Mao Zedong
Methods of Work
Put it on the table
Methods of Work of Party Committees (1949)
The call was right and everyone still went their own way. This one is about getting a group to actually move on one judgement.
What actually happened?
March 1949. The organisation was about to change from fighting to administering, and what he wrote down was twelve rules of craft rather than a line of argument: how to run a meeting, how to question the people below you, how to push ten things along at once without noise, how to turn I think into I have counted. The earlier essays settle the judgement; this one starts after it. One person seeing clearly and a group moving accordingly are two different problems.
Put the problem on the table
A disagreement that is not aired does not go away; it moves into the corridor afterwards and ferments. Tabling it is not about arguing. It lets whoever objects finish the reason out loud, because a reason left unfinished comes back in some other form.
Unanimous in the room, full of reservations in private messages afterwards. That agreement is the expensive kind: everyone executes their own unspoken version of it.
Learn to play the piano
All ten fingers move, but they do not come down together. Push only one thing and the rest rot; press ten evenly and what comes out is noise. The craft is in sequence: which is the melody this stretch, what accompanies it, who takes over next.
One word shouted all quarter while the other lines are left to rot, or twelve goals every one of them marked highest priority. Neither is playing.
Have the numbers in your head
Any quality shows up as a definite quantity. Feedback is good is an impression, not a situation. Retention is thirty-eight per cent this month against forty-one last month is a situation. Without quantity, the discussion is won by whoever is loudest.
Ask a manager what the biggest problem is and most can answer. Ask how many times a week it happens and half the answers disappear.
How do I use it today?
Where you are: the direction is settled and the group is still each running its own reading of it.
Ask first: has the disagreement been finished out loud, in front of everyone?
Where it goes wrong: nobody objects in the room and reservations are everywhere afterwards; twelve goals all marked top priority; two hours of discussion without a single number on the table.
Lines to keep
Put problems on the table; a meeting that hides them settles nothing.
Ten fingers all move, but pressed down together they make no tune.
Any quality shows up as a quantity; without quantity there is none.
Same situation, other people are asking
I explained it and what came back was not it.Everything is orderly now and we've somehow got slower.What I ask for and what I get are never the same thing.We added people and less gets finished than before.Nothing ships · all 12 questions →If this one named what you are going through,
send it to someone who needs it, or keep it somewhere you will find it again.