Labels are crutches
A while back, I’d posted on what some crutch phrases are.
As I was thinking about it more, I realised there are something else that are crutches - labels.
Labels exist in societies in two ways. The first is as brands (Nike, Apple) of products/services that signify trust and unique positioning for that service. There’s another more subliminally pervasive way - words given to make understanding an object or part of an identity better, through associated historical and social context. Both are related though (and I’ll come to how).
Let me give you different situations where labels are used.
You are looking for a ‘product manager’ and while considering the options, you look for everyone who has mentioned the word ‘product manager’ on their resume.
You are looking for a smart person and look to prestigious education as a proxy for smartness.
You are looking to buy a product, be it phone or fashion, and look at brands to make your decision.
What is common among all these examples?
You are minimising your downside by using the trust created by these definitions .
There’s a certain amount of trust and service that comes by owning Nike and Apple, and you don’t have to worry about a dysfunction later. Hence, by trusting these labels, you minimise your potential downside.
The same downside minimisation happens when you look at PM experience while hiring for PM. Or while looking for a ‘smart intern’ in prestigious colleges.
This is often enough in most situations and hence is a good and perhaps, the most ubiquitous, strategy for decision-making.
Where this fails?
Alpha
In finance, there’s a concept called alpha, that essentially means a distinct advantage (in terms of returns) that you have over the market. If you are an investor, alpha is the most important metric on which you’d be judged.
In public markets, where information about all stocks is ‘mostly’ available to everyone, alpha is generated by a unique perspective.
In private markets, there’s a lot of information asymmetry, and hence alpha is generated by access to information + perspective on that information.
If you are a public market investor and you pick all the common bluechip stocks in the same weight as the index, you perform as well as the index, not better. If you have to generate alpha over index, you will have to either skew the weights or pick different stocks or a combination of both.
Picking different stocks or weights than bluechip is inherently risky. But done well, they also give higher rewards.
Labels are the equivalent of bluechip stocks in the world. To put it another way, if you want to beat the market, you can’t rely on labels.
Labels will solve for good, but not great.
It may be that the people who have mentioned PM work before are good PMs. But there are often undiscovered people in other functions who have equivalent (or even better) natural skills but just haven’t been given that chance yet. If you have an eye for judging that, you will beat the talent market by bringing in undiscovered yet high potential talent.
Novelty
Labels are also not useful in uncertain / obscure domains.
Think of a newly emerging field where the work is evolving fast. Like hiring a PM in 1990s when internet was just evolving, there was not even a proper job description for what a PM would be supposed to do. In such cases, labels on role would be unreliable very soon. So you can’t rely on them even to minimise downsides.
Why is this a crutch?
Because you are outsourcing your thinking to the previous institution or societal context for making that decision.
That is completely fine if you are buying products, but not if you are looking for big things - jobs, cities, life partner, team mates, friends etc. You need to solve for not just good, but great here, and what is great in these things is personalised. It has to be great for you, may not be for everyone. And hence you have to make that decision independently, not rely on external definitions.
Also, good is often the enemy of great. If some definition is ossified, it’s likely that it’s the one that has been most commonly accepted among the masses, not necessarily the ‘best’ one.
This manifests in art very often. The best art is often not the one that is the most popular in that generation, but the most divisive. Jazz was very divisive when the movement started, and so was Van Gogh.1
But?
It takes a lot of time to hone this skill of identifying real things that fit you, without the labels. The societal force on labels is so high that often you will gravitate back to thinking in that way. Also, like I mentioned earlier, it’s a riskier strategy and that means frequent failures.
It’s like riding a dragon. You shouldn’t be hoping for a comfortable seating position. Expect turbulence. Make it your friend. Else don’t ride dragons and go for horses instead.2
I dont think the opposite is true - just because something is divisive doesn’t mean it’s great. But almost all great things in their time have this property. Which is another reason why creating great things is hard - at least half of the people will be against you.
That there may be less horses and more illusions of horses is a topic of another post
If you think you are one of those who dont have labels but have great potential and want to chat, just write back to me. Always interested in talking :)