For some reason, many companies treat their production team as a fixed quantity, something to be accommodated or disbanded but rarely improved. It’s the rare C-level executive who understands that a production team exists on a spectrum between good and bad, and that thoughtful management can influence the quality of their team. Perhaps this says something about the quality spectrum of C-level executives: the fewer people at the top of the pyramid, the narrower and more polarized the output.
Process and Creativity
One of my favorite paralogisms (and, sadly, I have several) is the fallacy of false opposites, more popularly known by such variants as the straw man argument or the fallacy of false alternatives. I like it because it’s a quick way of getting a conversation to us-versus-them, at which point any need for supporting argument goes swiftly out the window. What’s a Republican? Someone who doesn’t believe in unions, graduated tax or socialized healthcare. What’s a Democrat? One who doesn’t keep a loaded Glock beneath the pillow to defend home and hearth against early parolees and illegal immigrants. See how it works? It’s so easy, it ought to be illegal. (Republican again.)