Former Community – We Moved
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Dominance won't get you far, you need to collaborate and add value (says Jordan Peterson)
These days I'm listening to Jordan Peterson.
In this passage both Peterson and Jocko Willink touch on two important topics that are foundational to TPM:
Great interview, too.
Peterson is the only person I've seen who asked tougher questions on the merits and ethics of war.
I paraphrase and cut for brevity and simplicity:
Jocko: I had a SEAL platoon commander who commanded via power and authority. We did what he told us, because he told us to do it, and you better all just shut up and get on board with it. We had a mutiny. We went to his boss and said "we aren't working with this guy", and he ended up getting fired
Peterson: That's exactly right. No organization can run stably across time if its predictive operation is raw power (...) the people who are tyrannized are going to band together and say "no", we're gonna take you out. So if you don't wanna be taken out, you can't exercise tyrannical power.
(...)
Peterson: and to confuse functional and competent organizations with tyranny is to make a mockery with the fact that cooperative ethos is the dominating ethos if the organization is functioning properly
Jocko: Yeah, and as I actually pointed, I actually lived through that, and I live through the opposite (goes on to describe the success and putative superiority of democratic and ego-less leadership)
TPM agrees with that in large part.
And that's one of the reasons why here we espouse and generally advise on both value-adding leadership and cooperation (with the exceptions that confirm the rule).
Because value-adding leadership is also generally and often better for the leader, and because cooperation generally makes the pie larger (and better-tasting) for all.
However, JP and TPM agree less on the extent, generalization, and exceptions to those general tendencies.
Peterson seems to generalize that rule to all cases -or to the vast majority-.
To this website, that seems way too "rosy" and positive-thinking.
Instead:
- Tyranny / "raw power" and/or value-taking manipulation in 1:1 relationships can remain in power and in control for a long time. Sometimes, indefinitely -or until the dictator / abuser / toxic partner dies or moves on-. DeMesquita shows with data that dictators last longer in power than democratically elected leaders. And you only need to know a few abusive and toxic relationship to know that the "mutiny" is more difficult and less frequent than Peterson makes it out to be.
- You can sometimes reach the top by taking value, by "barging your way through", with shortcuts that add no value, or by pretending to give value, and there is evidence that several folks at the top are Machiavellians and/or value-takers. Plenty of spectacular examples of meteoric rises to the top, see Elibaeth Holmes, or Jho Low. It unraveled for those two, but how many others kept their positions, power, or money?
We also see plenty of examples in this forum of high-power value takers.
If the world was as reliably "good" as Peterson implies, or as reliably effective in weeding out the value-takers, we wouldn't need this website.
Instead, the above two are the reasons why it's so important to be power-aware and to know manipulation / tyranny / value-taking behavior and value-taking individuals, as well as knowing how to deal with them.
Genghis Khan dominated half of the world.
His genes still live on till today.
To be fair, he delegated power to his wives by letting them manage territories.
Debatable Benefits of Dictatorship
The positive side of more autocratic organisations is that the lazy/incompetent people don't get a say on who should be the leader.
While, in democracy, sometimes populism works too well.
A dictatorship can also be good for innovation if the dictator is far ahead in experience, skills and knowledge compared to subordinates.
We can argue that entrepreneurship is a form of dictatorship.
Dictatorships with solid vision and execution move fast.
That's why startups can challenge and even topple MNCs. (you.com vs Google)
Some strong leaders, visionaries and innovators are also dictator-like:
- Steve Jobs - Founder/CEO of Apple
- John Chambers - CEO of Cisco
“I’m a command-and-control person. I like being able to say turn right, and we truly have 67,000 people turn right.” - Lee Kuan Yew - First prime minister of Singapore
From some people's perspectives, he was ruthless and merciless quite a few times.
Others argue that he was pivotal in building the city nation.
Alluding to our previous discussion, we can call this "win-win" dominance.
The inverted brackets because dominance often involves taking people's power away which can be viewed as a loss.
Yep, all good examples that "dictatorship = short-lived & bad" is a simplification with lots of exceptions.
And albeit "good" and value-adding raw power or dictatorship are exceptions, they do also exist.
