Big organizations treat employees like replaceable cogs in the machine. Which for creative or highly skilled endeavors is really dumb. They kill the goose that lays the golden eggs (or allow it to be killed) over and over either because they don't realize it lays golden eggs, because they think they can easily find another such goose, or because they think they were responsible for its creation and therefore they can create another one. Arguably this is the primary advantage that we have on our side: an ability and flexibility to treat people as valuable parts of a whole.
It's not even about how organizations behave. Yes, organizations exhibit "emergent behavior" - the whole acts independently of each part's desires - but really I think the problem is the managerial class and the culture of changing jobs every few years.
There's this entire class of upper management who keep jumping companies every few years. A board of directors hires a new CEO, the new CEO makes a bunch of retarded decisions, but he can convince the completely disinterested board that these decisions will really pay off in the long term. Short term damage isn't all that bad, the board is convinced the short-term losses will lead to the company skyrocketing, and by the time the long-term terrible consequences of the CEO's rule of retardation reveal themselves, the guy already cashed in his stock and is in the top management of a different company. The board is dumbfounded, and so they hire the next CEO who just quit his job in a completely unrelated company and now he has a great PowerPoint plan to save theirs.
Management only works when managers come from people who used to work "on the line", literally or figuratively. Professional managers are one of the many cancers currently destroying capitalism and it needs to stop.
It's not even about how organizations behave. Yes, organizations exhibit "emergent behavior" - the whole acts independently of each part's desires - but really I think the problem is the managerial class and the culture of changing jobs every few years.
There's this entire class of upper management who keep jumping companies every few years. A board of directors hires a new CEO, the new CEO makes a bunch of retarded decisions, but he can convince the completely disinterested board that these decisions will really pay off in the long term. Short term damage isn't all that bad, the board is convinced the short-term losses will lead to the company skyrocketing, and by the time the long-term terrible consequences of the CEO's rule of retardation reveal themselves, the guy already cashed in his stock and is in the top management of a different company. The board is dumbfounded, and so they hire the next CEO who just quit his job in a completely unrelated company and now he has a great PowerPoint plan to save theirs.
Management only works when managers come from people who used to work "on the line", literally or figuratively. Professional managers are one of the many cancers currently destroying capitalism and it needs to stop.