running an inn: what skills?

[Tom H.]

Originally Posted by Kromm

Yep.

Okay, so I can't help but share this absurdity.

I had worked in a large company doing software, and as usual we were overextended and under lots of pressure.

A new initiative titled Employee Engagement was begun from on high that would increasingly require employees to allocate time and goals for the abstract purpose of greater job enthusiasm and commitment.

I could just imagine that the performance driven executives had started passing around the latest business book that documented the productivity of having employees who were truly engaged.

In typical modern fashion, such an outcome would surely have to be scheduled, structured, and measured.*

Did anyone in management consider the irony that employees might not be engaged because they were being forced to do more things that smacked of insincerity with ulterior motives?

I want to be clear that I'm not denigrating the difficulty and stress of managing people and organizations; more so, just how prevailing cultural attitudes can press us all to insanity.


* Maybe some things just happen organically through good will.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by (E)

Repairing/replacing equipment and acquiring supplies hasn't been covered yet. Depending on the setting this may involve the appropriate craft or farming skills or possibly just area knowledge (local business)

Minor repairs fall under Housekeeping, and supplies come under Merchant or possibly Scrounging. This is inside a city's walls, so the supplies will be produced largely by farmers and fishers, and there will be craftsmen available to do major jobs. Locating them may take Search rolls, which can be made against IQ in many cases.

Since this is a TL1 setting, "equipment" is somewhat limited. Braziers, cookpots, and chamber pots come to mind. . . .

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Tom H.

I want to be clear that I'm not denigrating the difficulty and stress of managing people and organizations; more so, just how prevailing cultural attitudes can press us all to insanity.

Many years ago I read the theory—it might have been proposed by Milton Friedman—that business management is never based on rational decisions. Rather, businesses adopt policies at random (or by jumping onto the latest fad), and then natural selection goes to work, with the ones that adopt the wrong approach dying or being eaten by bigger businesses.

[Tom H.]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Many years ago I read the theory—it might have been proposed by Milton Friedman—that business management is never based on rational decisions. Rather, businesses adopt policies at random (or by jumping onto the latest fad), . . .

Or based on the leaders' personality and beliefs.

Originally Posted by whswhs

. . . and then natural selection goes to work, with the ones that adopt the wrong approach dying or being eaten by bigger businesses.

Interesting.

However, in your opinion is the natural selection actually selecting businesses with the better approach or the ones with accumulated power?

Probably over the long haul (geological time?) the best approaches have to surface.

Unfortunately, I interpret in the short term that excellence can be aborted (bought-out, co-opted) by complacent power that gets threatened.

I'm optimistic that negative complacency eventually gets challenged regardless of its power, but it can take longer.

Maybe the model with mega-entities may be less unseating of their power than the gradual absorption of wise improvements as they fend off their competitors.

Of course, with mega-entities the internal dynamics foster another source of natural selection.

[Tom H.]

P.S.

Natural selection as applied to large organizations must be a complex topic since the life span can easily surpass the typical individual biological one.

Biologically as the alpha male ages, he becomes weaker and his power to thwart change is diminished. But technically an organization doesn't have a similar biological life expectancy?

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Many years ago I read the theory—it might have been proposed by Milton Friedman—that business management is never based on rational decisions. Rather, businesses adopt policies at random (or by jumping onto the latest fad), and then natural selection goes to work, with the ones that adopt the wrong approach dying or being eaten by bigger businesses.

Bah. Who says jumping onto the latest fad, isn't a rational decision? Imitating what seems to be working is thoroughly rational. "Rational" isn't the same thing as "brilliant".

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Tom H.

Natural selection as applied to large organizations must be a complex topic since the life span can easily surpass the typical individual biological one.

It's not natural selection of individual executives within a corporation. That would be like thinking that natural selection worked to choose one of your cells over another. It's natural selection of organizations on a time scale of organizational lifespans.

And of course it's a metaphor. But the theory of natural selection started out with a metaphor: Treating biological reproduction in terms inspired by political economy (Malthus's influence on Darwin). This is just turning the metaphor the other way around.

I think empirically it's clear that there is natural selection among organizations. Look at the past quarter century. How many large established retail businesses have gone away? For that matter, how many manufacturing firms have gotten into trouble? And the same process has overturned the economic habitats some of them have occupied (the ongoing death of the shopping mall) and even entire communities (look at what's become of Detroit). And in the process, not only new organizations but new genera of organizations have come into being; a quarter century ago, "social media" wasn't even a phrase, for example.

As for the adoption of the better policy, that depends on the organization's ability to alter its legal and political environment. I think the single best work on this is Mancur Olson's classic The Logic of Collective Action. Market competition ruthlessly compels organizations to change to serve their clienteles better and cheaper, but barriers to competition let them avoid this, rather as coral reefs shelter many organisms from predation. Or, if you prefer, they change the terms of the competition from serving customers to gaining political favor.

(Note, by the way, that the society where my campaign is set has this sort of thing going on too. For example, the PCs just had to deal with the Seafarers' Guild attempting to claim jurisdiction over long-distance trade ventures as well as established routes. I'm not trying to portray a free market utopia here!)

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Bah. Who says jumping onto the latest fad, isn't a rational decision? Imitating what seems to be working is thoroughly rational. "Rational" isn't the same thing as "brilliant".

The jumping on largely takes place without any serious attempt to assess whether the fad is working or not. It's often more a case of all the other kids jumping off the bridge.

[Hide]

For the part of skills, it would be really nice if you gave your inn a distinctive attraction: A skilled singer, a quick-portrait-painter, a workshop (to make quick repairs to armor and weapons), a fortune-teller, etc.

There are lots of good ideas here, so I might as well provide a complementary approach. It could be nice if Nergul had “Independent Income” and “Dependents”. Dependents could “buy-off” the “Independent income” from the inn. Then, this character could “buy” workers as "dependents" with skill levels as good as possible (accordingly to the CP she invests). And perhaps the “independent income” should be high enough as to cover the basic wealth/income requirements of the dependents and the owner.

- Hide

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Hide

For the part of skills, it would be really nice if you gave your inn a distinctive attraction: A skilled singer, a quick-portrait-painter, a workshop (to make quick repairs to armor and weapons), a fortune-teller, etc.

It's not my inn; it's the player character's inn. And it wouldn't be appropriate for me to suggest ingenious ideas of that sort to the player. That would deprive her of the fun of making it up.