Sunday, December 02, 2007

Sherlock Holmes is not a team player

I'm reading Sherlock Holmes right now, specifically, the complete works of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes. I bought it after reading 'How Do You Move Mount Fuji' about logic puzzles used in job interviews most famously by Microsoft.
I wanted a subtle departure from non-fiction work related topics, eg Moving from Drucker's 'effective executive' to 'how do you move mount fuji' to 'Sherlock Holmes' who I found out Dr House is based on.
For one thing the book cost $15 and weighs about 3 kilos. Furthermore comfortable seating/bedding is somewhat at a premium in Japan. But I perservere.
I did just want to comment though, for any one thinking, Sherlock Holme's there's a good bit of Victorian Literature I can read to my kids, that Sherlock Holmes' MO is not what should be imparted to children, without you there to guide and explain them to them.
Just pick up that handy pamphlet 'Talking With Your Kids About Drugs' and then apply all the recommendations within to Sherlock Holmes, that is if your housemate didn't draw a picture of you being spitroasted on the cover as a going away present like mine did.
Specifically let's talk about my upbringing, and recent crossover into managerial buzzword spitting cliche, Sherlock Holmes (as the author is also aware) utilises his skills in a way that leaves his accomplices in the dark and stages his arrests in a climax designed to impress the people he views as his inferiors - namely Watson and Lestrade.
In real life, this kind of behaviour whilst understandably appears to be playing your advantage in classic strategic thinking, is really just an individual refusing to be a team player.
Holmes can use clever excuses like 'If I disclose my suspicions before they are ripe they could put the case in jeopardy' but what he's really saying is 'your stupid, too stupid to tell what I've figured out in case you go blabbing it all over town, so I won't tell you because I also know you're so stupid you wont figure it out.' which is just mean and insensitive.
Watson is pretty useless one has to admit, almost never practicing medicine and living on welfare. But that being said, since Holmes' day, sufficient research has been conducted to say that the team always outperforms the individual.
Holmes is all take no give, he has even constructed a line of questioning that allows him to obtain information without his sources having any idea what he's getting at.
In short he's a one man show. You can see some of the needless risks he takes, using Sir Henry as bait in Hound of the Baskerville's and even sometimes killing people as a result of his natural showmanship.
One could say, settle down tohm, Sherlock behaves this way simply because he is a non fictional character and his method is designed to maximise suspense, but even in the realm of fiction, its not like you can actually match wits with Holmes a lot of the time he is privy to information you aren't so it's not like you can nitpick the facts and try and beat him to a conclusion.
No Holmes will go out for a day and send a wire to some other continent and find out the name of the culprit, all this he'll just drop with no explanation at various intervals eg. 'the man you are looking for goes by the name of J.H. Smith, an escaped convict with a wooden leg' sure the wooden leg part was easy, but how can I the reader truly appreciate Holmes ability when he just goes and finds out a name through individual enquiry.
Translated into a management precedent this sort of Genius results in the 'Genius with a thousand helpers' style of management. This is where you have one strong, charismatic, intelligent manager heading an organisation of otherwise mediocre but able administrative assistents.
It all works well so long as Holmes is on the case, but remover that piece and the whole game plan goes to shit, sort of like how I lose my queen and both my nights usually within the first 7 moves of chess.
Holmes would have been better off teaching his method Generically, at least after he had solved the first 2~3 cases. This would have produced a sustainable detective police force. Admittedly he's always publishing books and shit.
I guess in the end, we all won from the entertainment, and Holmesian deduction is now a taught method of detective work. But still, I think the books could have been improved with a proactive team and more high fives.
Incedentally my inferior brain struggled with all the Microsoft puzzles, that include how do they make m&m's, 50 couples in a village all with cheating husbands etc. On pretty much every account, except for one or two I'd heard before like the three switches one lightbulb puzzle. This gave me considerable advantage though as I determined quicker than most that these would not make for an effective interview technique, as I would have failed it.
If someone could devise the Sherlock Holmes roleplaying Bed & Breakfast weekend now, that would allow me to weed out non team-players.

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