> In every place I've been, school, university, corporate jobs, the "critical thinkers" always got marginalised.
Because while they get things done, they challenge the status quo.
When I've worked for large companies, the #1, #2, and #3 products of the company were management politics. Actually shipping anything was #4, maybe #5. Critical thinkers looked at that and went "we could do better", and got punished for it.
in a large company, if the main products are management politics, as you say, a capable critical thinker ought to be able to dominate that game, instead of focusing on relatively unimportant priorities like "shipping".
if someone tends to get marginalized, by definition that means they are ineffective at "getting things done".
>in a large company, if the main products are management politics, as you say, a capable critical thinker ought to be able to dominate that game
There's often no point. The main currencies of corporate politics are power, fealty, loyalty, power in numbers and image.
You can use your critical thinking to spin a good story but building coalitions takes time and demonstrating loyalty takes time. In a company on a downward trend is investing that time worth it? Probably not. Is it worth it if your best quality is that you're a reliable kiss ass? Maybe.
If shipping is priority #5 you'd likely do better getting out and moving to a company where it's #1 or #2 where critical thinking skills are more directly rewarded and you don't have to spend 5 years kissing the ring of an idiot boss in order to win political arguments.
> in a large company, if the main products are management politics, as you say, a capable critical thinker ought to be able to dominate that game, instead of focusing on relatively unimportant priorities like "shipping".
Um, they do exactly that? Upper managers are notorious for spending most of their time playing politics and very little time delivering product.
person i was responding to was defining "critical thinkers" as the ones who get sidelined and punished for challenging the status quo and focusing on priorities that are secondary (in fact not even secondary, #4, #5) to the purported main product of large companies, which is political gamesmanship.
so, alleged "critical thinkers" in this context are just the frustrated losers who think they are the one who get things done (which everyone thinks of themselves), but who actually focus on the wrong things to get done, while also rendering themselves ineffective even in that effort.
You're definition of "get things done" is Orwellian in its inanity...
Edit: as per your notion that critical thinkers should apparently just play the game better, rather than...I don't know...think critically/critique it.
please read the comments i am responding to. the comment i am responding to is positing that in large companies, the main product is political game-playing (i do not necessarily believe that this is true), stating that delivering and shipping what people typically think of as "product" is #4 and #5 at best (again, i think that is a distorted generalization).
at the same time, the comment i am replying to posits that "critical thinkers" are the effective people in an organization who are really the ones who get things done. at the same time stating that these people who get things done are sidelined, punished and rendered ineffective by the organization. at the same time stating that these same people are the ones who are focused on low-priority items in that organization.
i agree with you, taken together, those statements are rather inane.. not only that but also wildly inconsistent, an ironic example of sloppy critical thinking.
i do not know where you get the impression that critical thinkers "should" play the game better. i am stating the obvious (which apparently isnt), that you would expect truly effective critical thinkers to be very good at focusing on the main priority within an organization, which based on the definitions defined by the previous commentor, is not "shipping product", but rather playing the game better. i disagree with that conclusion, but it is a consistent conclusion that follows assumptions that i also think are flawed.
in fact, assuming the negative assumptions about large organizations are valid, truly effective critical thinkers in such an organization would be able to see thru typical "mission statements" about delivering great product and service yada yada ... and instead focus on the accumulation of individual power and influence, if that is the main purpose of any human group. "the true organization man is the one who is most skeptical [aka critically thinking] about the organization"... or something like that.
anyway, critical thinking and emotionalism (bitterness and resentment about the unfairness of it all) would seem to be mutually opposed.
critical thinking and Machiavellianism are orthogonal. if you read the comments i am responding to, you'd see that those comments are the ones which are making the assumption that critical thinkers are non-Machiavellian, which is just as inane as the idea that critical thinking should be Machiavellian in nature. perhaps the problem is that for most people it is more emotionally satisfying to believe themselves as non-Machiavellian critical thinkers, thus confusing the two as related somehow.
consider two fundamental properties of critical thinking: asking the right questions, and objectivity. in a large organization that was defined (not by me) as having politics and power-playing as the main priority, then the person who thinks they are "getting things done" as long as those "things" do not involve icky political managerial dynamics ("selling my soul"), never thinking to question their own personal biases of "just because i like to put my head down and work on shipping product, is that the right thing to get done?", would seem to in fact not be engaging in critical thinking at all.
again, my reply is responding to (not supporting) the nonsensical proposition that critical thinkers (as ill-defined by other commentors) are more effective than Machiavellian actors, even as they are supposedly marginalized (aka rendered ineffective) within large organizations.
i can understand why that line of thinking is confusing, because it is.
No, it's not confusing, it's just wrong. You're confusing objectivity, which is understanding how a situation really works, with a moral imperative to take advantage of every situation.
You're also implying that Machivellianism works better for individuals and corporations.
There's absolutely no evidence to support that position, and plenty of evidence to refute it - not least the incredibly stupid and destructive decisions made by corporate "winners" for reasons of political advantage which regularly sink companies and damage their own employment prospects.
If you were truly engaging in critical thinking you'd be able to understand this. In fact all you're doing is projecting the inverse of your own emotional biases onto people who not only have different motivations, but are modelling outcomes as a whole more effectively than you are.
The key question is the size of your predictive horizon. Just because someone is effective at small-scale politics doesn't mean they understand likely outcomes from a broader perspective.
In your system "critical thinkers" would be just as effective in absolutely any political system, including bureaucracy for its own sake, and North Korean dictatorship.
Clearly both of those have fundamental inefficiencies and stupidities which severely limit their practical effectiveness. Playing the game may be expedient if you're trapped inside them, but the inefficiencies and stupidities can only ever be mitigated by individuals who understand what's wrong with them, not by those who conform to them for personal gain.
> There's absolutely no evidence to support that position, and plenty of evidence to refute it - not least the incredibly stupid and destructive decisions made by corporate "winners" for reasons of political advantage which regularly sink companies and damage their own employment prospects.
In engineering terms, optimizing for local maxima doesn't mean you get the global maxima.
i.e. managers playing political games over crap "win" in the short term. And sink companies in the long term.
I know people who worked at DEC. They said it was a great company when it was focussed on products, and on engineering. Then at some point, "professional managers" took over. Management then became focussed on politics and infighting. And... DEC died.
> If you were truly engaging in critical thinking you'd be able to understand this. In fact all you're doing is projecting the inverse of your own emotional biases onto people who not only have different motivations, but are modelling outcomes as a whole more effectively than you are.
That sounds right to me.
The immediate labeling of people as "frustrated losers" shows that his reaction is emotional, and not rational.
> You're also implying that Machivellianism works better for individuals and corporations.
my position is exactly the opposite of stating that Machivellianism "works better". in fact the comments i have been responding to, and disagreeing with, were making that case, not me.
(in any case, the opposite of "works better" does not mean "works worse")
those comments assumed the following (il)logical connections: a) critical thinking = non-Machiavellian behavior, b) critical thinkers are supposedly the most effective in "getting things done", c) yet, critical thinkers are supposedly the most likely to be punished and rendered ineffective, d) Machiavellianism is rewarded (aka "works better") in big companies, e) because critical thinkers focus on priorities that are relatively unimportant in large companies, such as "shipping product"
not only are some of these points individually suspect, but taken together they are inconsistent and make no sense at all.
It's a generalization, but it's based on my experiences. It's not wholly wrong.
> the comment i am replying to posits that "critical thinkers" are the effective people in an organization who are really the ones who get things done.
Critical thinkers are usually the people who want to get things done. They might be effective, if the organization lets them be effective. Or, they might be entirely ineffective if the organization is pathological.
> at the same time stating that these people who get things done are sidelined, punished and rendered ineffective by the organization.
You're reading a lot into a simple comment.
> at the same time stating that these same people are the ones who are focused on low-priority items in that organization.
You've read too much into my comments.
In a pathological organization, the high priority items are management politics. Those politics are the daily work product of the majority of managers. The way a manager gets recognized or promoted is via playing the political game. actually shipping something is a lower priority.
> i agree with you, taken together, those statements are rather inane.. not only that but also wildly inconsistent, an ironic example of sloppy critical thinking.
Well, no. You didn't understand my comments. So you constructed a straw man version and attacked that. Genius!
> i am stating the obvious (which apparently isnt), that you would expect truly effective critical thinkers to be very good at focusing on the main priority within an organization
Only if you believe that critical thinkers enjoy playing the political games, and that they're good at it. My experience is that the people most focussed on political games are utter shit at engineering, and shipping product.
> anyway, critical thinking and emotionalism (bitterness and resentment about the unfairness of it all) would seem to be mutually opposed.
You can engage in critical thinking, while at the same time being upset that people treat you like shit for engaging in critical thinking. The two are in no way mutually exclusive.
Sure, but that's sad. Q: Why not get everybody involved with #1-#5? A: Because that's more effort for management, and they'd have to trust their staff. (Sometimes it depends on how well you go about this, aka. soft skills, but often there's no way to sell it other than get involved with company politics for 2+ years)
I'd also argue that at large companies, getting stuff shipped isn't usually the hardest part, not stagnating is. "How could we do things better" can be a pretty huge and valuable question in large places.
i think command and control management structures have a lot of benefits at scale. Maybe at scale a company's competitive edge is essentially about executing on information, and information asymmetry, which is why things like trust and politics are more important than shipping efficiently. Just an idea.
Because while they get things done, they challenge the status quo.
When I've worked for large companies, the #1, #2, and #3 products of the company were management politics. Actually shipping anything was #4, maybe #5. Critical thinkers looked at that and went "we could do better", and got punished for it.