Disruptive Data … Or Disruptive People?

 

One of the most fascinating games that we Game Theorists like to analyze is the Hawk/Dove game. Imagine a population of 100 generic birds. Each bird can either forage for their own food (Dove), or else aggressively attack other birds, and take their food away from them (Hawk). Which strategy will prevail? Without getting into the mathematics of the payoff grid[i], I can relay a couple of the findings from analyzing this setup:

• The payoff for the entire population is maximized when every member behaves like a Dove.
• With the introduction of just one Hawk, however, the mixed strategy will quickly conform to the Nash Equilibrium[ii], of 25% Hawk, 75% Dove.
• If the available amount of foodstuffs is insufficient to feed the entire population, selecting the Dove strategy exclusively will lead to certain death.

Okay, so we’re obviously not talking about literal birds here, but humans in an environment where strategic options are extremely limited, reduced to the binary decision to act passively or aggressively with respect to the other members of the population. Of course, in real-life human interactions within, say, a certain organization or Project Team, the decision(s) to employ a passive strategy (perform your job duties as assigned, to the best of your ability, while assisting others doing the same thing) or a more aggressive one (pursue your own interests, even at the expense of the other members of the Team, or by bending the rules) are not so Boolean. Almost everyone engages in a “mixed strategy,” composed of actions that can be objectively aggressive, or objectively passive … or somewhere in-between. It’s this in-between area that makes the relevancy of games like Hawk/Dove to real-life situations somewhat ambiguous, meaning that any take-aways from such analyses won’t approach the precision of a calculated Nash Equilibrium. Essentially, Game Theory can lend credence to some usable axioms or somewhat dependable leading indicators of organizational failure, but can’t provide the basis for making specific organizational behavior and performance decisions.

Speaking of organizational behavior and performance decisions, GTIM Nation knows of my respect for the brilliant Michael Maccoby, particularly in his book The Gamesman: The New Corporate Leaders (Simon and Schuster, 1977). In this book, Maccoby posits four basic archetypes in the workplace:

• The Craftsman cares deeply about his actual output, but not so much as to the organization around him.
• Conversely, the Company Man cares very much about the organization around him, to the point of adopting its persona.
• The Jungle Fighter gets ahead through calumny and cloak-and-dagger strategies.
• The Gamesman does not perceive his paycheck as a roof over his head, or food on the table. Rather, this archetype sees his perks and renumerations as some sort of token in an elaborate game he’s playing. Because of this, the Gamesman is both more likely to have an advanced knowledge or capability in whatever industry in which he is engaged, and more willing to take risks than the others.

Now consider what happens when we combine the Maccoby Archetypes with the usable axioms from an analysis of the Hawk/Dove Game. If we were to bin the former into the structure of the latter, I believe Craftsmen and Company Men would tend to be Doves, while Jungle Fighters and Gamesmen would be Hawks. Recall the third bullet from the Hawk/Dove analysis, that, in the absence of sufficient supplies of food, selecting the Dove strategy exclusively means that bird will perish. In PM parlance, if there aren’t enough projects for all of the Project Teams in a given industry, relying exclusively on Craftsmen and Company Men to advance your organization – or even keep it afloat – might not be the best strategy.

“But Michael!” I can hear GTIM Nation say, “In virtually every other blog where you invoke the Maccoby archetypes, you roundly condemn the Jungle Fighters! Are you reversing that now?”

Not in the least. Jungle Fighters are absolute poison, no doubt about it. It just so happens that they share the Hawk bin with the Gamesmen, and together they make up the disruptive component of the organization, or Project Team.

All of which brings us back to the question in the title… are we talking disruptive data, or disruptive people? Because an absence of disruptive data may or may not represent management information system validity, but a complete absence of disruptive people may very well presage a competitive deficiency in your Project Team or macro-organization. The trick here is to differentiate between Jungle Fighters and Gamesmen when utilizing disruptive people. The acid test? While both Jungle Fighters and Gamesmen pursue their own interests, the Jungle Fighter will do so to the detriment of the Project Team, while the Gamesmen does so in cooperation with them[iii].

Also, Jungle Fighters have more of a buzzard-like appearance.[iv]

[i] For these formulae, see Game Theory In Management, pp. 22-26.

[ii] From Investopedia,” The Nash equilibrium is a component of game theory that asserts that a player will continue with their chosen strategy while knowing their opponent's strategy as they have no incentive to change course.”

[iii] My take, not Maccoby’s.

[iv] Same as iii.