‘Management’

At the risk of making a grandiose statement, I think the fundamental question in ‘management’ is how to make people want to do things. All else is secondary, subsumed under this. This applies also, like the word ‘management’, to a vast assortment of fields – sales, security, law and order, diplomacy, teaching – nearly everything under the sun.

“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.”

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

I think Saint-Exupéry expresses the idea well, though I confess I’m skeptical how far it’s applicable in most contexts. In any case, I’m the wrong person to write about how to go about it, so I won’t bother trying. It’s just that this basic problem, of things needing to be done and people not wanting to do them, is interesting to think about, even if one doesn’t propound any solutions.

Why would anyone want to make other people do things? That’s because firstly, certain things have to be done (for whatever reasons, whether mandates or necessity), and secondly, these things that have to be done are typically those that most people, exceptions notwithstanding, left to themselves, wouldn’t want to do. You don’t need to pay people to binge on shows or gorge pizzas or smoke – they themselves pay to do it. But you do need to pay them to do the mundane work most jobs require them to – conduct boring meetings, write uninteresting reports, undertake painful physical labour and the like. It goes without saying, that those fortunate to be paid for doing what they’d do for free are beyond consideration here.

And another reason might be that people do a better job at something when it’s a thing they want to do. So for work beyond the ordinary, for achievements that require innovation and insight rather than solely grit and effort, it seems almost a necessity – it’s hard to imagine a scientist coming up with discoveries at gunpoint. But a soldier or a dishwasher or a security guard, one might imagine, may get the job done satisfactorily with a sword hanging over their head – though even here, I’m sure, willingness, if one could instill it, would yield better results.

So in fields that demand breakthroughs, creativity, insight and the like – things that can’t be forced out of a person through fear but demand willingness – it’s vital that people want to do the work. Which is probably why research and technical innovation are driven by carrots rather than sticks – perks, pay, pampering, and perhaps more than all, freedom and curiosity and autonomy and even a little brainwashing through adulation, awards, and recognition. And so you’d expect the culture at a company like Meta to be quite different from say, a local governmental office.

So there’s a reason to want to make people do things, but then you run into the question – why is it hard to make people want to do things? I’ve assumed it is hard, because I find it so, and I think if it wasn’t difficult then the world would be a very different place. Nevertheless, someone who finds it easy has my admiration. But, assuming it is hard, what makes it hard? Firstly, the same reason as before, that if you need to make someone do something, it’s probably because they don’t want to do it of their own volition. And, even if that’s not the case, then, at the risk of generalizing from personal experience, the very act of mandating something – telling someone they have to do it – makes them not want to do it, or worse, want to not do it.

Not wanting to do something is usually the default – it’s not having a desire to do a particular thing, which is natural, given the infinite number of things out there and the finite number about which one has opinions or desires. It doesn’t imply any resistance to be overcome – it requires the effort needed to turn a stationary being in a particular direction. Of course, the force you have to apply is proportional to the velocity with which you want them to turn, that is, the momentum you need to impart.

Wanting to not do something, though, is having a desire to avoid doing that thing. In this case, there is resistance which needs to be overcome, and hence, to achieve the same velocity or momentum as the previous case, you need to impart a much greater force. That’s because the being has its own momentum, in the opposite direction, and the change in momentum, and thus the force, required is now significantly greater.

Except, in this case, applying force might actually increase the resistance, if, the more one is told to do something, the less they want to do it. The coefficient of static friction, 𝜇_𝑠 increases, which makes the force required to move the being also increase, and that has to increase at a greater rate than 𝜇_𝑠 to eventually overpower the friction. Perhaps this feeling needn’t be true in the case of everyone, but, I imagine, at least some will share it. To be ordered to do something, even if you’d have done it anyway, is, in a sense, to be deprived of some autonomy (except, obviously, when you know the ordering is done with the intention of making you feel this way, as a joke).

So there is a reason to want to make people want to do things, and it is difficult to do. How then, does one do it? There are, I think, enough books on influencing people or becoming a leader or some such thing that advise on how to go about it, written by people better placed to impart such wisdom.

I think A Clockwork Orange, however, has a different, and nice, if currently infeasible, solution. A new technique of reformation, an aversion therapy behaviour modification treatment called the Ludovico Technique, involving injecting a patient with nausea-inducing drugs while compelling him to watch violence in films, eventually makes the subject physically ill at the mere thought of violence.

In a sense, however, it’s not perfect. Ludovico can make someone not want to do what you don’t want them to want to do, like a juvenile becoming sick at the mere thought of crime, but it can’t make someone want to do what you want them to want to do (with so many wants, perhaps this sentence is wanting). It can’t, for example, make the juvenile want to go about volunteering at orphanages.

It’s much harder to make a person want to do something than it is to make them not want to do some other thing, and so we usually settle for the latter as a proxy for the former. It’s harder to make someone want to work at office longer, but, by shaming or penalizing, it’s relatively easier to make them not want to (or more accurately, not be willing to although still wanting to) leave the office early. Of course, it’s less effective, because, someone coercively restrained from leaving in all likelihood now wants to leave all the more, and, retained against his will, probably just marks time until he’s allowed to go, defeating the purpose of the whole exercise.

The most perfect mechanism, I would guess, to make someone want to do something is literal, physical brainwashing, to be able to impart a message to the brain that the body, or mind, wants that thing, presumably by triggering dopamine release to ensure motivation. Testosterone and sugar seem to work along similar lines. It’s probably more difficult, though, to recreate the effect for something mundane like reviewing a checklist. And so we end up with proxies, what we call incentives – something in place of the real thing. Pavlov used a bell as a proxy for food, the way money or awards are used for work. Leaders, I suppose, do the same, just dressed up differently. As Napoleon said, You call these medals and ribbons baubles; well, it is with such baubles that men are led.

I suppose it’s good enough if one is able to achieve the goal with a proxy, to ask for more is simply greed. It’s hard to imagine any mechanism, for instance, that could make people want to work in coal mines, that works on millions of humans (the odd exception always exists). So if you could achieve the objective through monetary rewards or recognition or certificates – and even this is a mighty task, perhaps itself impossible – it’s commendable.

Is there any difference, though, in the outcomes? A proxy is, of course, an extrinsic motive, as opposed to an intrinsic one. I have an innate distaste for extrinsic ones, perhaps simply an idiosyncrasy, but have to admit that, in most cases, probably, it doesn’t matter. In fact, in many instances, I’d guess, the extrinsic reward is the better mechanism, maybe even the only feasible one.

Yet a proxy works only as long as and so far as one recognizes it, that is to say, one gives it any value. The moment one ceases to associate the proxy with any worth, the show comes crashing down. If, for instance, a worker gets it into their head that their cherished certificate is but a worthless piece of paper probably signed en masse hastily by another human being. Or an employee decides their bonus money is worth less to them than their time and effort that it took to obtain it.

For such reasons, I’ve never been able to share the fascination of those who swear by ‘gamification’ to get through arduous tasks, or even more daringly, learn skills and languages. Why the hell would I care about someone’s made up points? The difference is not moral but simply whether one considers the self-deceit worth the outcome. Fame or wealth or some such motive I could comprehend, and even appreciate the job the proxy does covering up the real thing, but artificial ‘points’ that one cooks up simply to get through a task feel like a shoddy disguise that doesn’t actually disguise anything.

One can also counter that the same problem remains even without a proxy. One may cease to value a proxy, one may also cease to value the thing itself. A manager whose star player plays soccer to win trophies may cease caring about trophies, but he may also cease caring about soccer, so, proxy or no proxy, the outcome is the same. In fact, one could argue a proxy is a kind of insurance – a player may play soccer even if he stops caring about it, if he continues to care about a proxy like fame or money or awards (conversely, proxies like wealth, fame might come along as byproducts without aiming for them). As long as one can find proxies, the show will continue.

The only counter to this I have is a weak, unconvincing, anecdotal one – that the things I do without a proxy give me far greater happiness than those with one, and the people I’ve met who spend more time on things than on proxies seem to me happier. The caveat, however, is that without a proxy, a person seems beyond ‘management’ – that is, beyond the question of ‘making’ people ‘want’ to do things.