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A comment on Set Up to Fail: How Bosses Create Their Own Poor Performers (1998) [pdf]. Parent comment

Re:Set Up to Fail: How Bosses Create Their Own Poor Performe... by tdullien on Tuesday August 12, 2014 @06:58AM (#8167279)
Bosses do, but the article does not necessarily provide any real solutions. The only clear thing to take away is "be aware that you may be causing a vicious cycle, and try to look out for that/get out of it" - which is a level of self-awareness that any semi-decent manager should have and keep in mind.

Management is a fundamentally messy and error-prone process, and dealing with differences in abilities is always hard and complicated :-/ The other thing about running organisations seems to be the "Anna Karenina principle" - all organisations that function really well are similar, but almost each organisation that fails fails in a different way.

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Re:Set Up to Fail: How Bosses Create Their Own Poor Performe... by lifebeyondfife on Tuesday August 12, 2014 @07:04AM (#8167299)
> the two parties have to "sit down and talk" [quote from the article]

As the paper is addressing a social problem rather than a technical one, the definition of what a 'real solution' may be is debatable.

I definitely think the paper provides suggestions about how to reverse such a cycle.

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Re:Set Up to Fail: How Bosses Create Their Own Poor Performe... by tdullien on Tuesday August 12, 2014 @09:09AM (#8167558)
Agreed; I guess my complaint could be best phrased as "the paper does not sufficiently address the complexities of determining whether you are in such a cycle, and the fact that many people that struggle actively search for more concrete guidance". This doesn't detract from the fact that it was a good read.
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