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Perverse Incentives Select for People Who Are the Best at Exploiting a Given System
Summary:
The original deans and administrators burn out due to their dislike of the US News and World Report rankings and are replaced by individuals driven by ranking success.
This shift reflects a difference in mentality between valuing money as a means of support versus valuing money as the sole purpose of life. Similarly, pursuing publications and citations for a job versus making them the ultimate goal shows a significant distinction.
However, these differences are connected through a temporal dynamic where initially people adapt their behavior to succeed in a flawed system.
The system then filters out those who can best exploit it, resulting in the selection of individuals with specific values.
Transcript:
Speaker 2
What happens later on, the original deans and administrators burn out because of how much they hate the US news and rule report rankings, and they get replaced by people who are all it. They think the only point is to rise in the rankings. And those people don't hold back. They only have one target. I think something similar is the difference between so realizing I need a lot of money in order to a decent amount of money to support my family, but not thinking money is the point of life. And similarly, realizing that getting a decent number of publications and citations is necessary for a job versus thinking the goal of my life is to max out citations. And for me, there's a huge gulf between those things.
Speaker 1
Well, here's where I think they're connected because I see the difference and I understand the difference you're talking about. But I think the difference is that is this temporal dynamic, right, where you start out with, let's say, perverse incentives and people saying, well, I don't necessarily value these Things, but I have to shape my behavior in order to succeed in this system. But the thing is, the system being the way it is creates a filter. And the people who are the best at figuring out how to operate in that are the ones that then end up being successful. And they're the ones that teach the next generation or emulated by the next generation. And over time, the people for whatever reasons, psychologically or behaviorally or ever their path is, are best able to exploit the system are going to be able to thrive in it. And I think that because of that, you end up selecting for people with certain kinds of values, because they're going to be the people who there's always exceptions, but are going to Be best able to thrive in this kind of thing.
Paul Smaldino & C. Thi Nguyen on Problems With Value Metrics & Governance at Scale
COMPLEXITY: Physics of Life
Create a User Manual of Yourself for Others
Summary:
Creating a user manual for yourself, including strengths, weaknesses, triggers, blind spots, and insights for working effectively with you, enables others to understand and collaborate with you more easily.
By soliciting feedback from colleagues and using their input to enhance self-awareness, you can provide new team members with valuable insights about working with you, facilitating quicker and more effective collaboration.
Transcript:
Speaker 1
He said, you know, when i buy a new car, it comes with an owner's manual, so i know how to operate it. But when i work with a new person, whose way more complex than a car, i don't get anything. And so i'm kind of starting from square one, when fact, they have all these experiences that could teach me something from their past about how to work with them better in the present And the future. And so what he did, same as orschol nick, he sat down and he wrote up one pager on how to work with him effectively. What are his strength what are his weaknesses, what are the triggers that bring out the worst in him? What are the the moments that bring out in the best in him? And then he didn't stop therehe asked his team to write their user manual for him, so that he could gauge his own self awareness. And of course, he found the team's os is much more ecihtful and accurate than his own, because of the blind spot factor in part. But now every new person who works with him gets that one pager and gets to immediately start as if they'd known him for a month or two, and say, ok, you know, here are the things i might want To adapt if i want to be really affective with this nager. And so i've gone, i've gone and done that. I asked a bunch of people who worke with me to write my user manual. Andit is very simple. The questions are, what are my strengths? What brings those out? What are my weaknesses? What brings those out? What are my blind spots? And what do you know now about working with me that you wish you had known when we first started working?
#399 — Adam Grant — The Man Who Does Everything
The Tim Ferriss Show
When business leaders describe their organisational cultures as embracing what it means to ‘fail fast’ or suggesting that we are all in a ‘learning organisation’, it rings hollow if the aspirations are not lived and structurally supported. Employees see through the public relations of an organisation that markets itself as innovative yet executes the same playbook year after year.
Driving Data Projects: A Comprehensive Guide
Haskell, Christine
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