Work Is Work
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Work Is Work
1–10 of 45 posts
Re: Work Is Work
#2> The work capacity of an organization scales, at most, linearly as new members are added.
This is going to sound kind of grim, but a counterexample here is, e.g., a Southern plantation where children of slaves were also born into slavery, yielding a superlinear work capacity. With that said, even though I intuitively agree with the statement, I think other (more contemporary) counterexamples might exist.
> Coherence costs grow quadratically as new members are added.
I see the point here, but I'm not sure how I can reconcile it with the reality of modern-day armed forces: where millions of organizational members function extremely efficiently (possibly due to very rigid organizational structures -- which the article doesn't really touch on). It seems there's a ratio between dyads and "organizational strength" which probably yields "true" coherence.
Re: Work Is Work
#3I will note that I have written the following in jest, due to the title of the post. I have not read your post, before writing the following statements: Arch biet Mach Frei - There was a man once, who believed as such. Although there were a great many more under him, who didn't much like what he had to say. Even though quite many simply went along with it, because it seemed easy, comforting, one might even contend that it was the right thing at the right time, while the others vehemently opposed such thinking and critique.
Re: Work Is Work
#4> Keep the work parallel, the groups small, and the resources local.
That how the military gets things done, by having a trained officer corps which can think on a local level and the higher up give general guidelines for how to proceed in different situations.
Re: Work Is Work
#5I believe there are two sides I'm aware of when it comes to people. Firstly there exists persons that consider work as another extension of life with social merit. Secondly the persons that think of work as work and disregard any social merit because they care more about it outside of work.
In my opinion if we shut out the first classification we're making these persons miserable because they see social merit in work. I also believe work has become overly optimized compared to previous years and where people should still be able to enjoy social merit if they desire it.
Re: Work Is Work
#6I will note that I have written the following in jest, due to the title of the post. I have not read your post, before writing the following statements: Arch biet Mach Frei - There was a man once, who believed as such. Although there were a great many more under him, who didn't much like what he had to say. Even though quite many simply went along with it, because it seemed easy, comforting, one might even contend th…
> I have not read your post
Then don’t comment?
Re: Work Is Work
#7> Keep the work parallel, the groups small, and the resources local. That how the military gets things done, by having a trained officer corps which can think on a local level and the higher up give general guidelines for how to proceed in different situations.
I guess it depends what you mean by that exactly. Military "group" sizes range from squads (~30 people) to corps (~50,000 people). According to the article, the dyad sizes here would be huge; but my hypothesis was that point-to-point communication is often not necessary in military organizations due to the rigid structure.
Re: Work Is Work
#8> Keep the work parallel, the groups small, and the resources local. That how the military gets things done, by having a trained officer corps which can think on a local level and the higher up give general guidelines for how to proceed in different situations.
I guess it depends what you mean by that exactly. Military "group" sizes range from squads (~30 people) to corps (~50,000 people). According to the article, the dyad sizes here would be huge; but my hypothesis was that point-to-point communication is often not necessary in military organizations due to the rigid structure.
Not necessary, and also actively inhibited via chain-of-command
Re: Work Is Work
#9> The work capacity of an organization scales, at most, linearly as new members are added. This is going to sound kind of grim, but a counterexample here is, e.g., a Southern plantation where children of slaves were also born into slavery, yielding a superlinear work capacity. With that said, even though I intuitively agree with the statement, I think other (more contemporary) counterexamples might exist. > Coherence…
> the reality of modern-day armed forces: millions of organizational members function extremely efficiently
How do you define "extremely efficiently" in this case?
Re: Work Is Work
#10> Keep the work parallel, the groups small, and the resources local. That how the military gets things done, by having a trained officer corps which can think on a local level and the higher up give general guidelines for how to proceed in different situations.
I guess it depends what you mean by that exactly. Military "group" sizes range from squads (~30 people) to corps (~50,000 people). According to the article, the dyad sizes here would be huge; but my hypothesis was that point-to-point communication is often not necessary in military organizations due to the rigid structure.
I mean that each unit in the military has some general orders on how to proceed in their mission, but the commander has a lot of flexibility. That true for the squad the same as for the platoon, they're just different sizes. The work gets done efficiently because there isn't the need to approve each action with the next level up, but often in business they don't trust the low level manager to make those decisions.