Company, Team, Self

by omoindrot • 4 years ago

106 61 4 years ago

pphysch• 4 years ago

As I’ve become a more experienced manager, I’ve stopped giving this advice. I still believe it’s the correct advice, and I continue to see managers who fail because they are missing this perspective. However, I’ve also seen some of the best leaders that I’ve worked with burn out by following this advice too loyally.

Most employees, especially in the West, especially in USA, are going to be biased towards their individual interests. Aligning their interests with the collective organizational interest is an extremely hard problem, but an extremely important one. Definitely something that could burn out a manager. But very much worth trying if you want a successful, healthy organization.

jacobyoder• 4 years ago

I've been in situations as a dev where I've figuratively screamed from the rafters "X is happening - we need to do ABC". It's almost universally ignored because "well, devs just like to do ABC! not happening this year... etc".

No... I hate doing ABC.

What's in my immediate interest is to quietly paper over problems, and pass them along to someone else.

What's also in my interest longer term is the organization to fix operational issues to help ensure there is a 'longer term' for the organization to continue in to. To think I'm not thinking of that, and just wanting to do bullshit busy work because "he's a dev! that's what they do!" is patronizing to say the least.

Many people are capable of looking at things from a few perspectives.

xyzelement8• 4 years ago

This is a really common dynamic and I think it's an opportunity.

Let's assume you are right, you are seeing some real threat and have a solution in mind.

If others were "ready" to see it, they'd already see it on their own and you'd have nothing additional to offer.

The reason your perspective is valuable is because you are seeing something others aren't, but it also by definition implies that they aren't ready to see it.

This is a universal thing - the gap between your insight and the org's awareness is directly related both to the value of your insight and how much of an uphill battle the sell is.

If you can become the person who can both see issues and drive others to see them through persuasive education, you become immensely impactful. Otherwise you are limited to only making impact on things where others are already sold on the issue while being frustrated by this limitation.

esparrohack2• 4 years ago

That’s cus they don’t trust you. Win their trust!

I don’t like the persuasive education angle. You’re going to come off as smarmy.

So not everything is an opportunity. You gotta remember that things are the way they are cus they got that way.

1) solution may seem stupid bad now, but at the time, it was the lesser of two evils

2) the people most responsible are now your coworkers.

It’s not always a good idea to see everything or comment on everything. Pick your battles.

misthop2• 4 years ago

It's always about incentive misalignment. As an employee thinking Company first will improve the bottom line for the company. As an executive thinking company first may well eliminate me as an employee.

Why should an employee put the company interests above their own with that incentive alignment? The company should work to make the company's interests serve the individual interests of the employees

lifeisstillgood3• 4 years ago

Yes.

And may I suggest a simple method: have employees vote for executives

Incentives align naturally when there is two way feedback

twblalock• 4 years ago

I suspect this would result in a lot of companies being run into the ground, as executives would focus on keeping employees happy at the cost of the business. "Vote for me, and everyone gets a raise and a bonus!"

When the interests of employees are put ahead of the success of the company, in the long run the employees end up losing because the company will fail, or at least need to lay people off.

Also, most employees simply aren't capable of understanding or judging executives more than a few levels above them. I'd hate to work somewhere where the junior devs get to pick the engineering directors, for example.

oytis2• 4 years ago

Businesses are not made for employees though.

mehphp2• 4 years ago

You can always "vote" by leaving a company, too.

xyzelement8• 4 years ago

I think the idea in the article is something like - by thinking company-first you can arrive at better outcomes for yourself in the long run. It's not about self sacrifice.

Certainly all the good gains in my career happened as a consequence of achieving big things for the company, which I wouldn't have landed with me-first thinking.

misthop2• 4 years ago

Interesting. I think I have come out about the same but being rather self-serving, or at least not company first.. Doing something big for the company reflects well on me, improves my standing, and I can tout those achievements to others for other career growth. But I do make a point of working for companies where I think my own interests align with the role in the company

rqtwteye• 4 years ago

“Certainly all the good gains in my career happened as a consequence of achieving big things for the company, which I wouldn't have landed with me-first thinking.”

You did me-first. You just had situations where what was good for the company was good for you too. If you repeatedly did what was good for the company but never got anything for yourself you would probably stop. A lot of people are in a situation where what’s good for the company doesn’t give them any reward or is even negative (lose their job, more work).

zelon88• 4 years ago

Contrary to that, some of my biggest achievements have been things I've done on my own for companies that the company didn't realize it needed. Things that I've done to make my job easier continue to make other people's jobs easier to this day. Nobody asked me to do those things. The business would have continued regardless. But these things I did to make my job easier have payed dividends in the long run.

conductr• 4 years ago

Not sure I follow or just have contradicting experiences. Executive's personal bottom lines are usually tied to the Company's.

The company's goals are usually a derivative of customer goals. Why are Customers not considered?

Any ways, I like being individual focused, but we all work for this Company for a reason (interest?) and so we should probably just say something like; the company goals should be such that they can be reasonably accomplished with <100% of available resources, time and efforts. Leaving time for some independent individual development. Something like what Google theoretically did with their 80/20 policy. It's up to you to figure out what the right X/Y mix is.

oytis2• 4 years ago

I understand it as being about technical decisions rather than interests. Engineers are inclined to make architectural decisions that align with their idea of what is fun to do. But really fulfilling work is the one that is being used and serves the purpose.

Say I've seen a QA engineer designing an elaborate formal verification framework that took a lot of time, but failed to test anything engineers or customers cared about. Can't tell if he himself was happy with the result, but I wouldn't want to be in his shoes.

simonw• 4 years ago

I loved this paragraph:

People are complex, and they get energy in complex ways. Some managers get energy from writing some software. That’s great, particularly if you avoid writing software with strict dependencies. Some managers get energy from coaching others. That’s great. Some get energy from doing exploratory work. Others get energy from optimizing existing systems. That’s great, too. Some get energy from speaking at conferences. Great. Some get energy from cleaning up internal wiki’s. You get the idea: that’s great. All these things are great, not because managers should or shouldn’t program/speak at conferences/clean up wiki’s/etc, but because folks will accomplish more if you let them do some energizing work, even if that work itself isn’t very important.

A think I've found challenging about management is that /people are different/. What works for one person in terms of motivation or style of work won't work for another person. A big part of effective people management is understanding that and figuring out what style works for each of the people you work with.

kqr3• 4 years ago

But it's not just about people being different. It's also about how not everything people do has to be valuable to the customer. It can be valuable in the sense that the person stays in the organisation for longer if they get to do it.

This realisation hit me when I was in a heated debate with my (then) product manager about what did and did not provide value for our customers. Then suddenly he said, "I'm pretty sure almost half of what I ask your team to do is not because it's valuable to our customers, but because it's clearly important to your team, for whatever reason I don't have to care about."

I had no idea until that point, but it did make a lot of sense.

wenholmes• 4 years ago

The thing that brought the same idea home for me is the idea that optimization is a destructive process. A business is a complex thing with many, many variables influencing its success. If you truly optimize "customer value" then you must give up everything else. A much more nuanced approach is to do what you did, and balance off various values against each other. Unfortunately this is very difficult to measure or "logic," it requires appreciating things like complexity, uncertainty, and indirection. But ultimately it produces better outcomes, and I'll take a manager who thinks like that over one that doesn't every time.

P.S. Recommended reading on this topic, "Obliquity" by John Kay is excellent.

umutisik• 4 years ago

Put customers first. The company, team, and self (in a work context) are there to help customers.

codemac• 4 years ago

meta, metamates, me

throwawaysleep• 4 years ago

If it will put a penny in my pocket, I will burn a billion of my employer's dollars.

vdqtp32• 4 years ago

If it will put $100000 in your pocket, will you make your employer a billion more dollars?

mfuzzey• 4 years ago

Problem is who gets to decide what is best for the company?

In many organisations most people may not have enough information to really know what is best for the whole organisation, even if they do have good ideas about their part.

And top executives often can't be trusted to act in the best interest of the company (rather than that of the shareholders, the stock market or themselves...). Short term vs longterm is also very imporant, the best way to make a quick buck today is often at odds with what is needed to remain relevant in 5 or 10 years.

bitwize• 4 years ago

Problem is who gets to decide what is best for the company?

People above your pay grade. What is best for the company for your purposes will be made clear to you by your manager or their superiors. Your job is to not question or criticize but to carry out. Be wary of calls for feedback (e.g., eNPS); every Hundred Flowers Campaign can be expected to soon be followed by an Anti-Rightist Campaign, i.e., the feedback solicited will likely be used to identify and eliminate potential troublemakers rather than effect actual change.

smcleod• 4 years ago

This feels like pretty typical capitalist rhetoric on the surface at least.

Ignoring income - Do you go to work to make the company you work for more wealthy? Or do you go to work to enjoy what you do and make friends? Or do you go to work to learn new skills and better yourself? - In which order do you place the statements? (Yes, it's a false trichotomy.)

Unless you're the company founder or a major shareholder I would really hope making the company more wealthy is not your top priority.

I always say to my co-workers health > family > work. If they're not healthy, they're not happy and they're not able to look after family (or close friends), for family (or close friends) I'm not happy or healthy they're less likely to be a viable support network. You can be passionate, expressive, and absorbed in your work - but doing what is best for the company above all else is not what is best for humanity most of the time.

jmk123• 4 years ago

health > family > work

100% agree.

I would've flipped the thesis of the post in reverse order: yourself, your team, your company.

wccrawford• 4 years ago

I agree, but it's more complex than both of those. If something matters to you, but matters a lot more to the company, it's probably a good idea to do what's good for the company. And if it matters a lot to you and not much to the company, it's probably right to do what you want.

When things meet in the middle it means you have to take lot of other things into account, too, to make the decision.

These hollow 1-way maps don't ever give good advice.

snug• 4 years ago

That's not a controversial heading though.

I probably wouldn't have read the article, because no shit, that would be obvious

alex_young• 4 years ago

Management theory ex Office Space?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dA5rB63Mzc8

p0pcult• 4 years ago

Dumb idea: what if we re conceptualized firms as entities whose role it is to keep people meaningfully employed at good wages, in order to support societal stability?

Oh right, I live in the USA.

captnswing• 4 years ago

I miss the customer in this. I've given the same advice in this format

Customer > Company

Company > Team

Team > Self

esparrohack2• 4 years ago

“It was very frustrating to me that the correct answer to most prioritization and architecture projects was obvious”

Lost me there. People that think they know everything are the easiest to trick.

“People are complex, and they get energy in complex ways. Some managers get energy from writing some software”

No. We get energy from food.

“folks will accomplish more if you let them do some energizing work, even if that work itself isn’t very important.”

Cited himself. No proof of claim.

“ fun project is prototyping a throwaway service in a new programming language, then hmm, maybe that’s fine. But if you put it into production, then your energizing detour is going to be net negative on energy generation after other teams are pulled in to figure out how to support it. Honestly, don’t worry about the other rules, just make sure to follow this one.“

I think you should fix your deploy pipeline. Prototypes don’t belong in production. Now, if that started a prototype and team decided it had to go to prod, then it’s a good decision. They had their reasons

——

I gave up. It’s hard to take it seriously. Obviously the self is always more important.

Anyway, the main issue is you have two midwits purple-prosing past each other.

Circumstances change. Shit happens. There is no such thing as “the right way”. Or correct. You pick the lesser of two evils and do your best.

“still believe it’s the correct advice, and I continue to see managers who fail because they are missing this perspective. However, I’ve also seen some of the best leaders that I’ve worked with burn out by following this advice too loyally.”

Then by definition it’s not “correct” because it can fail and fails spectacularly.

zug_zug2• 4 years ago

Company, Team, Self is backward, but not in the way you think.

It's backward because it's advice given to employees, when it needs to be given to be given to management.

Employees will and should do self-interest. It's the EXECUTIVES's duty/problem to ensure that they make workers' self-interests clearly aligned with Customers/ Company/Team/Self.

It's an interesting exercise to consider how to make it in an employee's self-interest to perform actions that prioritize the company's interest over the team. Of course managers have a perverse incentive here to prioritize a narrative that the team is always excelling in all ways, and thus may have an incentive to penalize/fire employees who put the company ahead of the team (e.g. by admitting the team's project is useless/redundant/poorly-defined).

I'm shocked by how few executive understand that their managers are a great threat to their company, because they have a huge vested interest in promoting dishonest narratives about the needs/successes of the company. The larger the management chain, the more likely a BS-er is in that chain.

Brigand2• 4 years ago

There is no way for executives to create a well working company if the employees think of nothing but themselves.

vdqtp32• 4 years ago

Sure there is. Compensate them for accomplishing tasks that benefit the company. If they do not benefit the company, stop compensating them. We call this practice employment.

skeeter20203• 4 years ago

Isn't this the single job of management though, to come up with an approach that is mutually beneficial so that an employee pursuing what's in their best interest moves the team and company forward, and conversely putting the company & team first benefits the individual?

TomSwirly• 4 years ago

Anyone who's spent any time working in the work world knows that 90% of companies simply don't care about their workers, particularly at the lowest level.

If I put the company and then the team first, and the team and company think the same way, who is there to look out for me?

Only a sociopath, and a stupid one, would put their company ahead of their family. And there aren't that many sociopaths in society.

Loyalty must be earned, and most companies have earned not loyalty, but resentment and deep distrust.

(I have been lucky that I have mostly avoided such companies, because I have a fairly rare talent, but not entirely. Oh, boy.)

_demilich• 4 years ago

As I’ve become a more experienced manager, I’ve stopped giving this advice. I still believe it’s the correct advice

No it is not the correct advice. It is an oversimplification. It might be an easy rule to remember and follow, but like many of those it fails to deal adequately with the subtleties of the real world.

skeeter20203• 4 years ago

The author doesn't end their advice with these oversimplified abstractions; it's the entry point into a deeper, more nuanced discussion. That's why the article is more than a a 3-word title.

(Good) advice doesn't deal with all of life's subtelties; that's an impossible prescription with no resiliency. It sets you up to figure it out yourself.

a_c• 4 years ago

I would like to challenge the premise of company first, then team, then self.

A forest is grown one tree at a time.

A company is formed because someone, the founders, thinking for themselves. They want to create a product, solve a problem, learn an industry, or they just want to get rich. Essentially "do the thing". All of these start from "self".

With any luck, the founder get some funding, sell some products, got enough resources to build up their team. A team with people who thinks about themselves. They are the people who want to build a product, solve their own problem, learn an industry, or get rich. All of these joiner start from "self".

Then the founder found first hand that, after all the interview, vision and mission statements, OKR and all the charade, their objectives isn't quite exactly aligned with the teammates. Instead of "doing the thing", they need motivate their teammates to "do the thing".

One more iteration we are at the company level.

As other comment points out, it is really the executive's duty in making the alignment. IMO, you don't make the alignment by indoctrinating the same message over and over, but by understanding your team, and how your team's motivation contributes to a wider company goal. Similarly, you don't indoctrinate your customer how good your product is, you understand their need and refine your product. It's the same process.

Moreover, a so-called company goal is really just optimizing a beaten path, get more user, get more usage, get more revenue. Kodak's company goal back then I bet was about improving some of the measureable metrics. As a company, you do want to harness some creative power. Let some of your people do what they like some of the time is highly beneficial. It is the same creation force that gives birth to numerous ideas.

If there is a higher goal than the company goal, it is yours. How would you leverage the opportunities and resources offered by your employment to achieve your personal goal? That is the question. And you achieve company's goal by tapping that source of energy from your teammates.

simonebrunozzi• 4 years ago

In an ideal world, yes.

In my personal experience (AWS, VMware), if the company you work for doesn't have a culture which is conducive to this type of behavior, you are going to be frustrated most of the time.

Extra hint: other people from the same company will have different priorities (self, self again, and something else), and if the company allows them to behave like that, you're screwed.

Company, Team, Self

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