Satan should chair your meetings: A literature lover’s guide to office politics

I think the term you're looking for is... "common knowledge"[0].

And indeed, there are peculiar things that happen once you cross the thresholds between knowing something, knowing that others know it too, and knowing that everyone knows everyone knows it.

Related to this, and I'm guessing where you were going with your wedding analogy, is the concept of intersubjectivity[1].

Intersubjectivity happens when you have people sharing subjective states or beliefs, and are aware they're sharing it. Pretty much all critical social infrastructure - all of modern life - depends on it. For example:

- Money is an intersubjective phenomenon. It holds value only because - and only for as long as - everyone knows that everyone else in the community will accept it as a means of payment. This shared belief is usually bootstrapped and maintained by a government declaring they'll accept a given form of money for purposes of taxation - but on smaller scales, can also start in many other ways.

- Organizations like governments and corporations are an intersubjective phenomenon. To borrow an example from Harari[2], a corporation like Porsche doesn't really exist in physical space - it's an abstract entity that exists only because, and for as long as, people believe it exists. It's independent of people employed in or running it - the board could fire all employees, and then the government could forcefully replace the board, and Porsche would still be there, with all the factories and offices and salons it owns.

- Companies are bootstrapped into being by performing certain rituals - offering monetary sacrifices to the government and getting the right priests sign the right legal paperwork. These rituals - and all laws in general - are also intersubjective. They have power only because, and for as long as, people believe they do (and believe everyone else believes it too).

It's kind of mind-blowing if you think about it - all the structure of our civilization is just an enormous pile of interconnected shared delusions. But it works, because intersubjective phenomena are extremely resilient - people can stop believing in them individually, but it doesn't matter for as long as enough other people keep the faith. It takes a critical mass of people to lose confidence in a visible way, or a memetic weapon[3], to shut down such an intersubjective phenomenon.

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[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_knowledge_(logic)

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersubjectivity

[2] - As much as I remember it. I was introduced to the name "intersubjectivity" through his book, Sapiens.

[3] - People don't have to actually lose faith in something - they just need to believe that enough other people believe that enough other people don't believe anymore.

> or respond with the successful-career-appropriate cynical unconcern.

If what you want people to do is punished, people won't do it.

moreso, a strong hierarchy can work when constructed meritocratically (the benevolent dictator concept). the (very) hard part is figuring out what's the most meritocratic and how to encourage that construction. most hierarchies end up unmeritocratic due to endless political machinations to subvert that definition and construction.

and to be right, you can slap the puck to where you want to go, or skate to where the puck will be. good leaders do both, and much more, like communicating early and often and using various commitment devices (e.g., cutting off retreat). there's really no trite summation of good leadership.

Amazon’s policy is even better than that (IMO). They know that no one reads things before meetings, so it’s accepted that everyone will quietly read for the first part of the meeting (as much as half the total meeting duration). Then (and only then) when everyone has finished reading the same material does anyone speak up to ask questions or share input. Saves a lot of time in meetings, although it adds a lot of time in preparing documents. I suspect it probably nets out to positive time savings and am confident it results in more informed decision-making.

Source: I’m an Amazon employee

Ah, I see how I communicated that poorly - it's not that the meetings aren't there, it's that they're oriented towards production.

I grew up working on a farm. The person in charge was a foreman, and his job was to coordinate how the work was accomplished on the ground by a crew of 5-7 people.

At most fortune 50 employers today, you’d have a director 1000 miles away, a local manager, a supervisor, an auditor and compliance person reviewing the payroll records, and recommending to the director that the 2 workers utilize less overtime. The local manager would eliminate the OT and hire McKinsey to recommend outsourcing the 2 workers, and retain McKinsey to monitor compliance.

Please stop and think about what you are saying. The Soviets were never Marxist.

Yes and no, there are still workers per se but I don't think they exist with the conception of themselves as that (as much). During the 20th century when the labor movement was strong class consciousness existed and there was an appetite for a conception of the self as a worker in relation to capital and society. I think it still exists but in a pretty inconsequential way. Technology has definitely played a factor in atomizing workers and automating away for labor intensive tasks.