Autonomy, Mastery, Purpose

I used to be a newspaper editor for a weekly, and boy did I learn a lot from that job.

First of all, the publisher of the entire chain was a MBA from a Top 10 school, and he didn't know what he was doing. I have no use for MBAs, whom I consider worse than worthless - they're dangerous (and there really is an Old Boy's Network).

The first general manager at the paper was a woman, and she was semi-competent and was asked to find another job.

The second was a guy, who had inherent manager skills. In fact, he left and took all the ads with him.

The third general manager was a woman, and she was a complete catastrophe with no managerial skills. I mean none.

I knew how to do my job, and was good at it. I had mastery. Under the second manager I had autonomy. I never really had any purpose, except writing things that entertained me and sometimes my audience (the purpose of newspapers is to sell advertising).

The third, utterly incompetent woman tried to take everything from me, which means we did not get along at all. So she got rid of me.

Not surprisingly, about after a month after she fired me, she was fired. She didn't understand why. She thought she was doing great (this is called the Dunning-Kruger effect, when someone is incompetent doesn't know it and thinks they are not only competent, but super-competent).

My experience has been first-rate people hire first-rate people; second-rate people hire third-rate people, and third-rate people hire four-rate ones.

I work for myself now.

I've posted similar TED talks like the one above. The lesson isn't hard. Autonomy, mastery, purpose - and productivity and profits will go up.