I'll give you a read. If you haven't read it already, I strongly recommend the Knapp Commission Report. Its about police corruption in New York City in 1972, but its lessons on systemic and institutionalized corruption are highly transferable to other contexts. Probably the most common naive mistake I see is people thinking their subfield is special and they are the first to really notice / understand fraud within it…
I'm Eric Ries, author of "The Lean Startup" and new book "Incorruptible" – AMA
531–540 of 618 posts
Re: I'm Eric Ries, author of "The Lean Startup" and new book "Incorruptible" – AMA
#532Re: I'm Eric Ries, author of "The Lean Startup" and new book "Incorruptible" – AMA
#533Re: I'm Eric Ries, author of "The Lean Startup" and new book "Incorruptible" – AMA
#534Serious question: I find that the core issue in corruption, and the corruptibility of an individual and then the groups they are a member relies on plain spoken communication skills, and the ability or inability of an individual to protect themselves from self deception.
A "uncorrupt person" does not choose to be corrupt, they lie to themselves with little corruptions until "it is too late" and then with no (self assessed) alternative they commit to their situation.
As well as a group of people knowingly engaged in less than ethically honest activities must impress their ethical failures on all their peers, to insure their safety if the corruption is exposed, and they then bully their uncomprehending peers into corruption.
All of this is caused to the educational hole that is effective communications: people are not taught how to identify honest and dishonest self conversation, people are not taught how to communicate without information mistakes they refuse are mistakes, omissions of critical information, and then deferment of blame when half considered strategies are met by complex reality.
I've been working in tech, at all levels, since the 70's. The #1 characteristic of every single organization I have been a member and interacted with is poor communications, weak documentation, and nobody able to discuss the topics at hand without technical pretension, omissions, misdirections, and misinformation.
This nonsense is all due to no real emphasis on communicating to mutual understanding anywhere in the verticals of technical and science educations. And that includes the communications in people's heads that drive them to comforting non-solutions they attempt and fail.
Re: I'm Eric Ries, author of "The Lean Startup" and new book "Incorruptible" – AMA
#535Re: I'm Eric Ries, author of "The Lean Startup" and new book "Incorruptible" – AMA
#536Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the claim that something by itself is enough has to explain why most companies are able to be destroyed, even though they have really good leadership I think most of us are happy to believe that most companies simply have bad leadership, that leadership quality really is the axis on which Costco differs from others. If you want us to believe that other (destroyed) companies' leadership is just as good as Costco's,…
"I think most of us are happy to believe that most companies simply have bad leadership" I don't believe this for a second. I don't know if this makes me the minority or not though! It trivializes forces influencing large public companies. Yes - there can be good and bad leadership - and bad leadership is just bad. But good leadership can be totally helpless in a public company. Not recognizing this is a huge gap. Th…
And is shorthanding “everyone without direct experience of the influential power of market forces” into “most of us.”
I think it’s fair to say that the fact that more or most people _don’t_ understand that and _do_ think it’s “all just leadership” explains much of the sentiment about capitalism generally.
Re: I'm Eric Ries, author of "The Lean Startup" and new book "Incorruptible" – AMA
#537I'll give you a read. If you haven't read it already, I strongly recommend the Knapp Commission Report. Its about police corruption in New York City in 1972, but its lessons on systemic and institutionalized corruption are highly transferable to other contexts. Probably the most common naive mistake I see is people thinking their subfield is special and they are the first to really notice / understand fraud within it…
gotta love HN. Top comment on an AMA with an author who's actually written books is "Here is a book you should read".
Re: I'm Eric Ries, author of "The Lean Startup" and new book "Incorruptible" – AMA
#538Eric, it's interesting the companies you've picked that "structurally resist gravity" and the ones you've left out. Costco, Patagonia, and Nova Nordisk are all interesting cases. But you're missing Mondragon, Equal Exchange, King Arthur Flour, and many others. Basically, you appear to be focusing on investor owned companies and missing the entire class of worker cooperatives where the financial gravity you're talking…
Both Mondragon and King Arthur Flour are in the book. I'm not familiar with Equal Exchange, but now that you've mentioned it, I'm going to go learn more.
It's extremely hard, because there's (almost) no infrastructure for it and funding is all but impossible to come by. The evidence is pretty strong that once cooperatives get going they are more resilient and far more pro-social than capital funded businesses. They are that structure your book seems to be alluding to that resists corruption.
There are two main reasons there aren't more of them: lack of awareness and lack of capital to fund them. If we want a truly pro-social economy, we should really work on fixing those two problems!
Re: I'm Eric Ries, author of "The Lean Startup" and new book "Incorruptible" – AMA
#539Earlier quoted context omitted.
gotta love HN. Top comment on an AMA with an author who's actually written books is "Here is a book you should read".
[flagged]
God I hate that, please send me more to-the-point tone deaf emails and messages.
Re: I'm Eric Ries, author of "The Lean Startup" and new book "Incorruptible" – AMA
#540Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's interesting is that this is not a long-standing pillar of the American financial system but a relatively recent addition that was done without any democratic legitimacy whatsoever. I think it's pretty clear that if we go a different direction, we can have a different outcome.
Is it much different in other countries?