Alex Komoroske: recommendation

Transcript context

…I want to get to this idea of gardening versus building that is central to a lot of the way you think about it. But before we get there, I want to touch on another bit and bob that I love that you come back to occasionally, which is this idea of organizational kayfabe. Talk about what this idea of kayfabe is on its own and then how this applies to organizations in your experience. One thing I should flag before I dive into any this stuff, sometimes when people hear me talk about how organizations work and systems, they think I'm being cynical. And I want to be very clear, I'm hyper-optimistic and I also believe that one of the moral precepts is how do you maximize the agency of real humans as ends in and of themselves? And so sometimes when I get excited about this, people go, "Wow, that is so cynical." No, I'm just trying to describe the system as it actually exists. Once we know how it exists, we can figure out how to make it do great things and how we as members of this system can tweak and nudge it. So I just want to flag that before I dive into this. I have this slime mold deck which has gotten a ton of traction over the years, and part of the reason for that is because it feels like people tell me it feels like they think they're crazy and it feels like giving a big hug saying, "You are not crazy. Here's why this thing shows up." And once you acknowledge it, it feels like a bummer to acknowledge it, but once you do, now there's all kinds of options that pop up. "Oh, given that this thing is way more expensive than it looks, I can now do this instead. That one's 10 times cheaper. These two options, this one is way cheaper, way more likely to succeed." So once you see these forces, you see them more clearly. So kayfabe is I think a lens that's useful to understand how organizations actually work. Kayfabe is a word that comes, I believe is a carny word that is used and applied to professional wrestling and it means a thing that everybody knows is fake and yet everybody acts like is real. And I think it's one of the defining forces within an organization, any organization. So kayfabe in the small is optimism, enthusiasm. When someone says, "We're going to do this thing," you say, "Yeah, we're going to do that," even if I think this isn't going to work. If you say, "I don't think this think is going to work," everyone loses hope and it definitely doesn't work. So having a little bit of this is extremely valuable. It's the lubricant that allows organizations to believe they can do something and to attempt to do it. The problem that you get is as organizations get larger, imagine you are five levels down or something and you have this project you're working on and you're trying to give a status update to be rolled up to leadership. And it's currently a yellow, and your manager asks it and you know it's not going to be presented to leadership and enrolled up until next week. "It's yellow, but I've got my arms around the problem. I know how to fix it. I'm going to go talk to Sarah. I think we have a solution. By the time this is reported up the chain, it's going to be green." So if I make it yellow, there's a non-trivial chance that someone's going to swoop down and say, "Well, what's going on? We have a review," and it will be way harder to fix, so I'm just going to... A little white lie. ellow, there's a non-trivial chance that someone's going to swoop down and say, "Well, what's going on? We have a review," and it will be way harder to fix, so I'm just going to... A little white lie. This is a totally reasonable thing to do. It's a self-defensive thing to do. And it's probably the right thing for the organization too. The problem is this happens up multiple layers and it compounds. So then your layer above you does the same, and the same, and the same, and levels up you can be many orders of magnitude off of the ground truth. And so the kayfabe, the thing that everyone pretends to believe is true, is obviously incorrect. And the dangerous part about this is it can lead you to make very bad decisions. And if you as someone who sees this can see that wait a second, the official strategy is definitely not going to work, you're like, "I got to tell somebody. We're doing work that's going in a bad direction. It's not going to work." And you go and say, "I think that it's actually not going to work for these reasons." And what someone will say to you, this happens by the way, I'm not substituting any particular organization, this happens literally in all organizations to some degree, is the senior person will say, "Alex, I agree with you. It's not perfect, but if you hit the ground truth button, if you share that and everybody, the whole thing will shatter and we can't do anything. And so help me fix it. Don't say the ground truth. Just help nudge it and fix it." That's a good point. Okay, so you help working on it and then you realize a month later, wait a second, it's getting worse. We're doing things that's not good for the company. It's not creating user value. It's not good for the employees. They're burning out. It's just not good for anybody and it's getting worse. And so if you think you're going to go and hit the ground truth button, before you do, you'll be flying tackled to the ground by somebody and stabbed in the dark because you will destroy everything. And so it becomes correct to hold onto this idea of if you acknowledge the kayfabe is false, then you are in danger of getting knocked out of the game. And so how do you do good things despite the fact that you're pulled in two different directions? And this increasingly in the limit, it can be good to a point where the easiest way is if I do, if I hold on this idea, we might create significant value for the company. If I let go of this idea, I die. So the easiest way to maintain this split-brain thing is to just turn this part off and just earnestly believe the kayfabe. This has been organizations become zombies, and anyone individually you talk to behind the scenes will agree yes, it could not possibly work. That turns out that these things work this way, and yet the entire organization lumbers on. And this is a death state for large organizations. It happens all over the place in any number of different conditions, and this is one of the reasons it shows up. And I think acknowledging that is an important way to help navigate and still make good grounded things happen.…

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