Miles's Law
Updated 2026-08-03
INTRODUCTION
English translation pending.
CORE DEFINITION
Miles's Law, from organizational research, states that where you stand depends on where you sit. A person's views and decisions are shaped primarily by the seat they occupy, the department, rank, and stakeholder role, rather than by their character or by objective truth. The practical consequence is analytical charity: when a colleague turns bureaucratic after promotion or flips views after changing departments, they have not changed as a person, only their position, and their new views are the rational output of that seat.
SCAFFOLDING EFFECT
Reduce cognitive load
- Seat mapping: Locate the person's department, rank, and incentives before evaluating their argument. - Functional charity: Explain a strange position by the seat before blaming the character. - Structure moving: Change the incentive structure if you want the position to change durably.
Anchor fast decisions
Each seat carries a distinct set of stakeholders, metrics, and risks, and the person in it optimizes for those. Views that look inconsistent across a career are consistent outputs of different incentive structures, so the apparent flip tracks the move between seats. Persuasion therefore works poorly on the level of argument, because the person is not free to hold a view that fails their new stakeholders, while moving the seat or its incentives can change the view overnight.
MINIMUM ACTION
In progress 0/1Practice this model in one real situation:
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Source support: Explicit
- zh.wikipedia.orghttps://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E9%AD%AF%E5%BC%97%E6%96%AF%C2%B7%E9%82%81%E7%88%BE%E6%96%AFverified
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