I think the biggest constraint for having more people working on EA projects is management and leadership capacity. But those aren’t things you can (solely) self-study; you need to practice management and leadership in order to get good at them.
What about those people that already have management and leadership skills, but lack things like:
Connections with important actors
Awareness of the incentives and the models of the important actors
Awareness of important bottlenecks in the movement
Background knowledge as a source of legitimacy
Skin in the game / a track record as a source of legitimacy
If I take my best self as a model for leadership (which feels like a status grab but I’ll hope you excuse me, it’s the best data I have) then good leadership requires a lot of affinity/domain knowledge/vision/previous interactions with the thing that is being led. Can this not be cultivated?
Hey Toon, that’s the kind of person I was talking about in my third paragraph (someone with a proven track record of a variable skill). Like I said, in most cases I’d expect this person to learn faster in a job context or with a grant for a particular project than simply “self-study” but I do think there are some cases where people with a good track record should apply for a self-study grant!
Let’s interpret “study” as broad as we can: is there not anything that someone can do on their own initiative, and do it better if they have time, that increases their leadership capacity?
The best thing they can do is probably to lead a project, either through paid work or as a volunteer.
Another good thing would be to speak to a mentor about their leadership work.
When those two things are already happening, books or courses can be really useful. But without practicing leadership and getting regular feedback, I don’t expect very good returns from independent study.
(The exception would be someone who’s already working at an executive level and wants to take a secondment for personal study and then return to a similar role—the fact that they’ve already gotten a lot of leadership experience and feedback makes me more positive about the value of them taking time off to study and reflect.)
What about those people that already have management and leadership skills, but lack things like:
Connections with important actors
Awareness of the incentives and the models of the important actors
Awareness of important bottlenecks in the movement
Background knowledge as a source of legitimacy
Skin in the game / a track record as a source of legitimacy
If I take my best self as a model for leadership (which feels like a status grab but I’ll hope you excuse me, it’s the best data I have) then good leadership requires a lot of affinity/domain knowledge/vision/previous interactions with the thing that is being led. Can this not be cultivated?
Hey Toon, that’s the kind of person I was talking about in my third paragraph (someone with a proven track record of a variable skill). Like I said, in most cases I’d expect this person to learn faster in a job context or with a grant for a particular project than simply “self-study” but I do think there are some cases where people with a good track record should apply for a self-study grant!
Let’s interpret “study” as broad as we can: is there not anything that someone can do on their own initiative, and do it better if they have time, that increases their leadership capacity?
The best thing they can do is probably to lead a project, either through paid work or as a volunteer.
Another good thing would be to speak to a mentor about their leadership work.
When those two things are already happening, books or courses can be really useful. But without practicing leadership and getting regular feedback, I don’t expect very good returns from independent study.
(The exception would be someone who’s already working at an executive level and wants to take a secondment for personal study and then return to a similar role—the fact that they’ve already gotten a lot of leadership experience and feedback makes me more positive about the value of them taking time off to study and reflect.)