[FRIAM] organizations

[Steven A Smith]

Marcus wrote:
>
> *Roger writes:*
>
> **
>
> *“*I don't get it, is it detailed technical planning or dog fighting?  
> Or some kind of mixed martial art?”
>
> Imagine you work in team made of up of unmotivated, uninterested or 
> untalented individuals.  Assume it is impossible to fire or move them 
> out of the way.   They mainly want predictability they can get out of 
> the office by 5:00pm every day; they want a process for everything so 
> that they can measure-up and continue to get steady raises.   The last 
> thing these lemmings want are individuals running ahead with proposals 
> they would have to work to understand.   That could have bad 
> consequences like having their expertise or productivity questioned 
> and them moving lower in the curve.
>
> One that happens in this situation is that people don’t want to have 
> deep technical conversations.   They want shallow, easily-digestible 
> guidance and at a pace that isn’t going to cause them to miss their 
> daughter’s soccer practice or forget to water their garden or whatever 
> it is they do care about.   They want it put on their `agile feed’ so 
> they can turn their crank and get their points for the day.   Other 
> people may mainly care about their `emotional health’ and this will 
> involve similar considerations about never feel condescended to, even 
> if they aren’t be condescended to, but are simply experiencing ignorance.
>
Sounds just like what I remember from when I worked at LANL?  Oh wait!
>
> The desire to enforce norms on group behavior invariably involves 
> isolating the top performers.   Much of the prattle in that 18F markup 
> file is about how to do that without looking like a total moron. 
>   It’s the same kind of note-comparing social contagion where one 
> Trump voter convinces the other that it is okay to engage in a bizarre 
> act of national sabotage.
>
> The question is, who makes the rules and for what purpose? The 
> lemmings will want the line between normal and abnormal behavior in 
> one area, and the frontier-pushers will want it in another.  An 
> organization that gives the lemmings what they want will have more 
> stability, but they probably won’t be innovators.  They may even fail 
> to be competitive.
>
> Frontier-pushers aren’t going to like Trump-like behavior, because 
> Trump-like behavior is stupid and leads to more dittohead lemmings.   
> So it is also in their interest to find a faster or bigger dog to take 
> down uncivil (in their definition) behavior too.   Depending on their 
> culture they may do this quietly or by making an example out of that 
> individual in front of everyone.
>
I've heard rumor that there was an official memo at LANL (a month or 
more ago) forbidding political discussions at work?  Can you confirm or 
deny?


- Steve
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