Do not eat aspirin
There was such a man in the world - Stephen Covey. One day he decided to write a book about personal effectiveness. Now everyone knows this book, it is called “The Seven Skills of Highly Effective People.” It is considered a classic, constantly reprinted in all conceivable countries of the world, over the years, several tens of millions of copies have been sold. Stephen Covey himself understood so much about personal effectiveness that several presidents did not fail to take advantage of his personal consultations, including USA.
The book is good, voluminous and inspiring. The lessons and principles laid down in it are often found with later authors of books and courses. Links, however, forget to do, but oh well.
But I do not want to talk about the book, but about the unexpected discovery that Stephen Covey made when writing it. He called this phenomenon "social aspirin."
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If you believe the author, he shoveled a mountain of literature on the topic of success in about 200 years. It is unlikely that any of us will have enough strength and motivation to repeat his feat in order to confirm, refute or improve Covey’s conclusions, therefore I propose to take his word for it. I think that now he himself would not have been able to turn such a focus, because over the past decades there have been so many published books about success that no life will be enough to read them.
So, Covey found a fundamental difference between old and new books. “New” he called books published in the last 50 years. Considering that the book “The Seven Skills of Highly Effective People” was released in 1989, we can assume that Covey called “all new” almost all books of the 20th century on the topic of success.
Accordingly, the "old" - books published earlier. The difference was that the authors of the old books tried to understand the essence, the reasons, the principles on which success is built. And having understood the principles, develop on their basis specific methodologies, recommendations and practice.
The authors of the new books immediately gave recommendations, practices, techniques and tricks. Do like this, and you will be successful. Why success will not matter. Not a fact, of course, that the authors understood the reason for success.
These are the tricks Covey called “social aspirin”, or “social plaster”. No need to think, to understand the reasons, to work on their elimination - pasted and went.
Here I have so little to say. understanding of the benefits of old books came recently. Now I am replenishing the library, solemnly moving to the archives, albeit few, but books on the shelves of an aspirin book.
First of all, it is a description of the lives of great people, created by themselves, by witnesses of their actions or subsequent historians. Secondly - actually, books written long ago on the topic of success, management, and, in general, “how to live is necessary”.
True, it is necessary to take into account the difference in the areas of knowledge. Previously, there was no business as it is now. Most books and biographies relate either to public administration, or to waging war, or to self-development, or to some kind of feudal economic management, like samurai.
I read the book by Stephen Covey several years ago. The paragraph about old and new books attracted my attention, but did not catch much on the soul. Well, cool, I thought, old books are better. Well, yes, you can learn from the ancient guys. Just what and why? After all, they solved completely different tasks.
But recently, just a couple of weeks ago, I began to read the “Sovereign” Niccolò Machiavelli. The book is considered controversial, it has a lot of criticism, but the genre is interesting. Sam Machiavelli was a politician, and wrote a book, as a set of rules for the seizure, retention and expansion of state power, almost as a textbook for autocrats. However, one very important detail attracted my attention - in each chapter the author appeals not to himself or his experience, but to history.
Literally, it analyzes and examines the reign of the ancient kings, right up to Alexander the Great, Darius and the like, lays out their failures and successes along the shelves, organizes and briefly, succinctly sums up one or another approach. And he repeats several times - all the lessons in history already exist, it is necessary to study and draw conclusions.
So, here are two respected people - Stephen Covey and Niccolò Machiavelli - they say that it is necessary to study history and old books in order to understand something in this life and achieve success.
Reflecting on this, I remembered all the old books that I had read and understood that the same principles were being professed in them.
For example, Hagakure and several other collections written in samurai times. Starting to read this book, many immediately slam it angrily and put it back on the shelf with the wording "there will be some kind of hell to teach me life." Do not repeat this mistake, consider the essence of the book: this is the message of the old samurai to the young, and not some abstract, but quite specific - from his own clan.
It was just that some person lived, like Yamamoto Tsunetomo, in some samurai clan, went about his business, cut down heads, fought, managed the farm, served his daimyo, and under old age — which, incidentally, happened rarely with samurai — he decided to summarize your life experience for the younger generation of your clan. He sat down and wrote down the rules, instructions on how to lead a real samurai life.
But most importantly - he added a bunch of examples, both from his own and from someone else’s life. Again offered to learn from history.
Yes, and what to learn from them? In Hagakure, for example, it tells a lot about how to chop heads. Like, not very useful skill in our time?
Immediately kupuyu area of ​​application of knowledge, so as not to go into your personal life. Let it be work and success in it.
Work is different for everyone, but there is one thing in common - people. We all work with people. Even a person sitting alone at a weather station in the snows of the Arctic faces people. Someone sent him there, someone periodically contacts him, someone will come to replace him, and after returning home, the person will encounter people again.
Everything you produce at work is bought (or not bought) by people. People pay you a salary. Lead you people. Tasks you put people. People are driving you out of work. You hire people. Your business is moving forward and bankrupt the people. You can seize power only with the help of people. To deprive you of power can only people.
Well, you're a man too.
If you connect success and money, then I will add one more truism: only people have money. And only people can take money. Money is always someone's, even if it lies in the state treasury. Whatever the large corporation in which you work or which you are trying to sell your product, it has owners.
Abstractions familiar to us like “markets”, their “capacity”, “sectors” and “regions” are, of course, necessary for work, but do not forget that there are always people behind them. Bringing the product to the "market", you bring it "in people". When you make a commercial offer of a corporation, you turn to specific people.
By posting a blog entry or an article on a thematic site, you turn to people. These people are called “audience”, “community” or “visitors” there, but it's still people.
I think that people, as an entity, are more important for success than technology and equipment. Of course, knowledge and understanding of people is not a sufficient condition for success, but it is necessary - for sure.
I myself, how many years I have been living in the world, cannot fully accept this fact, therefore I am constantly attacking the rake. After all, as a programmer, it seems to me that the success of my software or service depends almost entirely on its quality. For a product to be sold, it just has to be cool, fast, convenient and of high quality!
But no. A quality product, of course, is a success - but not where I wanted it. He likes other programmers. But they have no money. Well, it's not at all not at all — not on my product, because they don’t need it.
People have money, but I didn’t think about it when developing, concentrating on the product. The logical result is that people buy not the highest quality, but what fits their needs. Those who thought about the people in the design.
If we accept the hypothesis that success depends on people, then you have to agree with one more thing - people do not change.
The environment, lifestyle, clothing, preferences are changing, but people are not. Now all people buy the Internet and means of access to it, and earlier they bought books and newspapers. Before books and newspapers, they bought chewing tobacco and candles. Even earlier - clay pots, swords and axes. And so on.
A man remains a man - with arms, legs, head and mind. The products he buys are changing, but the approaches to their creation and sale are not. The technique of communication between people is changing, but the approach to management is not, just the information comes faster.
Let's sum up the intermediate result. People - the essence is almost unchanged. Success is associated mainly with people. Only people have money.
What are old books written about? About people, of course.
Of course, there are old books about electricity, space and animal husbandry, but this is not about them. Only about those that are written about people and their management.
Old books are written not even about many years, but about centuries-old experience in dealing with people. Compare with aspirin books, which, if they are based on experience, are short and, as a rule, personal or very narrow — for example, some company or team.
I’ll say right away that I don’t call for completely throwing out modern books. Tablets are also needed if the head already hurts. But, it seems, it is more interesting to sort it out and make it so that the head does not hurt at all.
In the last article I talked a lot about the fact that modern books are a product, with all the ensuing consequences, such as short release times, of not very high quality (due to the time requirements and “market digestibility”) and large amounts of water (to get the right amount of a.L.).
Now I’ll dwell on old books. I'll start with a simple - book size. Now publishers have requirements, a minimum and a maximum, and going beyond them almost guarantees a refusal to publish, if the author is not already heard. The old books did not have such restrictions - take a look at the same “Sovereign” Machiavelli, who now would go under the category of “training manual”, but due to its volume it turned out to be short, succinct and without water. Or a reverse example - the memoirs of Otto von Bismarck, which can prick nuts - there is also no water there.
The second is the purpose of the book. Now books are being written for consumers, and earlier - for very specific people. Examples I cited above. The Hagakure contained instructions for a particular clan. "Sovereign" was addressed to a specific dynasty, albeit with a plan for the autocrats of the whole world. Rashid ad-Din wrote a work about the empire of Genghis Khan in order to present it to his ruler.
The purpose of the book, as well as the requirements for the volume, play a very important role in its final quality. It is one thing to write a book for one person or a group of your followers, and quite another for the “audience.” The audience must be persuaded, motivated, entertained, in order not to quit reading, to attract, to buy a book at all, to take care of simplicity and clarity of presentation, so as not to get confused. In general, make the product attractive and easily digestible.
So books, forcedly, are filled with a huge amount of water. Old books had no such problem.
Further the term itself is “the book.” In many cases, it simply did not exist as it is now. For us, a book is a product released in a certain circulation and lying on the shelves. In those days, it could well be a bunch of parchment that existed in a single copy.
The essence of one - the text. But the text is not a book. The text is not for sale, it must be packaged as a product. The packaging is the book, imposing certain requirements for this text. Similarly, software code is not a product. To sell the code, you need to pack it and bring it to the market, adding a bunch of body kit and dependencies. Writing text and writing a book is a very different occupation. Even between the text and the article on the Internet there is a difference.
So, before the book is not particularly written. These were works, notes, memoirs, manuals, tables, bilikas, treatises. Which then turned into books - but not by the addition of water, but by various marketing tricks, such as the publication of collections.
I will also note the difference in the authors. Now books are written by all and sundry. I figured out how to treat pain in the left heel that occurs at a temperature of 12 degrees Celsius, if you are in the subtropical zone and head north - that's all, you can write a book about it, and the reader will find it.
Old books were written by completely different people. Sitting at the pen, they were already experts in their field, with many years of experience and proven talents. Elementary, they had money for paper and ink, and, most importantly, a prepared reader.
Now, too, there are such books. For example, “From the third world - to the first. The history of Singapore 1965 - 2000 "Lee Kuan Y. The man, as they say, raised the country from the bottom to the very top, and wrote a book about it. Personally, I have no doubt that this book is worth reading.
The topics related to people management and self-development in old books are worked out much deeper, for quite natural reasons.
What does a modern manager know about people? First, he sees them 8 hours a day. Secondly, he knows very little about their personal life. Thirdly, its capabilities in dealing with people are strictly limited by law. Fourth, people are constantly changing, not giving the opportunity to know themselves.
Compare the modern manager, for example, with the daimyo of an ancient Japanese province. It is served by a clan with samurai dynasties. He knows almost everything about each of his subordinates. He saw many samurai when they were walking on foot under the table. Knows their fathers and grandfathers, with a full list of merits and failures.
He knows how subordinates manifest themselves in practically all forms. One copes well with the economy, but does not fight well. The other can not command the army, but copes well with a small reconnaissance squad. The third is a wonderful negotiator. The fourth man slaps his wife every day, although he behaves decently in the service. The fifth is so fanatical that the suzerain’s chambers protect every night, even if he doesn’t ask for it.
Daimyo has the opportunity to observe people, experiment on them, draw conclusions and improve the skills of managing throughout life - and them, and his. It costs him nothing to test the hypothesis "what will happen if one subordinate every day, for twenty years, only to praise, and another - only to scold", or "how will the effectiveness of the service change if I execute the worst every five years?".
Now such methods are not available, and managers have to be content with a very limited framework. Therefore, it is possible that research spirit is so rare among them - the majority try to just keep afloat.
Now managers solve, basically, virtual tasks, as in a computer simulator. Raise sales, reduce costs, increase efficiency, improve business process, etc. - All these tasks do not go to any comparison with what Chinggiskhan, Bismarck or the same Machiavelli did.
The ancient guys were large-scale tasks, complex, and most importantly - real. With a real threat, including his own life.
Capture Europe, subjugate China, create a state, attach a million square kilometers to the empire, create an invincible army of a million people, build a fleet, knock together a couple of states, etc.
Even in our own, refined business world, this difference can be understood. It's one thing - when you just set the task. Sit down, make it little by little. If the fate of the project phase depends on this task, you will show more zeal. If the whole project depends on this task, you will sit for days and nights. If the fate of the company hangs in the balance - you forget for a time family, friends, food and sleep. With each turn of this spiral, attitudes change.
You stop chewing snot, talk a lot, analyze and choose - you just take it and do it, with the greatest efficiency and complete dedication. But, be that as it may, you still understand: if it does not work out, then nothing terrible will happen, in general. Maximum - lose your work or business. You can always start over.
And imagine what was the motivation of the ruler of the state, near the borders of which grew the empire of Genghis Khan? Or the one to whom Genghis Khan has already visited? Or the king, who understood that without a change his state and government would end? Or a tyrant who won half the world, and now he is thinking how to keep power there?
You and I also face real challenges in our lives, but, as a rule, not at work, but in our personal lives. For example, someone in the family got sick. Or there was a fire. Or you come back at night, drunk, in an unfamiliar area, lying on the outskirts of the city. There are many examples, but the essence is the same - these are real tasks that need to be solved, and immediately. There is no time to argue, it is impossible to retreat, the responsibility is entirely on you.
At work, such tasks are extremely rare, so we do not know how to solve them. And the ancients, as a rule, solved such problems only - if so at their work. Because of this forced necessity, they learned how to solve these problems.
I, of course, do not call for learning to protect the office from the raids of barbarians. It's about the approaches. Solving a real problem is almost always more efficient, or at least more effective. It remains to take approaches to solving real problems, and shift them to virtual ones.
I will give one example - the merciless Russian scrum.
What is scrum - everyone knows. This is a common method of solving virtual business problems. Now it has become a product, and it sells well.
According to Jeff Sutherland, the author of the book on scams, the methodology is based on, among other things, the real tasks that he solved when he was a pilot of a military reconnaissance aircraft in Vietnam. In those days, he, without realizing it, applied a certain semblance of Ajile - observe, understand, act according to circumstances. His own life depended on the solution of this problem.
And there is such a wonderful book as “The Russian Model of Management” by Prokhorov. I also attribute it to the old ones, even though it was written not so long ago, because there it is considered the history of Russian control over several centuries, and no recipes with pills are given.
So, in the book several chapters are devoted to how Russian managers throughout their history used the same approaches as Scram to solve real problems for themselves.
One of the examples given in the book is the evacuation of plants at the beginning of the Great Patriotic War. It began on the classic of management - meetings, events, responsible, deadlines, reporting, etc. Of course, immediately everything was drowned in bureaucratic procedures, and the plants were standing still, and every day they became less and less - the Germans were moving very quickly.
Applied what can be called scrum. They abolished the entire bureaucracy, gave the teams on-the-ground complete autonomy, the broadest powers, up to the execution of those who resist, gave all available resources on the ground to the disposal. And most importantly - they made the task extremely real for managers. You understand how motivated then.
And all evacuated, transported and launched in an extremely short time. Sometimes, in a day, a huge factory was dismantled and taken out. They understood everything on the spot, did not coordinate anything with anyone.
The author of the book introduced several designations to explain the success in this particular example, and in general when solving such problems by Russian people. For example, the mobilization and redistribution of resources. A Russian person is not able to work stably and at high speeds for a long time, but if he is mobilized for a while, he is capable of producing insane results.
And then Jeff Sutherland came, worked in the virtual, bought environment of several commercial projects, got a similar result, called it all scrambled, packaged as a product, and sells.
At the same time, it’s not even close to the effectiveness shown in the book by Prokhorov. Although many tricks - one to one. But you, most likely, did not read the “Russian model of management”, and you think that scrum is a framework applicable in some areas, invented by some Americans, described in a small scrum guide, and its effectiveness is not particularly confirmed?
If you remove the packaging from the screen, then there will be just a set of principles that have been known for a long time, and successfully - much more successfully than they are now - were applied many years ago. Including - in our country, which, it would seem, has not published a single book on management, which has become a bestseller.
Of course, this is not only a scram concern. In old books, if you try a little, you can find almost everything that is now called management. Only there it will be more interesting, because the tasks were real, not toy, as they are now.
I do not know how to convey my thoughts in the text, so it might seem to you that I urge you to read only old books. This is not true.
I suggest reading not only new books. Any knowledge will become richer in your head, if you learn about it from different sources, look at the practice of its application in different contexts, on the example of different tasks and even in different eras.
Acquaintance with some approach to management or self-development may well begin with a modern, watery, entertaining and well-packed book. The main thing is not to be limited to one source.
I learned about the same scram by chance, from someone I knew. I read the article in Wikipedia, I liked it, but I did not hook it enough to use it. I read the book of Sutherland, and the turning point came - I began to introduce it, before I finished reading it to the end. Then he went to the sources indicated by the author himself - TPS and Japanese quality management. Went to scrum guide.
But the most interesting thing happened later. Reading old books, I found scrum there. Not in its pure form, without fetishes in the form of boards and stickers. There were similar principles, and examples of problem solving based on these principles. Having passed this way, you understand what scam is based on, why it works - moreover, at the level of each component, what is necessary in it, and what can be safely thrown out.
The book is good, voluminous and inspiring. The lessons and principles laid down in it are often found with later authors of books and courses. Links, however, forget to do, but oh well.
But I do not want to talk about the book, but about the unexpected discovery that Stephen Covey made when writing it. He called this phenomenon "social aspirin."
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Aspirin
If you believe the author, he shoveled a mountain of literature on the topic of success in about 200 years. It is unlikely that any of us will have enough strength and motivation to repeat his feat in order to confirm, refute or improve Covey’s conclusions, therefore I propose to take his word for it. I think that now he himself would not have been able to turn such a focus, because over the past decades there have been so many published books about success that no life will be enough to read them.
So, Covey found a fundamental difference between old and new books. “New” he called books published in the last 50 years. Considering that the book “The Seven Skills of Highly Effective People” was released in 1989, we can assume that Covey called “all new” almost all books of the 20th century on the topic of success.
Accordingly, the "old" - books published earlier. The difference was that the authors of the old books tried to understand the essence, the reasons, the principles on which success is built. And having understood the principles, develop on their basis specific methodologies, recommendations and practice.
The authors of the new books immediately gave recommendations, practices, techniques and tricks. Do like this, and you will be successful. Why success will not matter. Not a fact, of course, that the authors understood the reason for success.
These are the tricks Covey called “social aspirin”, or “social plaster”. No need to think, to understand the reasons, to work on their elimination - pasted and went.
What are the old books?
Here I have so little to say. understanding of the benefits of old books came recently. Now I am replenishing the library, solemnly moving to the archives, albeit few, but books on the shelves of an aspirin book.
First of all, it is a description of the lives of great people, created by themselves, by witnesses of their actions or subsequent historians. Secondly - actually, books written long ago on the topic of success, management, and, in general, “how to live is necessary”.
True, it is necessary to take into account the difference in the areas of knowledge. Previously, there was no business as it is now. Most books and biographies relate either to public administration, or to waging war, or to self-development, or to some kind of feudal economic management, like samurai.
Who else?
I read the book by Stephen Covey several years ago. The paragraph about old and new books attracted my attention, but did not catch much on the soul. Well, cool, I thought, old books are better. Well, yes, you can learn from the ancient guys. Just what and why? After all, they solved completely different tasks.
But recently, just a couple of weeks ago, I began to read the “Sovereign” Niccolò Machiavelli. The book is considered controversial, it has a lot of criticism, but the genre is interesting. Sam Machiavelli was a politician, and wrote a book, as a set of rules for the seizure, retention and expansion of state power, almost as a textbook for autocrats. However, one very important detail attracted my attention - in each chapter the author appeals not to himself or his experience, but to history.
Literally, it analyzes and examines the reign of the ancient kings, right up to Alexander the Great, Darius and the like, lays out their failures and successes along the shelves, organizes and briefly, succinctly sums up one or another approach. And he repeats several times - all the lessons in history already exist, it is necessary to study and draw conclusions.
So, here are two respected people - Stephen Covey and Niccolò Machiavelli - they say that it is necessary to study history and old books in order to understand something in this life and achieve success.
Reflecting on this, I remembered all the old books that I had read and understood that the same principles were being professed in them.
For example, Hagakure and several other collections written in samurai times. Starting to read this book, many immediately slam it angrily and put it back on the shelf with the wording "there will be some kind of hell to teach me life." Do not repeat this mistake, consider the essence of the book: this is the message of the old samurai to the young, and not some abstract, but quite specific - from his own clan.
It was just that some person lived, like Yamamoto Tsunetomo, in some samurai clan, went about his business, cut down heads, fought, managed the farm, served his daimyo, and under old age — which, incidentally, happened rarely with samurai — he decided to summarize your life experience for the younger generation of your clan. He sat down and wrote down the rules, instructions on how to lead a real samurai life.
But most importantly - he added a bunch of examples, both from his own and from someone else’s life. Again offered to learn from history.
What to study?
Yes, and what to learn from them? In Hagakure, for example, it tells a lot about how to chop heads. Like, not very useful skill in our time?
Immediately kupuyu area of ​​application of knowledge, so as not to go into your personal life. Let it be work and success in it.
Work is different for everyone, but there is one thing in common - people. We all work with people. Even a person sitting alone at a weather station in the snows of the Arctic faces people. Someone sent him there, someone periodically contacts him, someone will come to replace him, and after returning home, the person will encounter people again.
Everything you produce at work is bought (or not bought) by people. People pay you a salary. Lead you people. Tasks you put people. People are driving you out of work. You hire people. Your business is moving forward and bankrupt the people. You can seize power only with the help of people. To deprive you of power can only people.
Well, you're a man too.
If you connect success and money, then I will add one more truism: only people have money. And only people can take money. Money is always someone's, even if it lies in the state treasury. Whatever the large corporation in which you work or which you are trying to sell your product, it has owners.
Abstractions familiar to us like “markets”, their “capacity”, “sectors” and “regions” are, of course, necessary for work, but do not forget that there are always people behind them. Bringing the product to the "market", you bring it "in people". When you make a commercial offer of a corporation, you turn to specific people.
By posting a blog entry or an article on a thematic site, you turn to people. These people are called “audience”, “community” or “visitors” there, but it's still people.
I think that people, as an entity, are more important for success than technology and equipment. Of course, knowledge and understanding of people is not a sufficient condition for success, but it is necessary - for sure.
I myself, how many years I have been living in the world, cannot fully accept this fact, therefore I am constantly attacking the rake. After all, as a programmer, it seems to me that the success of my software or service depends almost entirely on its quality. For a product to be sold, it just has to be cool, fast, convenient and of high quality!
But no. A quality product, of course, is a success - but not where I wanted it. He likes other programmers. But they have no money. Well, it's not at all not at all — not on my product, because they don’t need it.
People have money, but I didn’t think about it when developing, concentrating on the product. The logical result is that people buy not the highest quality, but what fits their needs. Those who thought about the people in the design.
And where does the old book?
If we accept the hypothesis that success depends on people, then you have to agree with one more thing - people do not change.
The environment, lifestyle, clothing, preferences are changing, but people are not. Now all people buy the Internet and means of access to it, and earlier they bought books and newspapers. Before books and newspapers, they bought chewing tobacco and candles. Even earlier - clay pots, swords and axes. And so on.
A man remains a man - with arms, legs, head and mind. The products he buys are changing, but the approaches to their creation and sale are not. The technique of communication between people is changing, but the approach to management is not, just the information comes faster.
Let's sum up the intermediate result. People - the essence is almost unchanged. Success is associated mainly with people. Only people have money.
What are old books written about? About people, of course.
Of course, there are old books about electricity, space and animal husbandry, but this is not about them. Only about those that are written about people and their management.
Old books are written not even about many years, but about centuries-old experience in dealing with people. Compare with aspirin books, which, if they are based on experience, are short and, as a rule, personal or very narrow — for example, some company or team.
I’ll say right away that I don’t call for completely throwing out modern books. Tablets are also needed if the head already hurts. But, it seems, it is more interesting to sort it out and make it so that the head does not hurt at all.
The difference of old and new books
In the last article I talked a lot about the fact that modern books are a product, with all the ensuing consequences, such as short release times, of not very high quality (due to the time requirements and “market digestibility”) and large amounts of water (to get the right amount of a.L.).
Now I’ll dwell on old books. I'll start with a simple - book size. Now publishers have requirements, a minimum and a maximum, and going beyond them almost guarantees a refusal to publish, if the author is not already heard. The old books did not have such restrictions - take a look at the same “Sovereign” Machiavelli, who now would go under the category of “training manual”, but due to its volume it turned out to be short, succinct and without water. Or a reverse example - the memoirs of Otto von Bismarck, which can prick nuts - there is also no water there.
The second is the purpose of the book. Now books are being written for consumers, and earlier - for very specific people. Examples I cited above. The Hagakure contained instructions for a particular clan. "Sovereign" was addressed to a specific dynasty, albeit with a plan for the autocrats of the whole world. Rashid ad-Din wrote a work about the empire of Genghis Khan in order to present it to his ruler.
The purpose of the book, as well as the requirements for the volume, play a very important role in its final quality. It is one thing to write a book for one person or a group of your followers, and quite another for the “audience.” The audience must be persuaded, motivated, entertained, in order not to quit reading, to attract, to buy a book at all, to take care of simplicity and clarity of presentation, so as not to get confused. In general, make the product attractive and easily digestible.
So books, forcedly, are filled with a huge amount of water. Old books had no such problem.
Further the term itself is “the book.” In many cases, it simply did not exist as it is now. For us, a book is a product released in a certain circulation and lying on the shelves. In those days, it could well be a bunch of parchment that existed in a single copy.
The essence of one - the text. But the text is not a book. The text is not for sale, it must be packaged as a product. The packaging is the book, imposing certain requirements for this text. Similarly, software code is not a product. To sell the code, you need to pack it and bring it to the market, adding a bunch of body kit and dependencies. Writing text and writing a book is a very different occupation. Even between the text and the article on the Internet there is a difference.
So, before the book is not particularly written. These were works, notes, memoirs, manuals, tables, bilikas, treatises. Which then turned into books - but not by the addition of water, but by various marketing tricks, such as the publication of collections.
I will also note the difference in the authors. Now books are written by all and sundry. I figured out how to treat pain in the left heel that occurs at a temperature of 12 degrees Celsius, if you are in the subtropical zone and head north - that's all, you can write a book about it, and the reader will find it.
Old books were written by completely different people. Sitting at the pen, they were already experts in their field, with many years of experience and proven talents. Elementary, they had money for paper and ink, and, most importantly, a prepared reader.
Now, too, there are such books. For example, “From the third world - to the first. The history of Singapore 1965 - 2000 "Lee Kuan Y. The man, as they say, raised the country from the bottom to the very top, and wrote a book about it. Personally, I have no doubt that this book is worth reading.
Depth of study
The topics related to people management and self-development in old books are worked out much deeper, for quite natural reasons.
What does a modern manager know about people? First, he sees them 8 hours a day. Secondly, he knows very little about their personal life. Thirdly, its capabilities in dealing with people are strictly limited by law. Fourth, people are constantly changing, not giving the opportunity to know themselves.
Compare the modern manager, for example, with the daimyo of an ancient Japanese province. It is served by a clan with samurai dynasties. He knows almost everything about each of his subordinates. He saw many samurai when they were walking on foot under the table. Knows their fathers and grandfathers, with a full list of merits and failures.
He knows how subordinates manifest themselves in practically all forms. One copes well with the economy, but does not fight well. The other can not command the army, but copes well with a small reconnaissance squad. The third is a wonderful negotiator. The fourth man slaps his wife every day, although he behaves decently in the service. The fifth is so fanatical that the suzerain’s chambers protect every night, even if he doesn’t ask for it.
Daimyo has the opportunity to observe people, experiment on them, draw conclusions and improve the skills of managing throughout life - and them, and his. It costs him nothing to test the hypothesis "what will happen if one subordinate every day, for twenty years, only to praise, and another - only to scold", or "how will the effectiveness of the service change if I execute the worst every five years?".
Now such methods are not available, and managers have to be content with a very limited framework. Therefore, it is possible that research spirit is so rare among them - the majority try to just keep afloat.
The reality of the tasks
Now managers solve, basically, virtual tasks, as in a computer simulator. Raise sales, reduce costs, increase efficiency, improve business process, etc. - All these tasks do not go to any comparison with what Chinggiskhan, Bismarck or the same Machiavelli did.
The ancient guys were large-scale tasks, complex, and most importantly - real. With a real threat, including his own life.
Capture Europe, subjugate China, create a state, attach a million square kilometers to the empire, create an invincible army of a million people, build a fleet, knock together a couple of states, etc.
Even in our own, refined business world, this difference can be understood. It's one thing - when you just set the task. Sit down, make it little by little. If the fate of the project phase depends on this task, you will show more zeal. If the whole project depends on this task, you will sit for days and nights. If the fate of the company hangs in the balance - you forget for a time family, friends, food and sleep. With each turn of this spiral, attitudes change.
You stop chewing snot, talk a lot, analyze and choose - you just take it and do it, with the greatest efficiency and complete dedication. But, be that as it may, you still understand: if it does not work out, then nothing terrible will happen, in general. Maximum - lose your work or business. You can always start over.
And imagine what was the motivation of the ruler of the state, near the borders of which grew the empire of Genghis Khan? Or the one to whom Genghis Khan has already visited? Or the king, who understood that without a change his state and government would end? Or a tyrant who won half the world, and now he is thinking how to keep power there?
You and I also face real challenges in our lives, but, as a rule, not at work, but in our personal lives. For example, someone in the family got sick. Or there was a fire. Or you come back at night, drunk, in an unfamiliar area, lying on the outskirts of the city. There are many examples, but the essence is the same - these are real tasks that need to be solved, and immediately. There is no time to argue, it is impossible to retreat, the responsibility is entirely on you.
At work, such tasks are extremely rare, so we do not know how to solve them. And the ancients, as a rule, solved such problems only - if so at their work. Because of this forced necessity, they learned how to solve these problems.
I, of course, do not call for learning to protect the office from the raids of barbarians. It's about the approaches. Solving a real problem is almost always more efficient, or at least more effective. It remains to take approaches to solving real problems, and shift them to virtual ones.
I will give one example - the merciless Russian scrum.
Merciless Russian Scrum
What is scrum - everyone knows. This is a common method of solving virtual business problems. Now it has become a product, and it sells well.
According to Jeff Sutherland, the author of the book on scams, the methodology is based on, among other things, the real tasks that he solved when he was a pilot of a military reconnaissance aircraft in Vietnam. In those days, he, without realizing it, applied a certain semblance of Ajile - observe, understand, act according to circumstances. His own life depended on the solution of this problem.
And there is such a wonderful book as “The Russian Model of Management” by Prokhorov. I also attribute it to the old ones, even though it was written not so long ago, because there it is considered the history of Russian control over several centuries, and no recipes with pills are given.
So, in the book several chapters are devoted to how Russian managers throughout their history used the same approaches as Scram to solve real problems for themselves.
One of the examples given in the book is the evacuation of plants at the beginning of the Great Patriotic War. It began on the classic of management - meetings, events, responsible, deadlines, reporting, etc. Of course, immediately everything was drowned in bureaucratic procedures, and the plants were standing still, and every day they became less and less - the Germans were moving very quickly.
Applied what can be called scrum. They abolished the entire bureaucracy, gave the teams on-the-ground complete autonomy, the broadest powers, up to the execution of those who resist, gave all available resources on the ground to the disposal. And most importantly - they made the task extremely real for managers. You understand how motivated then.
And all evacuated, transported and launched in an extremely short time. Sometimes, in a day, a huge factory was dismantled and taken out. They understood everything on the spot, did not coordinate anything with anyone.
The author of the book introduced several designations to explain the success in this particular example, and in general when solving such problems by Russian people. For example, the mobilization and redistribution of resources. A Russian person is not able to work stably and at high speeds for a long time, but if he is mobilized for a while, he is capable of producing insane results.
And then Jeff Sutherland came, worked in the virtual, bought environment of several commercial projects, got a similar result, called it all scrambled, packaged as a product, and sells.
At the same time, it’s not even close to the effectiveness shown in the book by Prokhorov. Although many tricks - one to one. But you, most likely, did not read the “Russian model of management”, and you think that scrum is a framework applicable in some areas, invented by some Americans, described in a small scrum guide, and its effectiveness is not particularly confirmed?
If you remove the packaging from the screen, then there will be just a set of principles that have been known for a long time, and successfully - much more successfully than they are now - were applied many years ago. Including - in our country, which, it would seem, has not published a single book on management, which has become a bestseller.
Of course, this is not only a scram concern. In old books, if you try a little, you can find almost everything that is now called management. Only there it will be more interesting, because the tasks were real, not toy, as they are now.
Summary
I do not know how to convey my thoughts in the text, so it might seem to you that I urge you to read only old books. This is not true.
I suggest reading not only new books. Any knowledge will become richer in your head, if you learn about it from different sources, look at the practice of its application in different contexts, on the example of different tasks and even in different eras.
Acquaintance with some approach to management or self-development may well begin with a modern, watery, entertaining and well-packed book. The main thing is not to be limited to one source.
I learned about the same scram by chance, from someone I knew. I read the article in Wikipedia, I liked it, but I did not hook it enough to use it. I read the book of Sutherland, and the turning point came - I began to introduce it, before I finished reading it to the end. Then he went to the sources indicated by the author himself - TPS and Japanese quality management. Went to scrum guide.
But the most interesting thing happened later. Reading old books, I found scrum there. Not in its pure form, without fetishes in the form of boards and stickers. There were similar principles, and examples of problem solving based on these principles. Having passed this way, you understand what scam is based on, why it works - moreover, at the level of each component, what is necessary in it, and what can be safely thrown out.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/445906/
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