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A brief background is in order:
Zeno’s Paradox: silly Greek wordplay arguing that you can’t get to the finish line.
Corporate Ladder: vertically oriented linear squirrel cage.
Problem: Corporations often take a rigid view of the corporate ladder. Because of the pyramidal corporate structure,
a fine middle manager can get stuck on the ladder just one rung below his incompetent boss, who is not going anywhere, or two managers can find themselves competing for the one rung above them.
Solution: Zeno adds an extra rung wherever one is needed, and removes any extras. The previously frustrated middle manager can now be promoted thousands of times, never actually getting to his boss’s level. From time to time, the distance between rungs is renormalized to avoid bunching up.
Added wrinkle: Dual Zeno’s Ladder
Problem: Balancing the numbers of managers relative to technical people.
Solution: Two ladders are used. Rapidly adding rungs to one ladder while keeping the other ladder static entices those on the static ladder to make a lateral move. In this way management can achieve balanced staffing, and can even get people to make downward moves (via the Checkout Line Paradox).
One ladder, two ladders, red ladder, blue ladder.
http://www.intellec...om/ladderintro.html
Like this but to do with m/f relationships [egbert, Oct 25 2002]
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Wonderful! You're halfway to getting a croissant! |
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I like this - if I understand it correctly, it's like: "Every year
I get promoted to be halfway closer to being CEO than I
was"
I confess though that I hoped this idea might be a
clever version of the "Jacob's Ladder" toy in which the
'rungs' of the ladder get successively smaller towards the
end such that an infinite number of them need to flip
over for it to finish. |
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Correct me if I am wrong, could this be likened to a vertical sort of "greased pig" contest? |
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We have this where I work, it's called a Flat Structure. Everyone is at the same level, you don't work for someone, you report to them. As the Pointy Haired Boss said "Now, instead of not getting a promotion, you'll only not get a raise". |
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Admittedly conceptually a different shape to Zeno's Ladder, but the end result of getting nowhere slowly is obtained. |
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The engineers solution to the Zeno ladder thingy is that...Yes, you'll never actually get there, but you will get close enough for all practical purposes. In this case presumably thats fiddling corporate accounts, and arranging lucrative fact finding missions to South Georgia Is. |
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In our case, close enough for all practical purposes means extra responsibility with no extra reward. |
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in the Peter Principle, you get promoted to the management position just above the one you are fit to hold - on this ladder, are you at the rung above the one that your vertigo can cope with? croissant |
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sounds good since i'm already in a good position. manager |
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This type of virtual ladder is exactly what was wrong with Ford when I was there. The org chart became a complete mess, with many one-reports and simply too many cooks in the kitchen. |
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Aaah the Ford Ladder...where the engineering and purchasing depts gets to sh*t on the suppliers below. |
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[Po] In my former employment, I noticed that if you always lost money for the company, rapid advancement was assured. This I termed the Inverse Peter Principle. There is a psychology that is common to the upper management responsible for promotions. They are not able to admit that the person that they’ve just promoted created a disaster that cost the company millions. If this recently promoted knucklehead had previously made money for the company, the accounts would balance and management could fire him. However, with an unbalanced loss, upper management is forced to mark the loss as “education”, and then move knucklehead up a rung so that he can make the money back. And with each succeeding disaster, up another rung up he goes. The secret to getting to the top was to lose money in each succeeding position. (If knucklehead every by pure chance made money, or pretended that he had, his rapid ascent would immediately end.) |
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Good grief, now that is dysfunctional. |
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I think that it is similar to a gambler doubling his bet with each loss. Eventually, if he dosen't run out of money first, he will make good his losses. At least, that’s the psychology. |
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So.....So.....If, I understand this correctly one can effectively be endlessly promoted, faster and faster untill there is no way of knowing on which rung you stand because you are in transition to the next one?
Well.... Well..... The thing is, my friend, you should have named your idea Heracleitus' ladder and as for silly wordplay, is that what you think of me?
(I would have annotated before but I had some trouble getting to my computer) |
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