the things i write about: take three

this is the third pass at summarizing what my writing is about. this frame came from cameron, the other person who said i should write a book.

my writing is really to answer the question: what do we do in late stage capitalism before we don’t have any choices left?

early- and mid-stage capitalism got us here with much destruction and gnashing of teeth, but also much productivity and many gains. we have massive, global infrastructure for many differnet systems: transporation, energy, communication, et cetera.

now that we’re here, the things needed to get to us here are less necessary and relevant. the don’t need to produce massive amounts of goods, because we can have raw material shipped to a local craftsperson and customized how we want. our identities, which are currently tied up in wealth and success (which is often measured in wealth) no longer need to be measured by those metrics.

many of us looking forwards or already on the edges of systems know that those metrics are outdated. so the question is how do we get to systems that reflect that?

this is what my writing is about: the pieces and parts that will aid the transition.

we need identities based on the creation of real value for other people and the planet. creating real value, sustainably (in all the ways), will mean that people are doing the work that is theirs to do. following your passion and using it to get your needs met isn’t privilege or nicety; it’s revolution and necessary. finding and living your passions will net you more well-being (the new success) than all the economic wealth in the world.

the things i write about: take two

yesterday, spencer and i had a really long, wandering, good conversation about many things. one of them was me writing a book and it might be about. this is my take on spencer’s take of what my book could be about.

what are the cultural implications of making and consuming differently?

i think a lot about objects: what they are made of, where they come from, who they come from, how long they last, what they mean to us (individually, collectively, societally).

this manifests in my daily life on a number of practical planes. i try to consume as little as possible (recycling is nice, but most of the waste our society produces is upstream, says my friend jonathan krones, who studies waste and urban metabolism).

that has two implications. first, because i try to minimize my throughput, i think a lot about what things i do consume. and by consume i mean, purchase, use, and discard (hopefully in circular ways, but not always). second, it means i try to pick things that have high utility. utility in this context is defined by how much i like the thing (shoutout to marie kondo), how long it’ll last, how often i’ll use it, how much it fits into my other possessions, and how durable it be for someone else once i no longer need it.

these two things involve a lot of thinking; thinking through what it means to use objects and what that means for consumption.

this, i imagine, will lead very quickly to differences between my generation and my parents’ generation. the question there will be: in a practical and technological sense, what are the implications of us not wanting the things that our parents wanted/created? my parents’ generation created mass consumption, consumerism, et cetera.

what, then, are the cultural impacts of wanting different things? as spencer put it, “lots of people think about the tools themselves but not the cultural impact of the tools.” this rings true to me, particularly as i think about about how the institutions that facilitate (dominate?) our society seem increasingly out of touch… but not from lack of trying. they just were built for a different era with different constraints and desired outcomes.

so, what are the cultural implications of making differently and consuming differently? i missed the local implications of this, but i guess that’s what the book is for?

the things i write about: take one

in the past two days, two good friends (thx cameron and spencer) have told me i should write a book. this post is the first pass at what i think it could be about. take two has already been framed up by spencer; it’s about the implications of not wanting our parents’ systems. will probably write that tomorrow.

ok. take one:

i write and think about productivity, love, justice, and revolution. these are surprisingly consistent. they relate in surprisingly intimate ways. 

being productive results in knowing exactly how much you can produce given a certain input. it also generates the knowledge of what is your maximum comfortable/reasonable output.

this relates to love because when our work is right-sized, we have loving relationships between our colleages and collaborators and we leave space to love people outside of our work. lovers, parents, friends, children, community.

the love for community is where justice comes from. when you have time to love those around you, you begin to realize how you can do things to make life better for others. this generates specific action. that action is justice.

and this justice, love in action for your community, creates revolution. first internal, then interpersonal, then systemic.

productivity, love, justice, and revolution.

people aren’t cogs: we need to stop designing systems like they are

earlier this week, ross and i talked through a core piece of jungle’s thinking. the conversation was more coherent than this, but here are some bits and pieces.

unfortunately (and largely due to the industrialization of everything), organizations and corporations are built as if people within them were cogs. roles and responsibilities are delineated under specific positions and titles as if replacing the current person in a position with another will allow that work to be done just as well.

we all know that’s not real. we also know that even though these work systems are designed with that notion in mind, they don’t often ever even work that way. ross and i have both worked in several organizations where our presence or absence (just like everyone else’s) had a significant impact on what work got done and how. of course, the destructive side of this is what most people have experienced as a complete stall of forward motion when someone is missing (short- or long-term) from a team.

so how do we (jungle and beyond) do better? a few things:

1. don’t design work teams, protocols, and systems as if people are replaceable.
2. find the balance between setting goals and allowing whatever team (individual or multiple people) to bring their skills and passions to the table in order to achieve it. this is a non-trivial procedure.

productivity shifts when different people are on a team. just because someone is (temporarily or permanently) missing from a team, doesn’t mean the team’s progress should stop. it does mean that progress might (should?) look different. this is because people are unique. this fact should be treated like an asset, not a hindrance. this will require a cultural shift. it is beginning, but we have a long way to go.

note: this is sort of a follow-up from a piece i wrote earlier today: on companies that plan on employee burnout

on companies that plan on employee burnout

at the end of this piece are excerpts from two articles i’ve read in the last couple of months. they both point to a phenomenon whereby companies essentially plan on a particular employee burnout rate. i think that’s a shitty thing.

i first noticed this trend among my friends who left undergrad and went to work in finance (mostly at hedge funds) or management consulting (bcg, kpmg, mckinsey, etc.). almost everyone worked at their firm for two years and then moved on. the verbalized reasons were different for each of them, but i definitely noticed a consistency in the two year tenure. trends like this almost always point to deeper structural or systemic factors. 

i don’t think there’s anything wrong with knowing at what rate people turnover from your company. i do think there’s something wrong when you plan on a particularly high churn rate. i also think it’s a problem when you know that rate, do nothing to lower it, and use it as a cornerstone of your business.

the problem with that is that it treats people like cogs. people are not cogs. industrialization and the mechanization of labor has created this myth and it’s still wreaking havoc today. mechanistic design for tools (bikes, factory machines, computers) has allowed humanity a massive number of quality of life improvements. however, applying that same thinking to people in organizations and societies i think is fundamentally wrong. a cog or spring in a watch is easily replaced, but a person in a role is unique. people bring their own experiences, knowledge, identity, and perspective to everything they do. building systems as if two people are able to do a particular task the same is not just wrong, it’s actually a sub-optimization.

more on that in the next post…

quotes that inspired this post:

• “I remember giving a talk at a prestigious investment bank several years ago. At the end a partner stood up and said, “Mr. Schwartz, this is all very interesting, but we have a thousand people knocking on the door who can’t wait to come in and replace the people we’ve burned out. Why should we worry about giving people time to renew? When they burn out, we just bring in a fresh new group of people, who are thrilled to get the jobs.” I’d argue that in knowledge work, you get more out of a person in the third or fifth or seventh year than out of the replacement you brought in because the first worker collapsed in year two. This is a broader issue that deserves attention. We can’t keep pushing people to their limits and expect them to produce at a sustainably high level of excellence. The companies that build true competitive advantage in the years ahead will be those that shift from seeking to get more out of people to investing in better meeting their needs.” - tony schwartz in the article being more productive, harvard business review
  
• “Driver turnover is a key metric. As long as there are lots of people willing to try working for the service, it is possible to treat drivers as a disposable commodity. But this is short-term thinking. What you want are drivers who love the job and are good at it, are paid well, and as a result, keep at it. Over the long term, I predict that Uber and Lyft will be engaged in as fierce a contest to attract and keep drivers as they are to attract and keep customers today.  And that competition may well provide further evidence that higher wages can pay for themselves by improving productivity and driving greater consumer satisfaction.”
  — tim o’reilly, to survive, the game of business needs to update its rules