organization

The Unaccountability Machines

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s Tumblr, and Pillowfort.  Find out more at my newsletter, and all my social media at my linktr.ee)

My regular readers will know that Dan Davies’ The Unaccountability Machine was a big influence on me. If you didn’t know this, well, you’ll probably keep hearing about it every now and then. Anyway, the short summary of this must-read book is that a lot of our systems (government business, etc.) go off the rails because they focus on a few metrics, insulate themselves and their leaders from impact, and become destructive.

There, I summarized an enormously complex book that sums up decades in a paragraph. Go me. Anyway, on to the subject.

I was reading a recent article in 404 media on how people are “staffing” companies with AI, or even discussing having entire companies that are just bots/agents. Yes, it won’t surprise you that people flush with cash or wild ideas imagine a world where they just automate everything and rake in cash. Yeah, you’re not surprised.

Nowhere’s many things wrong with this idea, from data center water burn to legal complications to AI being surprisingly crappy at many jobs. But I want to address something about what it’d be like to run a company with a bunch of stochastic systems doing work for you, because this sounds like the fears of The Unaccountability Machine taken to it’s logical conclusion. Or illogical conclusion.

Anyway, let’s imagine these AI companies, these automated companies, and what we know about AI. You have a lot of automated processes running things, running them with no moral agency because they’re not people. We know how sycophantic AI can be dangerous because it tells you what you need to know. All of this abstract and distant from real human experience, moreso because of the hype cycle.

What you’ve got here is, well, an Unaccountability Machine. A nearly completely automated company of AI agents spinning around one person is not going to get good, safe decisions. You may get something you can use to juice stock and sell off, but it won’t be safe.

What you have are devices that ape human awareness, using old data, telling people what they want, and when things go wrong the AI takes the blame. You have people insulated from real information, focused on limited measures, and using technology that will sound like it’s kissing up to them. All it is is amplifying what happens to various leaders anyway in our decaying government and business systems.

So, really, it’s just business as usual but faster. You can spin up bad ideas and unaccountability quicker.

Now I suspect a lot of this is just juicing stocks, posturing, and trying to ignore how AI costs are going to go up and legal issues will proliferate. So I’m more concerns what happens in the meantime and I doubt it’ll be good – and then of these “auto-companies” will need their work walked back.

Honestly, I hope most of them are scams. Maybe that’d be good.

I suspect Dan Davis is going to have to write yet another book.

Steven Savage

It’s A Matter Of The Day

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s Tumblr, and Pillowfort.  Find out more at my newsletter, and all my social media at my linktr.ee)

So let me take a break from discussing heavy world issues to focus on organization. In this case a more personal experience – what day of the week should I do my planning on?

No, trust me on this. Let me explain.

For a long time I did my planning for my week on Sunday (being an organized person, of course I plan my weeks). However the more I did that the more onerous it became. I was using my weekend to plan things and not relax. Why end the weekend with bureaucracy?

Yet at the same time wasn’t Sunday the start of the week and the end of the weekend? Wasn’t it the perfect day to do this? As a professional Project and Program Manager I felt myself in a quandary. As an organized person in general I was also in a quandary. Double quandary.

I confess this felt ridiculous at first. Why did the day matter? Well as I thought it over it mattered quite a bit.

Think of much much specific days matter. There’s the day you start work and the day you end it. There’s the time off you have that you want to enjoy. There’s the day traffic is the least worse so that’s when you do grocery shopping. All of these things affect your life – and thus when it’s best to plan it.

After some thought and discussion with friends, I settled on Monday as my planning day – essentially my week began and ended on Monday. It was the start of the workweek, it wasn’t on a weekend, and it wasn’t so far along the week it made things confusing.

My Mondays often got busy, but I’d carve out the time to make it work. Know what? It did.

Monday fit my needs perfectly as planning day, even with other things happening. The need to plan on the weekend was gone. I had clarity on my week and weekend. Thinking about what’s the best day to plan made a huge difference – and it was much less stressful.

I even changed up how I did my planning. Now that I was more aware of my time usage and rethinking things, I asked what other things I might do differently. I start planning my months not at the end of a month, but in the middle of the previous month. That let me get a better view of my upcoming weeks, which made Monday planning easier. One change had led to others.

Of course this helped me at work, and made me think over what I did when at work. I have statuses and reports and meetings to do. Now I have an experience to guide me on selecting the best day for things, a way to explain it, and some insights to share.

It’s a simple thing, but in busy times, deciding when to do what, the ideal day or week or month to accomplish something, can make a huge difference. Small things make a big difference organizationally.

So what day, or week, or monthly planning might you want to switch up?

Steven Savage

The Tyranny Of Time Control

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s Tumblr, and Pillowfort.  Find out more at my newsletter, and all my social media at my linktr.ee)

The last few months I’d felt stressed about time on the weekends – and sometimes during the week. What was weird was I couldn’t quite put my finger on what had happened or why because there was no identifiable cause. Trying to ask “what’s my priority” over “what’s my schedule” helped, but that stress was there.

Eventually I tried just rearranging my schedule, breaking out of the usual. That sometimes relaxed me, sometimes proved to be more stressful. However, I finally realized that I was trying to align a lot of disparate schedules and opportunities – because our modern times, ironically, give us more options to manage.

We have a lot of freedom, a lot of options, and that can be a pain.

For older folks such as myself, it’s easy to remember very regular schedules of the world. You worked in this time zone. Your job was an 8 hour block. You know about time zones and that affected how you might call people. TV and news was on a schedule barring a VCR.

This wasn’t ideal, but I think we all had a sense of other people’s schedules. If you were watching X show, it was probably Y time. We knew this timezone was ahead, this one behind. There was an unspoken schedule we were on.

As technology advanced we got more freedom from the constraints of time and even space. You could chat with anyone online in MIRC, them chat programs, then Discord. You could timeshift communications quickly with emails. You’d work with people in other countries. Entertainment and information wasn’t in any schedule, but was at your fingertips at all times.

We had more options and I think it can be overwhelming because of two reasons – we have options but still have constraints, and everyone else has options too.

Yes you can chat with people anywhere any time – except there are still time zones. We may have control over our work schedule, but we’re still all on different schedules anyway. You can order groceries any time – but have to check store schedules and delivery times. You have a lot of freedom that suddenly careers into harsh reality.

But we still have options, enough options to become overwhelmed. With so many opportunities, we can become overwhelmed (or underwhelmed if we want to overdo it). More options means more work put into choices and priorities – that collide with the above limits.

But the freedom you have is also freedom others have. So the schedules for people become more unpredictable. One friend is on a gaming binge when another is eating dinner. Another can timeshift their day two hours ahead but they’re in the same timezone. Don’t even start on the fact your family is in three countries, four timezomes, and everyone thinks everyone else is always available.

I don’t think we’ve entirely adjusted to all the options we’ve got AND all the limits we still have or created with time. I’m very sure we’ve become worse at coordinating with people to judge by the complaints I’ve heard. That’s before we take a look at the political, environmental, and economic chaos of the world.

Right now I’ve decided it’s time to do two things.

First, I’ve tried shaking up my schedule. That’s helped me find out what works – and is how I got this insight. Trying new things helps me break out of my habits and challenge ways of doing things.

Second, I’ve tried blocking time out more. By thinking in terms of blocks of time, minimizing distractions, and a bit more planning I feel more focused and get things done. The act of blocking time in turn also makes me think about my schedule.

So far this has helped me. But I wonder how the world is doing . . .

Steven Savage