No I said
“ Even if the truck has been a flop I doubt their whole battery program has been “
The replier then went off on one about the truck actually being a flop. I already conceded it had been. The main point was that their battery program probably hasn’t been a flop
Electrek’s ‘reporting’ has proven so one-sided that I take all their stories with a bucket of salt. Even if the truck has been a flop I doubt their whole battery program has been. Perhaps they’re rejigging suppliers and pausing whilst they get ready to ramp up cyber cab production lines
Hey this report was done by McKinsey and they hire from Harvard and Stanford, and hear how well they speak and look how soft their hair is, the report must be good!
True, they are called the "Hidden Client", any good consultant will be able to essentially do intelligence gathering on who that is and what they want, because it will be one exec
As someone who did an MBA and was groomed to be a Consultant and then repented (now a software engineer) you have to understand that the customer of a consultancy project is an exec.
1. The exec has been charged with exploring a new product space, a potential M&A deal, more vertical integration etc etc
2. The exec needs a gauge on the "size of the prize", is this thing worth doing? roughly how will it be done? how long etc.
3. The exec probably already has a rough idea or gut feeling about one such option
4. The consultants produce something that usually supports the gut feeling, other times it will suggest alternatives and provide some facts and figures to support
Yeah I worked out the "N days without sleep" was mostly rubbish too.
I personally went for 3 days without any sleep in the army as part of a sleep deprivation exercise and it was one of the most brutal things I've ever done, I fell asleep standing up whilst digging a trench, ouch.
So I know when people say "I literally haven't slept in 6 days", they very much don't mean literally, they normally mean they went to bed and had a few hours of sleep per night.
To be honest I don't think it's a lack of intelligence (although that can be the case). To get on the MBA you have to have reasonably high mental horsepower. It's more that in corporate machines, management are so far removed and abstracted from making things that they become administrators by default.
i.e. the core job becomes tweaking the money making machine. And because everything is so complex it's almost impossible for anyone to identify which tweaks are moving the needle. And so self promotion, displays of power and competence become the de-facto measure of competency. In other words, they become politicians.
"The purpose of the system, is what it does"
That doesn't mean that leadership isn't necessary, it just more often comes too little too late because everyone's been busy doing nothing important.
Yep the gulf between proper leadership and corporate managerialism was never more apparent to me than when I left the army and did an MBA.
Leaders are 'in the trenches', in a commercial environment this means they know their stuff, are putting themselves 'on the line' and are demonstrating the values and standards expected of those further down the ladder.
Corporate managers are more like administrators, they dispassionately work the system for their own benefits and pay lip service to the cares and concerns of those they're meant to be leading.