Ramble off
On 10/26/16 1:59 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
Any organization needs a reason to stay together. Reasons like profit or
safety. Many organizations don't have profit sharing or the profit sharing
doesn't amount to much, and is not a big motivator. On the other extreme are
organizations like nations or gangs that provide protection from the `other'.
In the middle is where most of us live, and organizations try to appeal to us
by exaggerating the significance of the reward they can offer or the punishment
they can impose.
Overall, I think managing individuals is often about undermining individuals.
Making the organization robust to perturbation of a given set of employees
without asking why it is that employees would be so inclined to cause a
perturbation. Also, it is expensive to invest in career development, and I
argue the trend toward building teams is in part just a cost saving measure.
A `team' is just code for a preference (by management) for particular
personality trait -- extraversion. People that feel energized or just
reassured by the presence of others as opposed to those people that may find
the ongoing needs of others a drain and a distraction on their attention.
If one can select such a set of people that don't expect intellectually
challenging work, or a greater purpose (intrinsic motivation) for what they do,
or ongoing escalations in salary or bonuses, isn't that just perfect for the
people at the top? The value of the team for this sort of team member _is_
the team. There's no grand idea that makes them get up in the morning (or
fail to), they just want to be around their friends. So long as the members
of the team are adequately competent, the work of the organization will
continue, if perhaps not in a Elon Musk / Steve Jobs sort of fabulous way and
life will go on.
-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of ?glen?
Sent: Wednesday, October 26, 2016 1:21 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam@redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Memo To Jeff Bezos: The Most Productive Workers Are Team
Players, Not Selfish Individualists | The Evolution Institute
I particularly liked this part:
Attributed to the once technical director of Real Madrid, Arrigo Sacchi, is an
insightful quote on this recruitment model “Today’s football [soccer] is about
managing the characteristics of individuals…The individual has trumped the
collective. But it’s a sign of weakness. It’s reactive, not proactive”. It
seems that Sacchi saw in soccer the same thing that Muir discovered in his
experiments 12 years earlier; teams constructed to function as a collective are
the ones that will enhance the qualities of the individuals within it and
prosper.
On 10/26/2016 12:17 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
A little nudge to you libertarians out there from your favorite
Bleeding heart liberal:
https://evolution-institute.org/article/memo-to-jeff-bezos-the-most-pr
oducti
ve-workers-are-team-players-not-selfish-individualists/?source=tvol
--
␦glen?
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