Finally, a Woke Corporation looks at the nonsense it’s been doing, and cancels it. Here’s an example:
3. No more committees. For nearly all of our 21 year existence, we were proudly committee-free. No big working groups making big decisions, or putting forward formalized, groupthink recommendations. No bureaucracy. But recently, a few sprung up. No longer. We’re turning things back over to the person (or people) who were distinctly hired to make those decisions.
“Management by Committee” is another of those Marxist-collectivist mantras which have two sources: from old Karl himself, as taught in schools; and from women, for whom “participative management” (i.e. by committee) has long been touted as a Good Thing when, in fact, it’s nothing of the kind. Camels emerging from committees (from a brief to create horses) is so old a joke that it’s actually become a truism. Of course, it makes people feel better when they’ve had input (the disgusting modern term “stakeholders” should have a stake driven right through its fucking ethos); but then again, “feeling better” seldom has any place in a corporate workplace except when Alka-Seltzer is freely dispensed from the vending machines.
So yes, Basecamp has done well by trimming back the weeds [sic], and best of all:
Who’s responsible for these changes? David and I are. Who made the changes? David and I did. These are our calls, and the outcomes and impacts land at our doorstep.
That’s called leadership. And it’s damn time some of it came back into corporate life, at the expense of Wokism and collectivism.
Meanwhile in Silicon Valley: “Committees will be replaced by Blue Ribbon Panels. “
“Consensus is the absence of leadership”–Margaret Thatcher
“If everybody is thinking the same, nobody’s thinking” — General George S. Patton
To find the IQ of a committee, take the IQ of the dumbest person on the committee, and divide by the number of members.
When I worked at a hospital I was on a committee because each department was supposed to send a representative to each of the various committees that were created. We were supposed to be able to effect improvement from the trenches. The only value I got from two different committees was an extra 3 hours of pay per month. One committee talked about the same non sense for 4 meetings (months) or more. At one meeting, a manager came in and gave us a 10 minute pep talk about how we’re having a positive impact and we’re doing well blah blah blah. It was pure horse shit. The meetings were useless, pointless and achieved nothing other than 3 hours more pay a month. At one committee, the rank and file agreed on something and a director constantly tried to override what we as rank and file members of the committee had decided. It made it very clear that the committee was a thinly veiled management run group to push whatever the higher ups wanted right or more often wrong. The “stake owner” and “you can make changes and improve things” were utter farces yet many of the members continued to believe the tripe.
In the end it reinforced my belief that meetings must be short, concise and limited attendance just like any other meeting.
JQ
PS DavidD you’re absolutely right
Having read the entire statement, I have one question: Are they hiring?
At a previous consulting company I’d sometimes make a few bucks by doing technical interviews for prospective hires. I interviewed this woman on Cobol and PL/I, and she just wasn’t that good, didn’t know some of the basics, you might hire her as a trainee but you certainly couldn’t put her into a Cobol or PL/I shop and expect her to produce. I told the account rep that, and his response was “We’d like to hire her, she’s a black woman, and she’s very presentable and well dressed, so we have a client who would like her.” I refused to change my evaluation, I told him if he wants to hire her go right ahead, but I gave my evaluation of her technical abilities.
Mind you, this occurred back in the late 80s or early 90s, before the PC BS had really taken hold. Now I couldn’t imagine, although a few years ago my wife’s then-company interviewed a woman who was obviously pregnant (as in they were concerned she might go into labor at the interview), they were afraid NOT to hire her despite the fact she’d go on maternity leave immediately, for fear of a discrimination lawsuit.
Sadly, these duds are the exception that proves the rule.
GOOD decisions by committees are rarely happen. U.S. Congress anyone !
It’s attractive because it requires no leadership, no responsibility , no guts.
Very few have the guts to make decisions, stand by them and accept the consequences if the decision(s) are wrong.
Much safer to be where, if anything ‘goes south’, it can be blamed on
the ‘the committee’s decision(s)’ rather than any individual.
Most meetings are a complete waste of everyone’s time and energy.
I know I’m a heretic, but there is a common theme here….Convince me I’m wrong.
Education- 1970s Women teachers start to proliferate and start to move up the power chain. Education standards have been sliding ever since.
Corporations- Women take over staff management functions (HR, Marketing etc) and bullshit proliferates. 1990s early 2000s they start to emerge at board level and you end up where we are today woke as fuck.
Politics? Been going backwards since women got the vote.
I could go on. Sports administration? military? Police?
No argument from this zip code, ST.
Not sure they’re reversing wokeness in the company.
My theory is wokeness has served its purpose, communism has taken over, and now the commissars are getting rid of their underlings in order to rule by decree.