a rambling from which I hope to extract more polished, simpler, and effective heuristics.

when nerds become restless at work about getting promoted to higher levels of management, they double down on their nerd skills to increase their output.

They start keeping track of every goal they score and attempt to highlight these achievements at opportune (and often inopportune) times. The assumption is that once the scoreboard reaches a certain number of goals, then one moves to the next grade.

But the high school nerd skills are not transferrable to the boss domain.

If you're trying to move from one domain to the other, it's helpful if you place your achievements in one of the two domains. If you want to be boss, focus on adding value in the correct bucket.

Here's a sketch of the delineation between the two domains.

high school nerd boss
does the work other people do the work
outsmart be smart
short term durable
not scalable scalable
transaction-oriented relationship-oriented

Should be self-explanatory, but a couple of comments anyway.

  • outsmart vs. be smart: in high school, the geometry teacher poses a puzzle, everyone scratches their heads as they fumble for a hint, a the theorem that could solve the seemingly impossible... and then, all of a sudden, the A-student nerd raises his hand and, voila, he has found the solution and makes it look like it took him zero effort to get it. He has outsmarted everyone in the classroom and his superiority has once more been proved. Well, this skill does not transfer well into boss domain. The grading scale is different, and what earned you an A in one domain may give you an F in another.
  • transaction-oriented vs. relationship-oriented: act for long-term success and antifragility, not the opposite. I see people squeeze business partners in isolated transactions, then go look for recognition for the "savings" they achieved. This "win" clearly belongs to the wrong bucket.