Tommy Dyer

Currently working on AI Agent infra and security at work. That's getting me thinking about AI justice/ethics/morality and so, AI Alignment.

[Tommy Dyer @ThomasCDyer1]

https://t.co/HI2NkXtmt9

[Tommy Dyer @ThomasCDyer1]

The "Schumpeter" column in The Economist provides a business-oriented perspective on economic developments, emphasizing the dynamic and often disruptive forces of innovation and entrepreneurship that shape the global economy.

[Tommy Dyer @ThomasCDyer1]

While Schumpeter of 11 years ago is not wrong, there’s a greater opportunity along similar lines. It is for teams to practice dialogue skills, practice the art of thinking together with deeper reading, deeper conversations, all for deeper insights.

[Tommy Dyer @ThomasCDyer1]

‘The thought leaders in our industry are not the ones who plodded dully, step by step, up the career ladder,” he says, they are “the ones who took chances and developed unique perspectives.’”

[Tommy Dyer @ThomasCDyer1]

“Damon Horowitz, who interrupted a career in technology to get a PhD in philosophy, has two jobs at Google: director of engineering and in-house philosopher.

[Tommy Dyer @ThomasCDyer1]

Peter Drucker remained top dog among management gurus for 50 years not because he attended more conferences but because he marinated his mind in great books: for example, he wrote about business alliances with reference to marriage alliances in Jane Austen.”

[Tommy Dyer @ThomasCDyer1]

You will learn far more about doing business in China from reading Confucius than by listening to “culture consultants”.

[Tommy Dyer @ThomasCDyer1]

“The only way to become a real thought leader is to ignore all this noise and listen to a few great thinkers. You will learn far more about leadership from reading Thucydides’s hymn to Pericles than you will from a thousand leadership experts.

[Tommy Dyer @ThomasCDyer1]

Schumpeter writes, it for developing real “thought leaders”, deeper understandings of challenges, leadership in challenges in particular and unique perspectives in general.

[Tommy Dyer @ThomasCDyer1]

That’s the what. But what’s the why? What's the benefit of a “rite of managerial passage”? Of an inward bound course?

[Tommy Dyer @ThomasCDyer1]

During the day a tutor would ensure their noses stay in their tomes; in the evening the inward-bounders would be encouraged to relate what they had read to their lives.”

[Tommy Dyer @ThomasCDyer1]

The format would be simple. A handful of future leaders would gather in an isolated hotel and devote themselves to studying great books. They would be deprived of electronic distractions.

[Tommy Dyer @ThomasCDyer1]

The columnist goes on…
“Rather than grappling with nature, business leaders would grapple with big ideas. Rather than proving their leadership abilities by leading people across a ravine, they would do so by leading them across an intellectual chasm.

[Tommy Dyer @ThomasCDyer1]

In 2014 I read Schumpeter declare “it is time to replace [outward bound courses] with something much more powerful: inward-bound courses.” I was excited.

[Tommy Dyer @ThomasCDyer1]

They deal with what the great Danish physicist, Niels Bohr, called “profound truths” - recognizable by the fact that their opposites are also profound truths.

[Tommy Dyer @ThomasCDyer1]

I just got back from Paris for a work trip. Last time I was there I interviewed Theirry Weil about the book he wrote with Stanford Business School Professor James G March by the name of On Leadership.

[Tommy Dyer @ThomasCDyer1]

Great literature engages these questions in a deeper and more enduring way than other texts. This greater engagement stems from a more profound realization that the issues are to be seen as intractable dilemmas rather than as problems to be solved.

[Tommy Dyer @ThomasCDyer1]

The proper texts for discussing these fundamental issues of leadership are drawn from Shakespeare, Moliére, Ibsen, Tolstoy, Cervantes, Mann, Goethe, Akhmatova, Schiller, Stendhal, Kawabata, Shaw, James, Dostoevsky, Balzac and others of similar stature.

[Tommy Dyer @ThomasCDyer1]

They are echoes of critical issues of life more generally. As a result, they are characteristically illuminated more by great literature than by modern essays or research on leadership…

[Tommy Dyer @ThomasCDyer1]

I’ll quote the core of March’s argument:
The fundamental issues of leadership - the complications involved in becoming, being, confronting, and evaluating leaders are not unique to leadership.

[Tommy Dyer @ThomasCDyer1]

And what Weil and March leave unsaid about teams is true nonetheless. Literature and reading and dialoging aren’t just tools for developing leadership but for building leadership teams too.