Bosses on hybrid don't get interrupted they interrupt

Was reading through this study of who gets interrupted by who in hybrid cases. The key outcome is that bosses (or those in power) can successfully interrupt most of the time and are rarely interrupted.

This feels related to the tragedy of the commons of attention that takes place in meeting culture where people will mimic the behavior that people in power have. They learn that this is the way to get things done is be in power.

Is this the reason why managers don’t want to change the structure and format of meetings? They can interrupt still?

With a strong facilitator or other meeting culture we change the way that power dominates the default structure. But power doesn’t want to give up their ability to talk about what they want, even if it is better for the performance of the team.

Related to yesterday’s post, I think standard structuring is optimized for this type of power play.

It also makes me think about how people in power may espouse one thing but really believe another.

Dart’s podcast “Work for Humans” had an episode where an author talked about the realities of Bridgewater. Ray Dalio may talk about principles in one way but they don’t apply to those in power. Every mistake you make is your fault, especially if you are a manager. But not Ray Dalio even though he is in charge.

Or when they tried to implement a system that would talk about how believable someone is and because Dalio was upstaged by two people they “fixed” the system to make him the most.

Power is often the problem and how these systems are built.

The future hybrid of HR and ops people shouldn’t be protecting or placating these people. They should be protecting the rest of the organization from them.