accountable, adjective, “required to render account” Tidy First? starts with, “Software design is an exercise in human relationships.” Since human relationships don’t come naturally to me, I’ve been digging into how relationships work before starting on the second book in series. So far we have:
I find it very valuable to distinguish Power from Strenght, as described in the "Finite and Infinite Games" book by James P. Carse. Strength is something I have and I develop. Power is something I give to others. For example, President has power because people gave it to him by election. My boss has power over me because I gave it to him by signing an employment contract.
An interesting conclusion in the book is that I want to develop more strength to be able to handle giving more power to others.
* What do you mean by extractive approaches. Is it similar to stopping cooperating (deflecting)?
* I struggle with the concept of accountability. It makes sense conceptually, but it the harder to exercise practically. We don't have many knobs to push the consequences of bad decisions, and they are rather dramatic (firing you, lousy performance review) and infrequent (once in your employment or once a year) to be helpful as a feedback loop. I feel that accountability is a farce as it only works when everyone has trust, and everyone has the same accountability framework that they use willingly and regularly. Can we make accountability work if we can't apply that consistently?
My opinion is that Accountability is about shaming and blaming. It might work in the short term but not the tool I want to rely on in my long-term relationships. I'm looking for evidence to disprove this point of view but unsuccessful so far. This post has not convinced me in opposite as well.
I find it very valuable to distinguish Power from Strenght, as described in the "Finite and Infinite Games" book by James P. Carse. Strength is something I have and I develop. Power is something I give to others. For example, President has power because people gave it to him by election. My boss has power over me because I gave it to him by signing an employment contract.
An interesting conclusion in the book is that I want to develop more strength to be able to handle giving more power to others.
Thanks for the article! A couple of questions:
* What do you mean by extractive approaches. Is it similar to stopping cooperating (deflecting)?
* I struggle with the concept of accountability. It makes sense conceptually, but it the harder to exercise practically. We don't have many knobs to push the consequences of bad decisions, and they are rather dramatic (firing you, lousy performance review) and infrequent (once in your employment or once a year) to be helpful as a feedback loop. I feel that accountability is a farce as it only works when everyone has trust, and everyone has the same accountability framework that they use willingly and regularly. Can we make accountability work if we can't apply that consistently?
My opinion is that Accountability is about shaming and blaming. It might work in the short term but not the tool I want to rely on in my long-term relationships. I'm looking for evidence to disprove this point of view but unsuccessful so far. This post has not convinced me in opposite as well.