Scaling People: Tactics for Management and Company Building, Claire Hughes Johnson (Stripe Press, 2023). This is a bad book. Usually we review books that we like. Sometimes we make an exception and review a book we don’t like, but which is nonetheless extremely interesting. Unfortunately, this book isn’t interesting either. What it is is important, both for what it tells us about some trends in Silicon Valley corporate management and about the broader ideology of the American ruling class.
I think this is a really great essay, and I really enjoyed it.
I do have a criticism, however, in that it sort of falls apart and contradicts itself in the second to last paragraph.
The first reason is somewhat pedantic, but in fact most societies had (have) a reason why their leaders were deserving. Divine right of kings, descent from gods, chosen of god, caste, right of conquest, etc. It just doesn't take long before people start to wonder "Why is he pushing everyone around? Why not me?" and an answer needs to be provided.
More importantly, however, is that you conflate "meritocracy" with "credentialism". Those managers and leaders you describe before, those who can do the job better than their subordinates because they did it before and know it so well, those people have merit. The management school graduate with no experience and a still damp degree, that fellow has merely a credential. He may have some merit when it comes to completing school, but no demonstrated merit in the field he is entering.
I bring that up because I think that is where we got off the rails, confusing merit in one field (getting through school) with merit in any other field. We mistook a credential for merit that can apply anywhere, as though it were the turpentine from the beginning of the essay.
I would wager the issue came from the distinct realms of schooling: job training vs filtering for smart and conscientious. An engineer or a doctor who gets a degree probably can do engineering and doctoring pretty well shortly there after with minimal extra training (at least in the old days.) A manager or English major who gets a degree has merely shown they are intellectually sufficient to get the degree, not that they can actually do anything useful after without a lot of extra training. I expect that once, long ago when relatively few people could cut it in college and most went for job training type things anyway, merit and credentials were a little closer, but lately of course they have greatly diverged.
At any rate, I would argue that although we call what we have a "meritocracy" what we in fact have is a "credentialocracy". Which is awkward to say and embarrassing, so our rulers prefer to claim merit when in fact they eschew merit in favor of, well, doing exactly what you say in this essay. Which was really great! Except for those last two paragraphs :D Don't grant the bastards their claim that what we have is a meritocracy, when those in charge are versions of your executive who doesn't even know what his company does. That's not merit, at least not in any activity worth pursuing.
A most excellent post! If you're familiar with Iain McGilchrist's work (The Master and His Emissary), his analysis of the differences between those who are Right Hemisphere Dominant and Left Hemisphere Dominant (in terms of their thinking and orientation) seems to really overlap with the distinctions you point out between good and bad leaders. (John Carter at Postcards from Barsoom had some posts on this theme, e.g., https://barsoom.substack.com/p/left-and-right-brains-and-politics, as did Winston Smith at Escaping Mass Psychosis, e.g., https://escapingmasspsychosis.substack.com/p/the-master-betrayed-1?s=r.) Your analysis also sheds some interesting light on the growing competency crisis in America (and the West generally), where we've been promoting leaders based on their mastery of symbolic knowledge, but they lack any concrete skills or any ability to tie their academic theories to anything real in any meaningful way; so we have a leadership class that can write bestselling books on leadership full of neat aphorisms, but cannot actually lead anyone in any way that yields tangible, real-world improvements. Add to that all the DEI nonsense and regular Peter Principle tendencies, and you have a surefire recipe for mediocrity.
The question of whether one can know how to manage without knowing anything in particular reminds me of the puzzle that kicks off the Ion: how can rhapsodes speak more eloquently on war than generals, or on wagons than a wagonwright, or whatever, if they don't actually possess the chops of any of those professions? You can say they're just smooth talkers, but then how do they even manage to talk smoothly about all of these things?
Plato's own answer is that this obviously doesn't make any kind of rational sense, and so the rhapsodes must just be possessed by divine madness.. (Application to Big 3 left as an exercise.)
I think this is a really great essay, and I really enjoyed it.
I do have a criticism, however, in that it sort of falls apart and contradicts itself in the second to last paragraph.
The first reason is somewhat pedantic, but in fact most societies had (have) a reason why their leaders were deserving. Divine right of kings, descent from gods, chosen of god, caste, right of conquest, etc. It just doesn't take long before people start to wonder "Why is he pushing everyone around? Why not me?" and an answer needs to be provided.
More importantly, however, is that you conflate "meritocracy" with "credentialism". Those managers and leaders you describe before, those who can do the job better than their subordinates because they did it before and know it so well, those people have merit. The management school graduate with no experience and a still damp degree, that fellow has merely a credential. He may have some merit when it comes to completing school, but no demonstrated merit in the field he is entering.
I bring that up because I think that is where we got off the rails, confusing merit in one field (getting through school) with merit in any other field. We mistook a credential for merit that can apply anywhere, as though it were the turpentine from the beginning of the essay.
I would wager the issue came from the distinct realms of schooling: job training vs filtering for smart and conscientious. An engineer or a doctor who gets a degree probably can do engineering and doctoring pretty well shortly there after with minimal extra training (at least in the old days.) A manager or English major who gets a degree has merely shown they are intellectually sufficient to get the degree, not that they can actually do anything useful after without a lot of extra training. I expect that once, long ago when relatively few people could cut it in college and most went for job training type things anyway, merit and credentials were a little closer, but lately of course they have greatly diverged.
At any rate, I would argue that although we call what we have a "meritocracy" what we in fact have is a "credentialocracy". Which is awkward to say and embarrassing, so our rulers prefer to claim merit when in fact they eschew merit in favor of, well, doing exactly what you say in this essay. Which was really great! Except for those last two paragraphs :D Don't grant the bastards their claim that what we have is a meritocracy, when those in charge are versions of your executive who doesn't even know what his company does. That's not merit, at least not in any activity worth pursuing.
A most excellent post! If you're familiar with Iain McGilchrist's work (The Master and His Emissary), his analysis of the differences between those who are Right Hemisphere Dominant and Left Hemisphere Dominant (in terms of their thinking and orientation) seems to really overlap with the distinctions you point out between good and bad leaders. (John Carter at Postcards from Barsoom had some posts on this theme, e.g., https://barsoom.substack.com/p/left-and-right-brains-and-politics, as did Winston Smith at Escaping Mass Psychosis, e.g., https://escapingmasspsychosis.substack.com/p/the-master-betrayed-1?s=r.) Your analysis also sheds some interesting light on the growing competency crisis in America (and the West generally), where we've been promoting leaders based on their mastery of symbolic knowledge, but they lack any concrete skills or any ability to tie their academic theories to anything real in any meaningful way; so we have a leadership class that can write bestselling books on leadership full of neat aphorisms, but cannot actually lead anyone in any way that yields tangible, real-world improvements. Add to that all the DEI nonsense and regular Peter Principle tendencies, and you have a surefire recipe for mediocrity.
Yup
The question of whether one can know how to manage without knowing anything in particular reminds me of the puzzle that kicks off the Ion: how can rhapsodes speak more eloquently on war than generals, or on wagons than a wagonwright, or whatever, if they don't actually possess the chops of any of those professions? You can say they're just smooth talkers, but then how do they even manage to talk smoothly about all of these things?
Plato's own answer is that this obviously doesn't make any kind of rational sense, and so the rhapsodes must just be possessed by divine madness.. (Application to Big 3 left as an exercise.)