Big monkeys management
Oct. 4th, 2015 07:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI have a theory about human behaviour, devised to explain the actions of Owen Harper in Torchwood. I am aware there's layers of problems there. But.
Owen Harper, when stressed, tries to piss off the boss. My theory is he feels small, so he picks a fight with the biggest monkey. Either he wins, in which case he's bigger than he thought, or big monkey wins, at which point it's all his problem and he's proven he's big enough to handle it. Except on Torchwood big monkey refused to play and fired him. So that doesn't work out so well.
Managers probably don't appreciate having small panic monkey around. If your problems from outside are big already, you do not want problems from inside the team. And it's a waste of effort doing threat displays to show you're biggest monkey. Well run teams are probably less monkey based.
But when we look for leaders some people have this sort of thing in mind. They're looking for someone bigger than them - actually depressingly literally, see correlation between height and getting elected, it's embarrassing. Someone bigger, stronger, smarter, all those useful things.
And in the genres we hang out in, we can take that further. Not hit the limits on human capacities. Go for the literally superhuman.
So Tony Stark, seeing a problem, tries to make himself bigger, stronger, faster, smarter. Be the biggest monkey around. And Captain America gets upgraded with strength, speed, and actually a foot of height, and now he's leader.
Problems: real life lacks superhumans. We're pretty much all monkeys. We make poetry and wear clothes, but a lot of the stress responses are from back up the tree.
But the idea of the bigger monkey is really pervasive. It's one of the appeals of stories about kings. It's not just that someone put them in charge, it's that they're somehow more suited to be there. They've won all the fights. They're the biggest monkey. They can deal with the biggest problems, at least better than any one of us could.
So there's a style of leadership that is very invested in being biggest monkey. The Owens of the world can bring it, for they will be crushed by biggest monkey's keen intellect and maybe shouting. And this is a problem when biggest monkey feels threatened, because they actually feel better once they've crushed a team mate or two, so they might initiate challenges when they could be saving the world or whatever.
There's also people who find a situation not to their liking and immediately set out to establish who is biggest monkey, and that it is in fact them. This isn't terribly helpful in the face of bureaucracy, or retail, or many other situations of modern human life. But there they are, feeling upset and small, so they either need a biggest monkey or to be biggest monkey, and nothing else gets done until that gets sorted.
I do not find the whole monkey thing very helpful, but it's my best guess at an explanation for a range of observed behaviour.
So the thing is, a decent manager does not have to be biggest monkey. There can be an ongoing lack of monkey business. If everyone is pretty sure we are all, when it gets down to it, more or less the same size of monkey, then different solutions must be pursued.
If the sky opens and aliens fall out then we can shout for the biggest monkeys to come save us, or, we can divide the task up small, and each do our bit.
Agents of SHIELD could be like that, no powers, just dealing with stuff.
If everyone is, for the scale of the current problem, pretty much same size, then we need teamwork. We can't pick a champion and wait for them. We can't hope someone else figures it all out for us. We need to get as big a team together as can be applied to the task and then sort it into smaller pieces and get each of those done.
That's the boss skill necessary for the modern era, to distribute tasks and allocate resources appropriately, and with a decent pyramid structure, such organisation can keep levelling up until it meets any challenge. Well, any challenge that can be handled by about seven billion people, thus far.
Torchwood was screwed for that approach because secrecy. Problem too big for half a dozen idiots in a basement? Problem not actually very big. World screwed.
But reaching out to the rest of the world doesn't make sense if you actually believe you're already inherently bigger monkeys. If the best of the best are in the room and can't handle it, what's the point in bringing in even smaller monkeys?
A lot of TV seems to think that way. Apocalypse? Beep Buffy. Buffy and her school year at the outside. You wouldn't want to go doing anything crazy like asking the world's best funded / largest military to come help. Because... monkeys.
I like best the UNISON ad with the ants though. Tiny little 'excuse mes' add up to huge great 'get out of the way'. And the ants could pick up the polar bear if they could get it evenly distributed.
So I like fantasy and science fiction when it's average people, badass normal at the outside, having to deal with these huge great problems. Because you can, if you just teamwork good enough.
But I also enjoy the power fantasy that does basically add up to 'but what if BIGGEST monkey?'
Owen Harper, when stressed, tries to piss off the boss. My theory is he feels small, so he picks a fight with the biggest monkey. Either he wins, in which case he's bigger than he thought, or big monkey wins, at which point it's all his problem and he's proven he's big enough to handle it. Except on Torchwood big monkey refused to play and fired him. So that doesn't work out so well.
Managers probably don't appreciate having small panic monkey around. If your problems from outside are big already, you do not want problems from inside the team. And it's a waste of effort doing threat displays to show you're biggest monkey. Well run teams are probably less monkey based.
But when we look for leaders some people have this sort of thing in mind. They're looking for someone bigger than them - actually depressingly literally, see correlation between height and getting elected, it's embarrassing. Someone bigger, stronger, smarter, all those useful things.
And in the genres we hang out in, we can take that further. Not hit the limits on human capacities. Go for the literally superhuman.
So Tony Stark, seeing a problem, tries to make himself bigger, stronger, faster, smarter. Be the biggest monkey around. And Captain America gets upgraded with strength, speed, and actually a foot of height, and now he's leader.
Problems: real life lacks superhumans. We're pretty much all monkeys. We make poetry and wear clothes, but a lot of the stress responses are from back up the tree.
But the idea of the bigger monkey is really pervasive. It's one of the appeals of stories about kings. It's not just that someone put them in charge, it's that they're somehow more suited to be there. They've won all the fights. They're the biggest monkey. They can deal with the biggest problems, at least better than any one of us could.
So there's a style of leadership that is very invested in being biggest monkey. The Owens of the world can bring it, for they will be crushed by biggest monkey's keen intellect and maybe shouting. And this is a problem when biggest monkey feels threatened, because they actually feel better once they've crushed a team mate or two, so they might initiate challenges when they could be saving the world or whatever.
There's also people who find a situation not to their liking and immediately set out to establish who is biggest monkey, and that it is in fact them. This isn't terribly helpful in the face of bureaucracy, or retail, or many other situations of modern human life. But there they are, feeling upset and small, so they either need a biggest monkey or to be biggest monkey, and nothing else gets done until that gets sorted.
I do not find the whole monkey thing very helpful, but it's my best guess at an explanation for a range of observed behaviour.
So the thing is, a decent manager does not have to be biggest monkey. There can be an ongoing lack of monkey business. If everyone is pretty sure we are all, when it gets down to it, more or less the same size of monkey, then different solutions must be pursued.
If the sky opens and aliens fall out then we can shout for the biggest monkeys to come save us, or, we can divide the task up small, and each do our bit.
Agents of SHIELD could be like that, no powers, just dealing with stuff.
If everyone is, for the scale of the current problem, pretty much same size, then we need teamwork. We can't pick a champion and wait for them. We can't hope someone else figures it all out for us. We need to get as big a team together as can be applied to the task and then sort it into smaller pieces and get each of those done.
That's the boss skill necessary for the modern era, to distribute tasks and allocate resources appropriately, and with a decent pyramid structure, such organisation can keep levelling up until it meets any challenge. Well, any challenge that can be handled by about seven billion people, thus far.
Torchwood was screwed for that approach because secrecy. Problem too big for half a dozen idiots in a basement? Problem not actually very big. World screwed.
But reaching out to the rest of the world doesn't make sense if you actually believe you're already inherently bigger monkeys. If the best of the best are in the room and can't handle it, what's the point in bringing in even smaller monkeys?
A lot of TV seems to think that way. Apocalypse? Beep Buffy. Buffy and her school year at the outside. You wouldn't want to go doing anything crazy like asking the world's best funded / largest military to come help. Because... monkeys.
I like best the UNISON ad with the ants though. Tiny little 'excuse mes' add up to huge great 'get out of the way'. And the ants could pick up the polar bear if they could get it evenly distributed.
So I like fantasy and science fiction when it's average people, badass normal at the outside, having to deal with these huge great problems. Because you can, if you just teamwork good enough.
But I also enjoy the power fantasy that does basically add up to 'but what if BIGGEST monkey?'