Action and Consequence

As our decision-making scales, it also has consequences that ripple. I find it incredibly disheartening when I have done a lot of work, and then a decision gets made that means none of that work is used. Scale also means disconnection between where the work is done, and where the consequences are felt. If the decision maker is doing the work, they can be doing constant triage on marginal effort. Once outsourced, if the work goes done a different path, you need to wait till check-in points to find that out. 

Outsourcing work without outsourcing decision-making requires very clear questions. For anything to actually happen, late-stage decision-making often involves closing down options. Accepting constraints and shipping. Making choices in the face of ambiguity. Reducing the number of things that will make you change your mind. In a world of practical decisions, you can never make the perfect choice. There are always trade-offs. 

“An ounce of practice beats a ton of theory” requires loops of action and consequence. Consequence that can be felt in a reality that is complex, ambiguous, and uncertain. We have to engage with the world. Learning to build consensus is how the interconnected scale works. Unstated rules that allow us to go deeper, but when those rules break... require engaging in difficult unlearning and relearning. 

There are very few areas where we can be the only decision maker. Where it doesn’t matter what other people think. In most cases, we are forced to engage in the messy process of joint decision-making. That requires skills like social, cultural, and emotional intelligence and an awareness of, and interest in, other people’s stories. It requires acknowledging the challenge we face by only being able to judge from our context, and our need to expand our context to see and resee.

Feeling Consequences

Erosion gully caused by introduction of Rabbits as game animals

Turning on the Tom Tom

Autonomy suggests individual decision making. If it is abstract (controlled and theoretical), it works very well. In reality, our decisions impact each other in complex, ambiguous, and random ways. How do you handle joint decisions when a path is shared? Tom-Toms are one form of GPS. My wife’s name is Gemma John. We were once driving through an area in Fulham across the river from where I lived in Putney. The GPS was telling us to go one way but Gem was pretty sure we should go another way. So I turned off the Tom-Tom and listened to the Gemma John. Even in an area I knew reasonably well, I had got to the point where I had to decide whether the GPS was doing a better job than me (when in doubt), and whether to trust it or not. At what point do you delegate your decision making when you are in an area you do not understand? Or when someone (or something) can make better decisions than you, even if you believe you have a decent understanding? 

 

Taking Direction

What do you do if autonomy is really important to you, but you find something or someone else makes better decisions than you do? Imagine you had an app on your phone that was similar to GPS and Google Maps, but for life choices. In the beginning, I certainly didn’t trust GPS. When it first came out, it wasn’t great. I was working in a job where I had to visit various financial advisors in Joburg. I was a Durban boy, not a Joburger, so I had to use maps. GPS would tell me “you have reached your destination”, and I would be in the middle of the highway. I knew enough to know my destination, even if the path was cloudy. I had enough of a sense of my direction to know, “I am pretty sure this isn’t the right turnoff”. I would start by saying, “trust the GPS”, but I would end up in the wrong place. But gradually it got better, and gradually I started feeling comfortable letting it make decisions for me. Letting me focus on other things. 

Learning my way around Gauteng

 

Healthy Disrespect

Whether it is from growing up in Apartheid, or being the youngest of three brothers, I have the common South African trait of a healthy disrespect for authority. I don't, by default, necessarily respect presumed authority. I don’t, by default, do what I am told. Sometimes in quite childish ways. Like if someone tells me that it is my decision, then I will make a decision. And if they suggest that I do something else, and I don't agree with them, I still want to do it my way. Unless they want to say it is not my decision. If they say that, I'll do it their way. Most people can read between the lines and go, “Well, actually, they want to tell me that it is my decision, but it is not really my decision. I just need to suck it up and play the game.” I'm not very good at that. I like clarity of decision-making processes. I like honesty about where the accountability and authority lie. I object to the delegation of responsibility without authority. I like it when decision makers have dirt under their fingertips from sharing the load. But everyone is different. A lot of people don’t have the baggage I do. Doing as you are told often makes life simpler.

Nelson Mandela burning his pass book

 

Hating Hierarchy

One of the ways that money is made is scaling up by doing the same tasks repeatedly. What that can result in is this is mono-culture. Which is dangerous. David Attenborough's witness statement shows aerial pictures of oil palm plantations where it looks green, but there is no life in it. It is just one decision laid out. That is dangerous. When you come to free will, there are levels of consciousness. Not everyone wants to be making decisions all the time. It feels good to nail a process so well that you are flowing. Complex decision-making is often far from flowing. Some people are more than happy just to do what they are told. That is okay. I have a friend who loves being micromanaged. It means he can be super productive because he knows what to do. And if he doesn't know what to do, someone will tell him. He just gets on with it. I hate being micromanaged. I hate someone telling me what to do. I don't like hierarchy at all. I have always had a chip on my shoulder about hierarchy. To the point where it has resulted in me being arrogant/childish. 

Central Decision Making

Decision Makers

Ideally, we would have a very transparent relationship with asking and offering. Money is made by solving problems for decision makers with money. The challenge is making sure everyone is a decision maker. That is a foundation stone for the idea of Universal Basic Income. Information gets lost in central decision making. The more layers there are between where the knowledge lies, and where the power lies, the poorer the decision will be. Central decision makers also rely on concealing information. The true nature of problems. The resources allocated to those problems. This makes it harder for people to develop the skills and knowledge necessary to find solutions. It is hard to ask. It is hard to offer. It is hard to know with clarity what you need to do to help, even if you want to. Part of this is due to trust and communication skills. Being prepared to clumsily iterate through the questions and answers needed to nail what needs doing. Trusting that being open will not bring down the barriers to entry that maintain the illusion of your superiority. Trusting that other people will make different decisions, while respecting yours.

Nailing the Problem

Space for Choice

I am trying to think of a gender-neutral word for emasculated. Disempowered does not feel visceral enough, and disemboweled is, I admit, too extreme. I also do not like being infantilised or micro-managed. This distaste for hierarchy is not a dislike of rules. I really enjoy clear decision-making processes and agreements. A perhaps strange combination of a rule-abiding contrarian. Seeking permission sucks when you are the one who has done the work. I have no problem with other people making different decisions to me. What I like is space. Space to make imperfect choices, and space for others to see the world differently. Where accountability and authority live together, with honest acknowledgement that we are all making it up as we go along. A great part of being an adult, is tolerating and dealing with your own mess. Building your own process. Owning the fact that decisions have consequences. In positive and negative directions. Making agreements, and making decisions within those agreements.

Submission Hold

I am the youngest of three brothers, by four years. My oldest brother is powerful. My middle brother is cunning and good with submission holds. I am good at not submitting. I was also good at making a lot of noise. When it came to the heart of arguments, there was a lot of pressure to just say sorry, and admit that I was wrong. I learnt that was sometimes the best course of action. Just say, “Sorry, I am wrong”. But my cunning brother knew my tricks. He did not just want a sorry. He wanted me to mean it. Perhaps that is where I got my aversion to some Corporate Politics. When someone says, “It is your decision, but this is what I would do” but means “just do what you are told”. I know I should play along with the illusion of delegated authority, when the truth is it is just delegated responsibility. People higher up the chain unwilling to fall on their swords, who want control without any blame for failure. Who become professionals at judging other people as not good enough, while never looking in the mirror. It is only meritocracy if everyone is being judged. Otherwise, it is a club.

Kneebar - Submission Hold

Path Dependent

Learning is path dependent. There is a real risk of Group Hypnosis on the path. Money and meaning are made in containers. Within constraints. With shape and form. It takes time and effort to build these containers. The things we care about, may be connected to things we don’t care about. Things we used to care about. Perhaps even things we think are wrong. We don’t get to pick and choose everything to be exactly as we want it to be. There are trade offs and concessions. We cloak the truth in a shared story or interpretation. There may come a point at which pointing out that the Emperor is wearing no clothes becomes worthwhile. Before that, it may be fine to have a naked ego maniac playing bossman if it doesn’t mess up the things you care about. When he suggests strip poker to take the things you care about, it becomes a little too obvious. Somehow, we need to detach and keep learning rather than defending our container. While still defending the people we care about in the containers. 

Being Forced

When I started my business, it wasn’t the dream. I honestly wouldn't do it if I didn't have to. I find having to think about money quite annoying. I like thinking about businesses abstractly. I like problem solving. I like talking to people. It is not that I am lazy. I like learning. I like writing. I don't like stuff that I think is pointless. I don't like it when I feel like I'm being forced to do something that I don't want to do. I don't like a**holes. I don’t like people bullying me or others. I've got a big chip on my shoulder about bullies. I don't want to be in the same room as them. I don't want to help them. And when I don't want to put up with that, I'm not very good at just sucking it up. I wear my heart on my sleeves. I share more than I should share. Which is not great for a corporate environment.  

Life's Battlefield

I have a growing belief that the fundamental secret to making money is going full yogi on it. Maya literally means “illusion” or “magic”. Pick your analogy. The Emperor is wearing no clothes. There is a little man behind the green curtain. Maya (Money?) is just “a magic show, an illusion where things appear to be present but are not what they seem”. Maya (Money?) is “that which exists, but is constantly changing and thus is spiritually unreal”. It is possible to wrap too much of our identity up with how we make money. To see conspicuous accumulation as a scoreboard of a life well lived. Who we are. How impressive that is. Life as a civilising mission where you are trying to take the story of yourself from savage to sage. The Gita is a story used to help unpack the battlefield of life. How we deal with all this temporary nonsense, and the waves of unimportant noise, and protect the stuff that really matters. I think part of that lies in seeing that not all good ideas are good business ideas. That money making is focused on solving temporary supply and demand problems. That how you make money is not who you are. Detach. Separate. Build space. Create a buffer for the noise. Don’t allow the world to define and rank you by your earning ability.

Dealing with Life's Battles

 

Man Behind the Curtain

When our institutions (Nations, Companies, Identities) fail us, we need to take the power away from the man behind the curtain. Small a anarchy inverts hierarchy. It recognises the danger in central decision making. The danger of lost information and distorted incentives that comes with the intentional creation of barriers to entry around wealth and information. Small a anarchy is not about creating chaos or lack of rule of law. Quite the opposite. When you empower individual decision and agreement making, you recognise and support the power of the multiple relationships that make up society. Imagine a world full of capitalists, in the sense that everyone had a buffer of cash and an engine of capital that allowed their No and Yes to be meaningful. Autonomy. Consent. This doesn’t mean people can do whatever they want. It means we are empowered to build agreements. It means a spontaneous order that has the resilience and endurance to deal with whatever comes our way. Learning. Unlearning. Contributing.

Building Bridges

Playing the Corporate Game involves not burning bridges. When it comes to interviews, reviews, and exit discussions, senior people will regularly bemoan the lack of honest, meaningful, feedback. Honest  feedback isn’t the same thing as true feedback. We are all projecting our stuff. So if your feedback is pointed, it is often a reflection on you. That is why people know to hold back. Otherwise they are exposing their bits. Honesty will get held against you in promotions, compensation, and the quality of references you are given. Many references simply confirm the work dates. Many “weaknesses” are “I am a bit of a perfectionist”. So I get why people don’t want to talk about their black lives matter experiences in white majority companies. They don’t want to be the idiot who takes the request at face value. Smart people know that when a boss says, “This is my view, but it’s your decision”. They mean, “Just do what you are told”, but want to lie to themselves that they can delegate. Corporates like delegating responsibility, but not authority. Few people will take responsibility for why we are having the black lives matter conversation. People will be honest when bosses stop playing games.

Spot the Chairman

Corporates aren’t democracies. They have shareholders who employ (or are) managers, who set the goals and manage the performance of their teams. Corporates also aren’t free markets. Once you are hired, central decisions get made up the chain and strategies set. The most obvious exhibit to demonstrate this is salaries. If there was an internal market for skills and knowledge, then whoever needed something done would have to bid for their team. Instead, in most companies I know of, the bosses would be irate if a Spreadsheet of everyone’s pay got leaked. Like Chairman Mao managing the iron supply in a 5-year plan, the central powers need to trust the train of information about who is doing what. Layers of grades and metrics can be added to maintain the illusion of price (salary) and value bearing a relation. The beauty of free markets is the lack of pretence. Price isn’t value. It is a way of matching supply and demand. It is very noisy, but if both parties are happy, value is created. In Corporates, this falls apart because (1) the employee is full time, and (2) we don’t talk about pay. In some ways that is good. Imagine your pay moved like the markets? To cope with that you can’t live hand-to-mouth. To cope with noise (transparency and truth), you need to create space to breathe.

Can you handle the truth?

Not a Democracy

“This isn’t a democracy” was a common phrase in my corporate career. Although there are legal minority shareholder protections, the reality is that control is concentrated… even if you are a part owner rather than a work taking employee. But, there are checks on power. Arguably more than over democratic majorities. Companies can fail if run badly, or if competitors attract away their staff and clients. They can fail slowly, if they have Capital to eat through while paying Corporate Zombies lots of money to do bad work. They can fail fast, if they live hand to mouth. Democracies don’t have the competitive pressures of the four freedoms of movement (Capital, Goods, Services, Labour) because we still live in a system of Global Apartheid where your rights depend on where, and to who, you were born. Citizenship isn’t voluntary and with enthusiastic consent. A system that ensures that Countries don’t fail like Companies in a way that frees the people and capital. I am a “small a” anarchist. Decision making should have as few layers as possible, be voluntary, and we should hire our bosses. Should isn’t reality. Human rights are built in the same way as Capital. From scratch. If that is the world we want, we need to build it.

Hierarchy from the Greek hierarkhēs "president of sacred rites, high-priest"

Consenting Adults

Some people like hierarchy. That’s okay. Everyone has their kinks, and anything that goes on between consenting adults is fine. It’s the consent part that bothers me. I believe in institution building, but I worry about the power of “legal people” over people. When the institution gets so big that the individuals become abstractions. Roles, categories, functions, grades. Turning people into numbers for memos to pass up to boardrooms. Particularly when the negotiating power is lopsided, and on one side there is a person “speaking for the institution” (be it a Country, Company or a The People). For markets and communities to function well, there has to be full transparency and a sense of peers working together. Otherwise it is just bullying. Using the fact that someone has limited job opportunities or capital to incentivise them to do as they are told. 

Need a Crown?

Petty Dictator

It becomes gradually harder to accept things you don’t like, as you become more empowered to not have to accept them. Having no option but to carry on forces you to suck it up. We live in an income dependent world. Nothing kills an activist like a mortgage and school fees. Obligations that override competing desires. 30-year mortgages lay some pretty clear constraints around your options. I don’t like hierarchy without enthusiastic consent. I don’t like Petty Dictators.  I don’t like having to follow instructions because there is no option to walk. No agency. Particularly when the person issuing the instruction knows that. Teams work significantly better when there is genuine respect. At a human level, when the engagement is relational rather than transactional. When there is a sense of Peers who recognise each other’s competence and goals, and are supporting each other. In an income dependent world, Capital empowers you to say “No”. To work with people rather than just do what you are told.

Bob your Botha

Signs of Rot

Double Standards are a sign of rot. When those in charge are not held to the same level of accountability as those to whom they delegate responsibility but not authority. Responsibility without authority is meaningless. With every degree of separation from where the impacts of a decision are felt, information is lost. This is the heart of the reason why empowerment beats Central Decision Making. Why “Boardrooms” should be where obstacles are removed, not where decisions are made. And certainly not where accountability disappears. We talk of not giving hand-outs to those without money because of Entitlement and Dependency. We want to add conditions. We forget the bosses and talking heads higher up the chain who don’t roll up their sleeves. Who don’t get their hands dirty. Who don’t fall on their swords when their decisions don’t work out. Who do so well in the good times when “interests are aligned”, that they have a bottomless buffer to ride out the bad times. There is no Solution. There are only decentralised Solutions. Make more decision makers.

Wooden beam with significant fungal growth

Delegate Power

Delegating responsibility without authority is dangerous. I have always had a lot of respect for leaders who remain involved in the task. Rolling their sleeves up and leading by conscious example. Unless you are digging holes in the ground or following an algorithmic set of clearly defined steps, there is always judgment required in a world that is complex, ambiguous, and random. Delegation without involvement in these murky situations is the kind of hierarchy to which I am violently allergic. If you constantly second guess someone, they will wait until they are crystal clear on what you want. They will wait until they believe they have the skills to do the task in the way you want it done. Not all knowledge can be communicated up the chain. I am a firm believer in empowering people to make decisions where the decisions need to be made. Then backing them up. Or doing it yourself.

Athlone Power Station - Cape Town

Right Price

Desperation prevents good decision making. Price isn’t value. It is a clearing mechanism that matches supply and demand. If you are desperate, the seller will be able to smell it and the negotiation will not be one of equals with options. I am allergic to hierarchy. Condescension dances with desperation. Conversations can feel dirty when you are trying to get work, because you need it. Because it is urgent. Because there is no alternative. The condescension leads, the desperation follows. I believe the solution has to be in slow built foundations. In the basics. In building buffers. Reducing urgency. Reducing panic. Adding space. Adding time. Flash forced decisions burn out. Consistent small decisions without desperation compound. Clearing supply and demand works best when both parties are empowered and the swap feels good. Price isn’t value, but that is when a “right price” creates value.