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Nobody ever gets credit for fixing problems that never happened (2001) [pdf]

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Re: Nobody ever gets credit for fixing problems that never happened (2001) [pdf]

#31

Post by ChicknNuggt »

keyle wrote: post #17

I've been in those companies where "struggling departments" ended up getting all the praises and raise in budgets the following quarter because of the heroic saves they did, and raising awareness on how important they are... For stuff they totally caused on themselves. Meanwhile, my perfectly purring department was struggling to keep the lights on. It's a serious problem in this industry due to the disconnect between…

I feel that disconnect is everywhere, when the suits dont see anything and act on reports

Re: Nobody ever gets credit for fixing problems that never happened (2001) [pdf]

#32

Post by dang »

Related. Others?

Nobody ever gets credit for fixing problems that never happened (2001) [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39472693 - Feb 2024 (424 comments)

Nobody Ever Gets Credit for Fixing Problems That Never Happened (2001) [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8940820 - Jan 2015 (50 comments)

Re: Nobody ever gets credit for fixing problems that never happened (2001) [pdf]

#33

Post by willXare »

keyle wrote: post #17

I've been in those companies where "struggling departments" ended up getting all the praises and raise in budgets the following quarter because of the heroic saves they did, and raising awareness on how important they are... For stuff they totally caused on themselves. Meanwhile, my perfectly purring department was struggling to keep the lights on. It's a serious problem in this industry due to the disconnect between…

[flagged]

Re: Nobody ever gets credit for fixing problems that never happened (2001) [pdf]

#34

Post by macrocosmos »

jacques_chester wrote: post #4

You'll see capability traps everywhere once you learn about them. Sterman, Repenning and other collaborators wrote several papers after this one. All fascinating and almost entirely depressing. Especially since MIT's Sloan school, where system dynamics first became a discipline, is just around the bend from Harvard Business school, where system dynamics first became ignored.

One thing I don't get about the concept of capability traps is why is it expected that a company which is good at one thing would be capable at the new thing? What exactly makes a capability trap a trap?

Re: Nobody ever gets credit for fixing problems that never happened (2001) [pdf]

#35

Post by Terr_ »

nullhole wrote: post #25
timmg wrote: post #9

There are a lot of things like this. My favorite is how elegant solutions often look simple in retrospect. So if you noodle on a problem for a while and then come up with a clever solution: once you explain it to someone they'll be like, "yeah, of course." Meanwhile the guy next to you that overcomplicates the problem ends up getting kudos for building something so difficult :D

The passage that comes to mind for me whenever this idea comes up, from the Brett version of the Holmes story "The Dancing Men": H: So, Watson. W: Hmm. H: You do not propose to invest in South African securities? W: How on earth do you know that? H: Now, confess, you are utterly taken aback. W: I am! H: I should make you sign a paper to that effect. W: Why? H: Because in a few minutes you will say it is all so absurd…

Found the clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zx6Dr1iJ4p8&t=3m13s

Re: Nobody ever gets credit for fixing problems that never happened (2001) [pdf]

#37

Post by smath »

I'm looking for some data -- if anyone has it -- on the fraction of companies that are led (CEO) by a technical person, over the years/decades. I have the (anecdotal) impression that this fraction has been falling (stories like Boeing), but it would be cool to support or refute this with hard data. Anyone know where to find/assemble something like this? Also, if this trend is true, then why?

Re: Nobody ever gets credit for fixing problems that never happened (2001) [pdf]

#38

Post by fugaziboutit »

timmg wrote: post #9

There are a lot of things like this. My favorite is how elegant solutions often look simple in retrospect. So if you noodle on a problem for a while and then come up with a clever solution: once you explain it to someone they'll be like, "yeah, of course." Meanwhile the guy next to you that overcomplicates the problem ends up getting kudos for building something so difficult :D

"Je n'ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n'ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte."

("I have made this longer than usual, only because I have not had the time to make it shorter.")

Blaise Pascal

Re: Nobody ever gets credit for fixing problems that never happened (2001) [pdf]

#39

Post by cortesoft »

armada651 wrote: post #7
rmunn wrote: post #6

Article published in the Summer 2001 edition of California Management Review, yet it never mentioned Y2K, the first thing I thought of when I read the line "fixing problems that never happened". Perhaps it was actually written in 1999 and took a while to get published, because otherwise that seems a very strange omission. The Y2K problem was very much over-hyped by the American news media at the time (no, at no point…

The problem is that a lot of people have a very binary view on life. Either something is a complete success or a complete waste of money, rarely do we accept that most projects fall somewhere in the middle.

And even worse, they don't think probability is a thing. If something happens, it was certain to happen and we just failed to predict it correctly.

So when someone predicts something will happen with a 90% probability, and then the 10% chances happens and the predicted event does not happen, people will talk about what a bad prediction that was and how they were clearly wrong.

It's the same logic that causes people to say vaccines don't work because they don't stop a disease with 100% effectiveness, or that there is no point to wear a seatbelt because people still die while wearing one.

Re: Nobody ever gets credit for fixing problems that never happened (2001) [pdf]

#40

Post by didgetmaster »

We all learned this back in first grade. The kids that behaved in class and did their homework did not command most of the teacher's time and effort. It was the problem children who refused to follow the rules and needed constant praise for every bit of actual effort that they put into their studies; that got the teacher's attention.
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