From individualists to communities: Overachiever edition

[jacob]

Maybe I am a (4,4), because I think this whole problem is based on false premise. Obviously, all sorts of people get together and DO stuff all the time.

Insofar the whole map (10x10 points in total) and each step being continuous and "costly" enough to take months or years, what is a good approach to get to (7,7)? Should the focus be on creating as many (4,4) people as possible so as to move the starting point and then add the (1,8) or (8,1) "idiot savants" to the (4,4) group?

[mountainFrugal]

When we talk about community, what is the group size? The number of members preferred will be smaller for a group of all (6,4) individualists than an all (4,6) community group. As a made up example, let us say that is 8 for the (6,4) centered group and 20 for the (4,6) centered group. Presumably there is research or examples of this in real groups (i.e. military/NASA has optimized this in some way for individualist track). If your group size is 8 then you are going to be even more selective on who you let in and it is going to likely skew towards individualists. If you have tolerance for a larger group you could include more individualists as long as they were not skewing your center of gravity too much away from the (4,6) median member. What I think I am getting at is that there might be a gradient of optimal group size given the coordinates of the median member that would still allow the group to remain effective at "leveling up" along the diagonal.

Note: assuming (individualist,community) coordinates, but I might have that mixed up

[7Wannabe5]

Insofar the whole map (10x10 points in total) and each step being continuous and "costly" enough to take months or years, what is a good approach to get to (7,7)? Should the focus be on creating as many (4,4) people as possible so as to move the starting point and then add the (1,8) or (8,1) "idiot savants" to the (4,4) group?

On second thought, I might be more like a (5,3) (if lounging about reading books by my ownsome counts as "doing'), so not quite socially competent enough to answer this question. I hope she doesn't mind, but I am going to nominate mooretrees as an example of somebody who has made quicker than average progress because she was able to leverage social skillz as well as solo skillz.

I can only come up with examples based on how my sisters and I (and also my daughter) are able to do all sorts of projects without having to have endless meetings or hierarchal structure, and that's kind of a cheat for same reason it is easier to create harmony in a singing siblings group. One thing I thought of is that extreme introvert/doers (such as my second sister) in addition to needing complete autonomy over designated/delegated domain for their own mental health within group, also need to have something like a kind-hearted "punk ethic" respect for those who are less competent. For instance, maybe you practice piano for 2 to 4 hours every day, but you also hold the strong belief that "Everybody should be a musician!" because you want to share your passion, so it actually makes you happy to teach your less musically gifted group members how they can also contribute on tambourine.

[jacob]

A simple logarithmic scale might do for group size: social WLn coordinates(*) well with 2^(n-1) people. In hierarchical structures, a person will usually not having more than 5-8 people reporting. This then would be between 2^(3-1) and 2^(4-1) and so typical managers would be between 3 and 4.

(*) Obviously qualitatively different ways of doing this. family, sportsball captain, teacher, ... Various human interaction forms have been invented to make it possible to influence larger number of people.

This can probably be somewhat mapped to Kegan.

[Ego]

Letting others do one task doesn't mean that all growth has to stop, learning and continual skill acquisitions can continue outside of the teachings.

Don't get me wrong... I believe that everyone should be doing. I also believe that the most valuable thing that anyone here can do is show your work. Talk about what you are doing. Show how you went from unskilled to skilled. From ignorant to knowledgeable. Tell detailed stories. Exactly like you do is your journal.

I always liked the saying by a famous general, "Amateurs talk about strategy and tactics; professionals talk logistics." Obviously generals think about tactics and strategy. They speak with one another about the big picture stuff. They don't routinely ask the grunt his opinion on big picture strategy or tactics. For good reason.

How well things map to Kegan is not a grunt level discussion. But what do I know? I'm just a grunt so I should shut up now.

[jacob]

Proposal to get a better handle on the sizing. This refers to how many perspectives or concerns are incorporated into one's behavior. Another way of saying it is the extent to which other people's interests are taken into account. This is unfortunately not a trivial counting exercise. There's a big difference between whether one holds a first, second, third, fourth, or fifth person perspective. They often parallel each other though so the suggested "nth person" perspective follows in parenthesis. Avoid confusing cause and effect. WL2 can obviously serve as a CEO lording it over thousands of people, but the nepotistic approach will be miserable. This is more indicative of whether someone is succeeding/any good at it.

WL1: Self (1st)
WL2: Nuclear family (2nd)
WL3: Friends, colleagues, and extended family (2nd)
WL4: Fitting in, tribe, squad leader, group leader, lecturer, professional behavior (3rd)
WL5: Community organizer, mayor, politician, department leader, therapist, consultant, conflict resolution (4th)
WL6: Counselor, family therapist, division leader, CEO (5th)
WL7: Mandela, Gandhi, etc. (5th+)

Enormous caveat: Very hard to put everything social on one axis.