Stuff you must read today (Sun, 16 Feb 2020) – The Explaining Incompetence Edition

  • Research: Do People Really Get Promoted to Their Level of Incompetence? | Harvard Business Review
    A confirmation of The Peter Principle and how firms can manage around it: creating a structure in which top performers are rewarded with pay rather than promotion; and promoting, to managerial positions, staff who are above-average in individual contributor roles, but savvy in skillsets of leadership.

  • The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity | Carlo M. Cipolla
    An essay by an Italian economic historian that provides an explanation for human behaviour in the world.

  • The Dunning-Kruger Effect Shows Why Some People Think They’re Great Even When Their Work Is Terrible | Forbes
    “…many people are underperforming simply because they don’t know that they could be doing better or what really great performance looks like. It’s not that they’re necessarily being defensive, rather they just lack the knowledge. In fact, he told me that research subjects were willing to criticize their own previous poor skills once they were trained up and could see the difference between their previous poor performance and their new improved performance”.

  • If Humble People Make the Best Leaders, Why Do We Fall for Charismatic Narcissists? | Harvard Business Review
    “…narcissistic individuals radiate ‘an image of a prototypically effective leader.’ Narcissistic leaders know how to draw attention toward themselves. They enjoy the visibility. It takes time for people to see that these early signals of competence are not later realized, and that a leader’s narcissism reduces the exchange of information among team members and often negatively affects group performance”.
     
  • Putt’s Law | davewentzel.com
    “I really admire managers who follow the management-by-walking-around (MBWA) principle. This management philosophy is very simple: The best managers are those who leave their offices and observe. By observing they learn what the challenges are for their teams and how to help them better.
     

    So, what I am looking for in a manager?

    1. He knows he is the least qualified person to make a technical decision.
    2. He is a facilitator. He knows how to help his technologists succeed.
    3. MBWA.”

Stuff you must read today (Sat, 4 Mar 2017) – The Leadership and Management Edition

Nothing lasts forever

Last night’s gig by Guns N’ Roses marked the end of an era.

It was a great gig; the band was tight and everyone pulled out all stops to give their all.

Kudos to Slash, especially – he was holding the act together with his instrumental pieces.

However, Axl Rose’s singing was a stark reminder of how we are all mortal.

His vocals aren’t as good as they used to be – understandably so, because of age and a lifetime of various forms of abuse.

He demonstrated a much more limited vocal range and inconsistent singing quality e.g. songs like “Sweet Child Of Mine” were pitch perfect and performed to almost album-like quality, to the note.

On other songs it was especially apparent that he was masking the decreased ability to reach a certain pitch by slurring his words or taking tonal shortcuts.

I thought this mortality was most ironically epitomised during “November Rain”, when he sang the line “nothing lasts forever, even cold November rain” and “Knocking On Heaven’s Door”:

Mama take this badge from me
I can’t use it anymore
It’s getting dark too dark to see
Feels like I’m knockin’ on heaven’s door

The performance aside, I want to detail some of the experiences for posterity, and also, in case it’s good feedback for anyone who wants to organise a concert:

  1. The drive there was terrible.At one point, the jam along Changi Coast Road got so bad that people started getting out of their cars and running to the venue.

    The organisers have to recognise that the venue has serious transportation limitations.

    First, there are zero public transport options.

    Second, there is only one two-lane road going in:

    My sister and I were joking that LAMC Productions should’ve just should’ve organised a ferry service from Harbourfront to Changi Ferry Terminal.

    With the coastal hook, it would provide gig-goers an alternative mode of transport plus get commuters there in a quicker time and with a more scenic view.

    While stuck in the jam, I also had some time to think about whether we should’ve taken the shuttle bus.

    Because it wasn’t mandatory, taking the shuttle bus wouldn’t have helped.

    So there’s a need to give a larger incentive to get people to take the shuttle bus e.g. disallow parking at the venue, give discounts for early birds, etc.

  2. The gig management itself was terrible.
    • No one collected our tickets at the door, which made me feel like we shouldn’t have bought tickets.
    • For Pen B tickets holders, part of the view was blocked; the organisers had erected some kind of barrier, for reasons I know not.

      If you buy a more expensive VIP or Pen A ticket, you pay more to be closer to the action.

      If you buy a cheaper ticket, you do so with the cognisance that you will be farther from the stage – but your view shouldn’t be blocked.
    • At some point in the night, they closed the token top-up counters (we could only pay using a token, which we had to top-up using cash or credit).

      I had $10 left in my token and the money was non-refundable. So if there weren’t any items with which I could spend the $10, I would’ve been shorted.

      I’m not sure if they had announced beforehand that top-up counters would be closed.

      Even if they did, who would remember/who would want to take a break from music they wanted to listen to, just to top-up their tokens before the counter closed?
    • Last but not least, it seems they didn’t check the tickets.So at a later point in the night, we managed to get into Pen A because no one seemed to care.

      That was the saving grace of the night – but it also made me wonder if I should’ve bought tickets at all…

UPDATE: LAMC Productions’ Ross Knudson breaks down what went wrong at Guns N’ Roses’ show in Singapore.