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The HR Problem #1 – The Traditional Organization is a Machine and We are Human

by Rob Paterson

January 30, 2010 at 3:27 pm · Filed under Culture, Organizational Design

Employee_Engagement_This_is_how_it_is2

Did you laugh when you saw this? I did. I laughed because the picture tells the truth that we dare not speak about. That the only thing that keeps the formal organization going are the informal, unseen, human, social networks that both inhabit it and cross its boundaries.

What really lives and works today are social networks. But all the rules that are used in the traditional organization are based on the central metaphor that it is a machine and that people are merely components.

This is the disconnect that Jon and I wish to talk about in this new series on HR and IT.

There are many reasons why the old model is not a good one any more. The disconnect between the machine model and our humanity makes us ill.

CHD Whitehall

This slide is taken for Marmot’s historic study of the UK Civil Service. (The Whitehall Study) What it shows is that our hierarchies kill us. The issue is control. Those in the lowest levels are 5 times more likely to die of Heart Disease than those on the far left, the Senior Leadership. High demands and low control cause our immune system to be compromised. The traditional organization is all about control. CHD is not the only outcome. At my old employer, a major bank, more than 60% of the women staff used anti depressants. We were typical.

We are miserable inside these kinds of organizations – if a better alternative arrives we will go there. Many of my kids age group, about 30, will not work in such places. They just can’t cope with the control.

These organizations cannot cope with change. And Change is all there is right now. We also know how unresponsive these organizations are to change. I was stunned to know this week that most governments in North America still use Word Perfect! This of course is tiny when compared to facing the challenges that confront us all.

There are new organizations based on natural models that are now at scale and making a difference in the world. They are now ready as a model, to be applied everywhere. You think I exaggerate? Let’s look at these numbers.

Skype has 500 million customers/users and only 600 staff. How many people work for your Telco?

Mozilla has about 350 million and so does Wikipedia. Mozilla has 375 staff and Wikipedia 30.

Back in 2007, Craigslist had the 7th highest number of page views of any web company. It had 23 on the payroll. Yahoo, the # 1 had 10,000. Time Warner #2 had 90,000. No wonder the newspapers lost the personals and the locals and could never get them back.

Here is one I bet you never thought of. It is the grandfather of the natural model – the first Chaord or as Jon might the first Wirearchic Organization.

Back in the 1990’s Visa International had 355 million users, 23,000 partners and operated in more than 200 countries but had only 3,000 employees. The NatWest at that time had 81,000 and B of A 91,000 and a fraction of the scale. Here is more current information

All these organizations are designed as natural networks. They use Group Forming as their value proposition.

In the next few weeks, we will talk about what is it about these natural network models that make them so effective? What are the new rules? Why does social media make so much sense in the network model? Why is it so hard to install any of this in the traditional model?

How can a traditional organization stand up to this? After all an artisan weaver could not stand up to the big mill. So once again, a better model will trump the lesser. The industrialization of the world took less than 50 years to be dominant. How long will it take for the natural model to supplant the mechanical?

Is this something that you should know about?

There will be a lot of pain along the way. Especially for those that get caught by the transition. But there is good news. I think that we are about to return to a world where mankind is no longer separated by his tools and processes from nature but is in fact ironically taken home by his new tool set. The plow took us to a cold inhuman and unnatural machine world – the internet and the metaphor that it embodies will return us home. Home to a world where we live again inside the metaphor and rules of nature herself.

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dan pontefractJanuary 30th, 2010 at 4:04 pm

I am so looking forward to these posts and the discussion thereafter.

Bring it on! (that being the new 2.0 org)

Lars HansenJanuary 30th, 2010 at 5:10 pm

If I may for a second borrow a leaf from Russell Ackoff…

I am not certain that the machine metaphor is the most accurate description of the current management paradigm. Rather, I think that the most precise metaphoris that of an organism, i.e. an entity with a brain and a lot of bodyfunctions each serving a specific need. We have a management layer, that defines a purpose for the organisation, and then layers of all the people doing the actual work (a machine does not have a purpose – it just serves a function).

This leads to ignorance of the fact, that all parts of the enterprise (me, you, departments, divisions) all have their own purposes. The purpose of the individual is sacrificed at the expense of the purpose of the organisation.

Another problem is, that the organism metaphor – with its brain and its functions – leads to a separation of decision making from the actual work being done. This creates an arms length distance between the decision makers and the ones having to live with the decisions.

The correct metaphor for the organisation, would be that of an eco-system – or perhaps a system of systems.

Rob PatersonFebruary 1st, 2010 at 6:14 am

Lars – Ecosystem – I am with you all the way – the organization as a proto person brings us back as you say to the brain led idea. Of course as we learn more, even that model with the rational thinking part as the peak is crumbling.

Sam DeeksFebruary 2nd, 2010 at 6:04 am

Rob, great article – and a pleasure to see our picture at the top of this discussion – thank you.

When our work surfaces the ‘unspokens’ in organisations it is always with the intention of supporting a client shift in some small way from the old mechanical, human-consuming model of business to a more enlightened, engaging and spiritually nurturing one.

Great to see we’re not alone in that intention. You’re also right that this transformation (whether forced by external factors or courageously chosen) is painful. But as Eckhart Tolle says of humanity’s spiritual evolution: “we are in a time when things are getting worse at the same time as they are getting better”

Robert PatersonFebruary 2nd, 2010 at 9:03 am

Sam
Thank you for your kind comments – I am inspired by your work – I also love the way you use art to bring the metaphor to life. I think that your picture is THE great introduction to the issue of the struggle between 2 universes that is taking place today.

I look forward to getting to know you guys better
Rob

RotkapchenFebruary 25th, 2010 at 4:00 pm

Per the medical evidence, I have a personal artifact that I offer. It’s only something I’ve suspected, but the research lends credibility to it. I have a sister who is 6 years younger than I. She looks considerably older — all the while, she is developmentally disabled, so her brain behaves younger.

That said, I’ve often reflected on the ‘fear’ that goes along with a mindset like that. I watch her extreme moments of frustration when others take control from her (extreme in the sense that she will often rip her clothes). Having noticed this, when I talk to her in those moments (which are not frequent), I try to be sensitive to where her mind is and how she’s viewing the situation. It’s tremendously helpful as a perspective to understand the behaviors of others when they seem resistant.

But again, the focus here is that when I tried to consider how she (with no bad behaviors like smoking/drinking, save for a weight problem) could have aged so much more radically than I, my first suspicions were with the ‘control’ issues. Come to think of it, I think that I really started to age a bit more when I began to realize that what I thought I controlled, I really didn’t : ) Now I’m just trying to come to peace with it all.

ffblogJanuary 30th, 2010 at 3:27 pm

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