Making the abstract concrete

“A phase transition occurs as the ‘market’ gets larger: it passes from something tangible to something abstract, and this impacts everything.” – Joe Norman (link)

The same applies to management. In a small company, say six people, everything is tangible. The CEO knows all his employees, and the employees more or less have an idea of what’s going on. People have a direct relationship with what they discuss. Conversely, in a large company, employees become numbers, objects become metrics, and events become digits on a dashboard. The concrete becomes abstract. 

This is bad for four reasons. One, decisions made on the abstract are good only in the measure that the abstract represents the concrete – often, not much.  Two, it’s difficult to drive change into something you have an abstract relationship with. Three, abstract relationships are a precursor to inhumane treatment and conflict escalation. Four, abstract metrics are easy to misinterpret – leading to many employees misunderstanding them, and some gaming them.

The more an organization grows, the more inexorable will the concrete become abstract. A manager’s job must increasingly encompass making the abstract concrete. For example, explain not what that form is for (abstract) but whose life it’s improving (concrete), commission video feedback from customers (concrete) rather than showing an aggregate review rating (abstract), and so on.

The two best tools a manager has to make the abstract concrete are practical descriptive examples and weekly reviews. The former consist in describing Core Values and procedures not as aseptic prescriptions but as examples of daily life. For example, not “safety is important” but “we always wear seat belts, even when we’re in a rush, and are okay with not going with the cheapest Personal Protective Equipment if there’s a more comfortable and protective one.”

Weekly reviews are crucial to prevent employees from focusing too much on the literal and to avoid virtue signaling and misunderstandings. It is during these regular reviews that the manager can say, “I know I said that it’s okay not to go with the cheapest PPE, but you asked to purchase the most expensive one – I didn’t mean that price isn’t a concern.”

One key property of weekly review is that they are, well, weekly. I know that managers are busy and workers don’t like frequent meetings, but misunderstandings have to be caught early. The same misunderstanding can lead to a constructive discussion if caught early or to a destructive one, full of defensiveness, frustration, and blaming, if caught late.

So, to summarize: as a company grows, the concrete becomes abstract; managers should constantly strive to make the abstract concrete; and their best tools are practical descriptive examples and weekly reviews.

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