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Comment by wyager | Hacker News Reader

When reading articles like these, I can't tell if they are very low semantic density, or if they are using terms of art that sound like noise but are actually communicating valuable information.

"accelerating mission/delivering innovative products/services at high speed" - what does this actually mean? This sounds like a jumble of positively-connoted words that I would throw together if I was trying to fill space in a powerpoint.

"The CTO’s job is to: create a common process, language and tools for innovation [and] make them permanent with a written innovation doctrine and policy". Is this not just "Draw the rest of the owl"?

"The CEO's job is to: make the company make lots of money."

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One rough translation for the first two lines there would be: Look for the orgs that are "getting shit done" and then "figure out how to unblock the people who want to get shit done in the other orgs based on how the currently-productive ones do things, and make that a company-wide policy."

In any large company things will have changed since the org was founded, so some of what used to work won't be efficient any more. So you both have to spot what's working now vs what used to work, and also figure out how to get a sufficient group of "doers" (vs just middle management) that they should buy in even though a lot of people won't be super motivated for the classic Office Space reason: "Now if I work my ass off and Initech ships a few extra units, I don't see another dime; so where's the motivation?" - and you often are going to have to do it without that motivation being just financial.

Thanks, that is all very coherent. I would like to read your version of the article :)

I have found that higher level management works in sort of.. higher order derivatives of process. they end up having to use bullshit sounding terms like this as a result. the more you get into management, the more meaningful those sentences become, but I totally understand it absolutely sounds like bullshit.

it also definitely becomes a coping mechanism to management-fuck your sentences in order to counteract your crippling imposter syndrome as you ascend

Why isn’t the more common solution to senior management imposter syndrome to capitulate to your ignorance and humbly speak with those at the lower rungs?

Extending programming patterns to how executive management operates: they need a very high level language with support for generics and abstractions to communicate efficiently without getting caught in the details. That is the job of lower level management.

Terms like “innovation” are a placeholder for something that will vary greatly depending on the instance.

My objection to the article is that it is simply two guys bullshitting about what might be the case instead of a story of trials and results.

Yes I agree. While it was an interesting story, I could not find a useful takeaway.

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