Mastodawn

Ruth — of systems & design Aug 25, 2024

Eric Schmidt:

‘learned that there were people who I call “glue people”. The glue people are incredibly nice people who sit at interstitial boundaries between groups, and they assist in activity. And they are very, very loyal, and people love them, and you don’t need them at all.

[..] I kept trying to get rid of these glue people, because they were getting in the way, because they slowed everything down.’

quoted in Contempt for the Glue People by @norootcause

https://surfingcomplexity.blog/2021/08/28/contempt-for-the-glue-people/

Contempt for the glue people

The clip below is from a lecture from 2015 that then-Google CEO Eric Schmidt gave to a Stanford class. Here’s a transcript, emphasis mine. When I was at Novell, I had learned that there were …

Surfing Complexity

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Ruth — of systems & design Aug 25, 2024

Contempt serves to self-elevate by denigrating. It is a classic power-over kind of move, for it takes personal power from.

Still. The importance of “glue people” might be better understood if we used a word that connotes cohesion rather than adhesion??

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Marsh Gardiner 🌱🐝Aug 25, 2024

@RuthMalan I love the framing of cohesion vs adhesion! How about "systematician" (or "systematic," though risks connotation of study vs practitioner). "Connectors" might also work?

(And I have to say that this whole thread is 🤩! It makes me feel like I've found my people.)

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Marsh Gardiner 🌱🐝

@RuthMalan High leverage work is possible because of a solid base. The lever needs the fulcrum. A net without knots is just string. Knowledge is woven from facts. (I think that know and knot even share a common Proto-Indo-European root *"gnō?)