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Comment by nrclark | Hacker News Reader

If you were trying to convince a german to abandon old/bad process, what would be a convincing / resonant counter-statement?

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The (only?) way I’ve seen work is demonstrating your way to be better by implementing it and surpassing whomever is still using the old process. They will then panic and scramble to implement the new process, often times actually quite well.

We‘re constantly playing catch-up but are actually quite alright at it (see EVs).

You can not teach someone who doesn't want to learn. If you want an organization to change, you need people who are willing to demonstrate that change and show its superiority.

A big part of life is influencing others act in your interest even when it’s against their interests, we can’t replace people with better people and must work with the people we have. Sure you could try your luck elsewhere but that does not solve this problem. Appeals to superiority are not where I would start.

I think you totally misunderstood me. What I was advocating was that you give those willing to learn new things the ability to implement their ideas and by that their colleagues will see that there is a better way.

The most important thing is getting the others to want to learn.

* not German by AFAIK its governance by appeals to authority.

There is a bit of dominance power play where you each try to establish that your rules have the most authority. Appeals to correctness are best done with an authoritative determination on said correctness. One way to avoid the power play confrontation is by letting them make the new rules which incorporate the changes you want.

It’s different to the Russian powerplay on who can get away with telling the biggest lies without being called out on it. The more outlandish and obvious the lie the stronger the signal of dominance.

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