Cat Herding is a bad thing
December 17th, 2007 by HenThis is a somewhat tongue in cheek, somewhat serious idea that has been hovering in the back of my head for a while.
Let’s take a population of Omnians. I’ll begin with Pratchett’s Small Gods theorem that there are two types of people within that population, sheep and goats. Sheep must be herded, while goats must be lead.
Let’s create a matrix:
| Sheep | Goats | |
| Herd | Happy Sheep | Cats |
| Lead | Lost Sheep | Happy Goats |
So, given your population of people - if you herd them, you end up with Happy Sheep and Cats, and if you lead them you will end up with Lost Sheep and Happy Goats. So, to link to the title, if you are Cat Herding, then it probably means your population is largely goat-like and you should start leading.
My next assertion is that Lost Sheep and Cats are equally dangerous; you either have a clueless baabaa out of their depth, or you have a loose cannonball bouncing around. Both of them are quite likely not going the way you desire.
This would suggest that managing groups of people takes the following steps:
1) Identify your sheep/goat ratio.
2) Identify your preferred method - leading or herding.
3) 1 and 2 shows you if you need a people/culture change.
4) Based on pain of using your less preferred method, and the pain of a change, decide how you will manage.
A side effect you will probably see is that your population will tend towards your chosen method. I imagine the correct answer to this tomfoolery is to create herding silos for sheep and leadership silos for goats, and watch both types of Omnian become productive and useful.
This random thought brought to you by ‘Too Much Ice Cream’, and ‘I should really read the Starfish and the Spider - there it’s on my wishlist’.
December 18th, 2007 at 2:02 am
Sorry, don’t get it. When you herd goats why do you get cats? Maybe it’s just my English?
December 18th, 2007 at 6:03 am
Sounds almost plausible, except it probably turns out that “cat herding” is something people only started doing when they found out that to try and “lead cats” is completely and utterly impossible — you get a big cat-fight.
December 18th, 2007 at 5:26 pm
I too am confused by the emergent cat properties of your sheep & goat model.
December 18th, 2007 at 9:19 pm
Goats->Cats….
The reason it’s called Cat Herding is because everyone is trying to go in their own direction at the same time - like Brownian motion. This is because if you try to push a bunch of people who want to go in their own direction, then they’ll dislike that and head in their own direction.
If you consider the Goat/Sheep split - Goats are people wanting a pull approach, while Sheep are people wanting a push approach. If you push the people who want a pull approach, you find that all you do is give them energy to go in the direction they are pointing.
Push people will align with your direction but will require your energy; while pull people will supply the energy but will require you to help them align (think a magnetic attraction).
As to Leo’s cat-fight point…. “leading cats” is impossible by definition [see matrix]. If they’ve become cats, then you’ve failed. Instead you should be leading goats. That’s semantics - I think there’s a good point in Leo’s comment which is that it is easier to Herd Sheep than Lead Goats. Given that the danger of failing (Lost Sheep or Cats) is (I argue) the same, then it suggests that you should only try to Lead when you know you have a high Goat percentage. In equal scenarios, you should herd.
Or… and I suspect this is what happens that leads to people complaining about being pushed into management from being a techie… you make your Goats into Herders, and you try to Lead the Goats. ie) You reward the drive for independence with a group who will take direction well but require you to supply energy.
The problem we all know there is that there’s no reason why a Goat should be a good Shepherd.