
Founder personalities and the “first-class man” theory of management - Cmccann7
http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2010/07/founder-personalities-and-first-class.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+startup%2Flessons%2Flearned+%28Lessons+Learned%29
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lvecsey
Isn't it the case that legal issues are often a bottleneck to getting products
to market? The traits listed for "taking the plunge" have been described
elsewhere (I think by pg) as the "rat" phenomenon. Basically there are a new
breed of super rats which will persist and bootstrap or gain traction, to the
detriment of conventional or historic VC interaction.

The advent of online trading (with the floor traders going bye bye) is another
peg in the coffin, I think. It very well may be possible to day trade as a
primary means, with only a secondary concern of bootstrapping or working on a
startup. With priorities like that the startup just becomes a passionate "can
it be accomplished?" pursuit, because by comparison the profit incentive just
isn't there.

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zb
This feels like a rewriting of history, given that the idea of the 'first-
class man' was at the very core of "scientific management" and the phrase was,
according to Kanigel, "a staple of Taylor's rhetoric".

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eries
Taylor still believed in the importance of individual character and skills.
Taylor used the term "first-class man" to refer to the kind of person you
could train to do high-quality work in scientific management. But he was
careful to say that someone else (ie a manager armed with scientific methods)
should determine what the optimal amount of work such a man should do.

Today, Taylor is mostly remembered for the tactics he emphasized: time and
motion studies, the separation of planning from working, etc. But that
overlooks his lasting contribution, which is that the systems that are used to
do work could be studied and scientifically improved.

His 1911 "Principles of Scientific Management" is actually a very short read,
is in the public domain, and is quite fun. You can get it for free for your
Kindle here: [http://www.amazon.com/Principles-Scientific-Management-
ebook...](http://www.amazon.com/Principles-Scientific-Management-
ebook/dp/B000JQUO5G/ref=tmm_kin_title_0?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2)

