Trapped in a Values Oasis. — Irrational Exuberance

Will Larson talking to something I've seen, and even personally struggled with at times.

I have also come to appreciate how using it in the wrong circumstances can create a misalignment of values within an organization, that causes a great deal of friction. I call those pockets of values misalignment a Values Oasis, and want to talk a bit about why they’re a problem, as well as how you can avoid creating them.

He doesn't use M&A as an example, but that is where I've seen this. I've seen it and have felt it. When I was CTO for BigCharts and MarketWatch bought us, I created a Values Oasis between the team I was leading before, and the new MarketWatch organization. It almost got the better of me. I was trying to manage all the chaos on one side and effectively sheltering the other side from it. But all that energy had to get absorbed, and I was trying to do it. After a couple of months I realized this wasn't going to work. I had to stop attempting to alter and instead flow with it. If that resulted in challenges down stream from me, I would have to deal with that.

The challenges with these Oasis, to use Larson's term, is that sometimes they are incredible hard to see. And sometimes I think they can even be a mirage.