When you get to know the inner workings of a business, you realize the chaos it is
“I ran HR at Square, […], and I used to meet with every employee at Square, and I remember starting part of my conversation with every new hire by saying: “you’re about to walk into this company that is reveared and has an unbelievable brand on the market and a lot of notoriety in the tech community because of Jack and because of the technology that Square created around the whole payments.
Having said that, you’ve just joined and you’re going to see the nuts and bolts under the covers, that this company is run on a bunch of Google Docs, and you’re gonna be appalled at what you see when you get here. When you see that, your job is not to look at it and be appalled. Your job is then to just go fix it. Because we’re still at this intense level of growth and company building where it’s not one person’s job to go build the company; it’s everybody’s job. You know it’s a moving organism. Every level of the company needs to get 10% better; otherwise you’re not evolving as an organization, […].”
— Jackie Reses, former senior executive at Yahoo!, Alibaba, and Square
I found this sentence by Jackie Reses in this podcast episode interesting and true. It is interesting because it highlights the messy truth of the internal workings of teams in companies, despite this messiness is often hidden in the fog in favor of a public display of well-oiled systems and joy within everyone involved.
One of the key fundamental axioms of running a company involves counteracting the strong power of entropy acting to create chaos and death. This means establishing systems (heuristics) to increase the degree of order and counteract the huge degree of potential chaos within the daily operations of the business, in the constantly-renewing attempt to keep the business alive and well.
Entropy plays a crucial role in shaping every organization’s and individual’s life, and it is a physical truth embedded in the planet’s daily existence. Yet, often both individuals and teams/organizations hide what’s perceived as negative in the fog for the fear of losing their reputation, their business, their long-crafted identity, or their life.
What is also interesting in the quote by Jackie Reses is this part: “[…] that this company is run on a bunch of Google Docs, and you’re gonna be appalled at what you see when you get here. When you see that, your job is not to look at it and be appalled. Your job is then to just go fix it.”
Your job is not to look at the role of entropy and imperfections present in your/the organization’s life and stare at it like a by-stander would a car accident on the road, maybe also gossiping about the people involved in the chaos, or whose fault it was, or how other people reacted to it, or avoiding to look in fear of getting tangled in the uncomfortable situation and lose social status.
Those are often the default immediate response of human biology, to shield you from experiencing psychologically or physically threatening situations. Instead, the highest rewards in society at large are given to the people who stare at the issues in the eyes and do what’s in their power to improve the situation, whatever that means. Not in a flashy yet unsubstantial way to merely increase social status, but in a sufficiently involved and committed manner to really improve the situation.