I shared this idea pretty strongly a few years back, but have changed my mind due to personal experience of running an organisation with lots of people. I think a community has enough parallels for it to be a useful comparison.
Here’s what changed my mind:
1. The number of one-to-one relationships increases with the factorial of the number of people in a group. Shit gets complicated and it creates a breeding ground for bad behaviour; you can behave horribly and then move on to a new group of people without facing ramifications, because it’s unlikely that those two groups are talking to one and other.
2. At least within an organisation, having a lot of people necessitates hierarchy which itself has major drawbacks e.g. it increases the links in the Chinese whisper chain that is organisational communication, affecting information flow both on the way up and on the way down.
3. You’d think that the productivity of a team would be n * average productivity, but it’s more like n * productivity of the worst person; mediocre people lower the standards people hold themselves to and higher performers leave in disgust. New hires then conform the ever lowering standard.
4. A lot of processes are at least somewhat serialized. You can’t make them go faster by increasing the number of people, only increasing the quality will move the needle (e.g. a team of 100000 sprinters will still reach the finish line slower than Usain Bolt)
5. A person is smart. People are stupid. When you have large groups, reputation starts to become decoupled from reality. Rumor becomes the dominant mode of information transfer. People start having very strong opinions about people they’ve barely met or interacted with.
6. The importance of work is power-law distributed. The top priority is usually more important than the tenth through to the nth combined. What really matters is nailing the most important stuff.
That being said, here are some changes I’d like to see in who we hire / invite:
- Someone who went to Oxford despite being born poor is likely much smarter than their richer peers; familial social economic status should be considered.. - Greater focus on people who’ve sacrificed more. It’s a costly signal of value-alignment - Prioritise people are cannot have achieved their position through office politics / bullshiting / being carried by their teams e.g. soloprenuers >> management consultant.
I shared this idea pretty strongly a few years back, but have changed my mind due to personal experience of running an organisation with lots of people. I think a community has enough parallels for it to be a useful comparison.
Here’s what changed my mind:
1. The number of one-to-one relationships increases with the factorial of the number of people in a group. Shit gets complicated and it creates a breeding ground for bad behaviour; you can behave horribly and then move on to a new group of people without facing ramifications, because it’s unlikely that those two groups are talking to one and other.
2. At least within an organisation, having a lot of people necessitates hierarchy which itself has major drawbacks e.g. it increases the links in the Chinese whisper chain that is organisational communication, affecting information flow both on the way up and on the way down.
3. You’d think that the productivity of a team would be n * average productivity, but it’s more like n * productivity of the worst person; mediocre people lower the standards people hold themselves to and higher performers leave in disgust. New hires then conform the ever lowering standard.
4. A lot of processes are at least somewhat serialized. You can’t make them go faster by increasing the number of people, only increasing the quality will move the needle (e.g. a team of 100000 sprinters will still reach the finish line slower than Usain Bolt)
5. A person is smart. People are stupid. When you have large groups, reputation starts to become decoupled from reality. Rumor becomes the dominant mode of information transfer. People start having very strong opinions about people they’ve barely met or interacted with.
6. The importance of work is power-law distributed. The top priority is usually more important than the tenth through to the nth combined. What really matters is nailing the most important stuff.
That being said, here are some changes I’d like to see in who we hire / invite:
- Someone who went to Oxford despite being born poor is likely much smarter than their richer peers; familial social economic status should be considered..
- Greater focus on people who’ve sacrificed more. It’s a costly signal of value-alignment
- Prioritise people are cannot have achieved their position through office politics / bullshiting / being carried by their teams e.g. soloprenuers >> management consultant.
Thanks for sharing!