The more I work in corporate and learn about office politics, the more I see parallels to geopolitics and diplomacy. If I squint, I can even see the parallels to social and romantic relationships as well.
Maybe it's the mathematician in me who enjoys building models of abstraction.
One of my favorite subjects is politics. I enjoy reading books about politics, and keeping up on (geo-)politics, subscribe to political magazines and honestly don’t mind navigating office politics.
Because at the heart of it it’s all the same. It’s humans acting like humans. Every person (and organization) has desires and fears. When two parties get together, balancing everyone’s wants is fun. It’s like a complicated engineering problem, except with people requirements instead, and politics is the architecture.
I think people are rad and genuinely enjoy these kinds of problems.
My own experience is that it's hard to do predictable engineering in more social environments because requirements can change from one hour to another and there's no reprocurssiom, you just have accept it and move on.
Although this also happens in office environments, there's more accountability and continuous planning, making requirements changes something that is undesirable.
I only recently realized this. I was seeing geopolitics as an intricate, emergent behavior of complex systems made of hundreds of diplomats. I realized it was merely interpersonal relationships between a few country leaders who happen to have power over their respective states, military etc. This is not as different as kindergarten playground drama and squabbles, to some approximation of course.
I think that's the wrong lesson to take. The realist approach to international relations where states are controlled from the top as you describe is more legible. Instead I agree that it's really based on interpersonal relationships, but that those relationships are between CEOs, diplomats, immigrant communities, military officers, and of course also country leaders. This illegible network is what guides actually guides policy.
Is it not natural for that? I think less so between social and romantic but larger businesses and governments have definitely share many of the same problems. Though I think businesses tend to be much more autocratic. Maybe feudal is a better term?
There's definitely a lot of differences but I think the larger a business becomes the more government like it becomes. Or at least it appears that way to me. I mean they're both very bureaucratic
Govts are typically "large enterprise". In most cases the largest enterprise in a country.
In some countries they also have the burden of being legible to outsiders. Between the shareholders (voters) and journalists etc there's a lot of process that has to be transparent.
This transparency is legibility driven to extremes. If an enterprise kills a project (think Windows Phone) its done, and we move on. If a govt kills a project there's a lot of external attention on what went wrong, who's getting fired (or going to jail) and how "our money got wasted".
So yes, as things get bigger they matter to more people. The more people involved the more every single thought and action has to be meticulously detailed.
Which is party why (democratic) govt is soooo bad at actually getting anything done. Feudal govts, and autocratic businesses, get a lot done - much of it quickly. It might not be good. It might be motivated my enrichment not care, but it gets done fast.
A good autocrat moves the needle, and things get a lot better very quickly. A bad autocrat achieves his goals, often at enormous cost to the organization (which may not survive. )
Physicists think the strongest force in the universe is the one that holds protons and neutrons together, but the real strongest force in the universe is game theory.
> We humans love to make patterns out of everything.
Not sure in which vein you meant:
1. Humans exhibit some behavioral patterns.
2. Cognitive bias where the brain thinks that there is a pattern when no such pattern exist.
I think you meant the second one. I used to think I am good at noticing patterns. But then I realized that this perception about myself clouded my vision of looking at a given problem or system because my brain tried to pattern match problems and solutions. While it worked in some cases, it did not in others. And just telling myself that while I think that there's a pattern here, there may or may not be a pattern helped- just being aware of cognitive bias.
harrall|4 months ago
Because at the heart of it it’s all the same. It’s humans acting like humans. Every person (and organization) has desires and fears. When two parties get together, balancing everyone’s wants is fun. It’s like a complicated engineering problem, except with people requirements instead, and politics is the architecture.
I think people are rad and genuinely enjoy these kinds of problems.
rukuu001|4 months ago
A group I used to work with framed it as needs and fears, and would produce a ‘conflict map’ when heading into a situation with multiple stakeholders.
The conflict map set out the needs and fears of each group, and indicated where they were incompatible.
That information was used to proactively resolve, or at least plan around those areas of conflict.
ranguna|4 months ago
Although this also happens in office environments, there's more accountability and continuous planning, making requirements changes something that is undesirable.
rossant|4 months ago
joarxpablo|4 months ago
6510|4 months ago
godelski|4 months ago
There's definitely a lot of differences but I think the larger a business becomes the more government like it becomes. Or at least it appears that way to me. I mean they're both very bureaucratic
bruce511|4 months ago
In some countries they also have the burden of being legible to outsiders. Between the shareholders (voters) and journalists etc there's a lot of process that has to be transparent.
This transparency is legibility driven to extremes. If an enterprise kills a project (think Windows Phone) its done, and we move on. If a govt kills a project there's a lot of external attention on what went wrong, who's getting fired (or going to jail) and how "our money got wasted".
So yes, as things get bigger they matter to more people. The more people involved the more every single thought and action has to be meticulously detailed.
Which is party why (democratic) govt is soooo bad at actually getting anything done. Feudal govts, and autocratic businesses, get a lot done - much of it quickly. It might not be good. It might be motivated my enrichment not care, but it gets done fast.
A good autocrat moves the needle, and things get a lot better very quickly. A bad autocrat achieves his goals, often at enormous cost to the organization (which may not survive. )
15155|4 months ago
immibis|4 months ago
nrclark|4 months ago
People are irrational actors way more often than they are rational ones.
linhns|4 months ago
lanyard-textile|4 months ago
fruitplants|4 months ago
Not sure in which vein you meant: 1. Humans exhibit some behavioral patterns.
2. Cognitive bias where the brain thinks that there is a pattern when no such pattern exist.
I think you meant the second one. I used to think I am good at noticing patterns. But then I realized that this perception about myself clouded my vision of looking at a given problem or system because my brain tried to pattern match problems and solutions. While it worked in some cases, it did not in others. And just telling myself that while I think that there's a pattern here, there may or may not be a pattern helped- just being aware of cognitive bias.