Organization – Choreography or Energy? Machine or Natural?

September 29, 2007 at 9:46 am · Filed under 2.0 Design Thinking, Business Model, Charles Handy, Donut, Emergent, Enterprise 2.0, Web 2.0

In the Ptolemaic Org design world – every move and every person is choreographed

Here is a clip from Chorus line showing the process – note that really experienced dancers are struggling. Imagine if on the night the music changed?

Here is a clip from UFIT – see how the group transition from one move to another. The class lasts for an hour and nothing is choreographed and most of the class are just regular folks.

I think that this shows me the essential difference between an energetic organization and a machine organization.

With social media you too can dance

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More on the reality of the “Donut”

September 29, 2007 at 7:27 am · Filed under 2.0 Design Thinking, Business Model, Charles Handy, Donut, Emergent, Enterprise 2.0, Relationships

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As I have been attending my client UFIT’s classes recently I have had a “Donut” moment. All at once the theory leapt into reality.

The picture above gives you a rough idea of the set up. As a newbie, I hang out trying not to be seen on the periphery. Gord is in the centre. Seen from this angle it would appear that we all follow him. But in practice this is not possible.

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In practice, you have to follow the folks in the inner ring. These folks tend to be not only very experienced but are amplifying what Gord does. Note the guy in the red shirt – he is in the centre but is not connected. he is in effect working against the energy.

We have just noticed that while the instructor has to be energetically powerful, she or he is not very effective unless they have attracted this inner circle to themselves. We see this with new instructors – who have all the moves etc but not disciples. When Julie came as a guest to Charlottetown from her home base in Summerside, she brought her inner circle that has even named itself – Team Sweaty!.

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Julie is a great instructor but having her Crew with her lifted the entire experience. It appears that the inner circle interact with each other and with the point in the centre. They create a “Sun” that attracts the outer rings with their “light”, energy and gravity.

[photopress:Donut.png,full,centered]

So what does this mean?

I think that it means that we can now see how to operate the new organizational model. The new model is not a mechanical model that has friction and demands effort. It does not have to control every move and component. It is “Energetic”. If the centre and the inner circle are dense enough and in tune enough – the resulting energy will fill the system. My bet is that such an insight is behind the new reality of the 1% Rule for Networks such as for Wikipedia.

If we are correct – all of the current organizational theory can be thrown out the window. The current theory is like the old Ptolemaic (put the Earth in the centre) system. It was OK for a less complex world. But once people traveled around the globe – it became too complex. (They had to use very complex math to make it work giving the planets little orbits called epicycles) Our current organizational theory is based on a fallacy as was the Ptolemaic system – human organizations are not mechanical or kinetic – they are energetic. We all “Know” that really. Think of the days when the boss in at the office or away – think about the difference in “feel”. To make a mechanical system work, you have to have a non complex environment. A mass market ideal can be seen as being essentially “simple”.

But in a complex reality – as our interconnected world is today – a simple mechanical model can only work by making the processes over complex. Imagine trying to choreograph a UFIT class? The only way a UFIT class can work is an an organism that is connected energetically.

People moan on all the time about how hard change is. That is because in a machine model change is hard – it demands that parts are broken or that too much effort is put in choreography. But in a UFIT class, or in an organization that is set up energetically, change is fun, is easy and is natural.

So what then is the new work of the leaders in the energetic model?

• The person in the centre has to listen to the music and feel the energy of the system – they have to not only have the moves but be in tune with the group
• The person in the centre has to have their own Team Sweaty or inner circle. This group also have to be able to know the moves and to listen well.
• The larger and the more connected Team Sweaty is – the more powerful the energy is to attract the system
• So the organization is simplified as the Copernican Revolution simplified the universe. All the leader has to do is to hold the key ideas and attract and nurture the inner circle – the resulting energy will drive the system. No more attempting to choreograph and drill every part. Most of the effort, friction and labor goes away. With it most of the cost and the anguish.

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The old model is like this steam engine. It’s big, noisy, hot and very very inefficient. It has to run on tracks on a schedule. There is little flexibility. The smallest mistake in scheduling can lead to a big crash. Without constant reinvestment of outside resources it cannot grow.

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The new system is like this. It follows the 14 billion year old design that nature uses. It is so much more powerful than any machine. It is is a life creating system. It has a timetable measured in millenia.

So my friends the choice is clear and it is yours.

Do you want to run a railway or a solar system?

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Social Media and the Organization – Part 1

August 29, 2007 at 8:36 am · Filed under Charles Handy, Enterprise 2.0, Social Media, SocialText, Web 2.0

Why is collaboration so hard in organizations? Every organization that I know tells me that it is hard. Hard – all but impossible! Why? Why? Can Social Media help improve collaboration? I have had no success with just the introduction of the technology. Is there something missing?

I think that I stumbled upon the something that may be missing this week as I was struggling with this question of why it is so hard for organizations to collaborate and to adopt social media. I think that the missing link is having the right context. Throughout history, technology has changed before the prevailing context. Two examples:

• In 1941, the French had more and better tanks than the Germans. But they were decisively beaten in days. Why? Because the French’s context for using tanks was still based in static defensive warfare – Tanks to them were mobile pill boxes. The Germans saw them as a raging offensive torrent. Same technology – different context – different result!

• All airlines except one – use the traditional model of mechanical “efficiency” – usually by playing off pilots with flight attendants versus ground staff versus check in staff. All airlines except one – thought that fleet unification or better use of technology – would save them money. Only one understood that the key to the single most important factor in keeping costs low – having the highest fleet utilization rate (Planes in the air versus on the ground – was not through efficiency but through collaboration on the ramp. Their entire organization is deigned to promote cross fertilization and collaboration. A host of rewards and penalties reinforce this aim. That airline makes more money that all the rest of the industry. None have been able to change their context to follow it – of course that airline is Souhwest.

My aha was this – If you introduce Social Media into your organization without thinking about the new context for enterprise – you will fail as did the French and the other airlines
So then what context?

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When we use the word “Organization” we default to this model. An organization that breaks up work and people naturally into separate and competing parts. I say competing – because this is also how we allocate capital and resources – the parts compete for the attention of the “father” as kids do for the car keys. At the centre of this context is Budget and the idea that everyone and everything inside the department is “Property” that has to be owned by the Head. Hence my Feudal analogy.

This model excludes all externalities such as suppliers and customers. Departments will rather die that share resources with another department. Of course the people inside cannot collaborate – it is logical and wise that they don’t. For the real aim of the department is not the customer or even the larger good of the whole enterprise but the expansion and or the protection of the department itself. Hence the reason why most organizations in the end default into being self serving. They are designed to be so.
So what is the new organizational context?

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I think it looks like the logo for Ross Mayfield’s Social Text. It’s intellectual father is Charles Handy. It is his Shamrock idea made real by Social Software.

In The Age of Unreason (1989) he proposed the Shamrock organisation as a business model. Many have tied the symbol to his Irish background. The shamrock has long been powerful in the Anglican Church of Ireland because of its apocryphal use by St Patrick as a symbol of the Holy Trinity.

For Handy the first of the three leaves represented the professional managers and administrators � the organisational core. This leaf is shrinking in size. The second leaf contained the contractual fringe. Its contributors to the organisation were vital, but they were outsiders. In the third leaf were those including the portfolio workers, as well as temporary workers and part-timers. They contributed much, but they could never be considered part of the organisation. Many didn�t want to be. They wanted jobs but not careers. They frequently worked for a number of disparate organisations. In Handy�s language they were like fleas feeding off elephants. The latter were the large organisations. This was an analogy he pursued in the autobiographical The Elephant and the Flea (2001).

Social Text’s logo sheds for me new light on Handy’s idea or an organic structure whose role id to get a lot of resources for much less cost that by having to own them all like a Feudal Lord.

Let’s briefly explore this idea in practice.

You are the president of a small Public TV station. Your staff is already maxed out with putting the existing world on air. How are you going to make the transition to being a public media company? You have no spare resources. You have only modest internal expertise in the new. You have no way of having God suddenly give you the money to create the new. But you know that if you don’t – you will be dead in maybe 5 years?

In part 2 – I will offer up how such a President could solve this paradox by using the Handy Model and Ross’s Pentogram as a guide. In the mean time – give this paradox a whirl yourself

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