Constant battle between a structure and a flexibility. What to choose?

Whether in day-to-day business or in bringing up of children, we constantly face a challenge of choosing between structure (more of rule or process, shown through discipline) and flexibility (more of efficiency, shown in creativity).

Some may see it as a challenge toward making the right balance, as only one simple approach doesn’t resolve complex problems in a real world. I suppose you probably have experienced a situation that you feel someone in an organization (i.e. Finance, Legal, or R&D) simply blocks your brilliant idea, saying you need to follow a process. Or in the other side, you might have experienced a case that you feel someone in an organization (i.e. Sales) asking your extensive flexibility, even to an extent to blame you lack business sense. What is right and how we handle the challenge?

There were two references in the history that may be helpful.

1. In a battle field of 17th to 19th century : Brave man, where is your flexibility?

When I watched a movie on the 17th to early 19th century, there has been one thing I had a hard time to understand on battle scenes. When a highly trained two troops fought, the two troops were standing in lines facing each other in a wide, flat field, in a relatively short distance apart. They marched courageously to each other, even when soldiers next to them fell down helplessly upon getting shot, but they continuously fought in this way. I was wondering, “How come they do not lower their position, scatter and run, or crawl, as shown in a battle scene in the 2nd World War?" I originally had believed it was simply of a movie, but later learned it was historically accurate. Then how come they stuck to this inefficient way for such a long time?

Such approach started from inefficiencies of early rifles, of which shooting range and accuracy were not good. Thus they had to gather together and shoot in sequence. However, it took quite long to change how soldiers fought like in modern wars, even after a technology in weapons significantly improved, because there were so many things to change to command the whole troops in new way, including how soldiers need to be trained and how the organizational structure of officers and soldiers need to be set. Thus many of the military leaders simply stuck to the old ways, thinking only a discipline will provide a victory. Doesn't it sound familiar to you, reminding someone who claims, "The process shall resolve everything."?

2. Ancient Greek soldiers in phalanx : Brave man, where is your flexibility?  

Even if you are not much into history, you probably have seen ancient Greek soldiers' picture, holding spears and shields in an amazing scrum, also known as phalanx. You may simply link soldiers of Sparta or Athens.

It is in quite a scale and sometimes looks splendid for people who watch this scenes in a movie, though it is of a reality on an awful battle field. Highly trained soldiers in phalanx structure was almost invincible in many ancient wars. However, like the case of soldiers in the 17th century, ancient Greeks stuck to this structure quite long with reasons. Those infantry soldiers were middle class citizens who were entitled of suffrage (political right, including voting), and they considered the battle participation as a right. Thus archery or light infantry (armed lightly for a speed) were believed to be for lower-class people, and battles were conducted based upon the implicit rule that these heavy infantry in phalanx should decide a fate of a battle. Thus battles took place in flat, wild field as if it were similar to a sports game.

This inefficiency finally ended when they lost to barbarians who were not affluent to arm their soldiers in expensive weapons and to train them in this degree of discipline. In addition, they had no reason to respect the ancient Greek's implicit rule how a battle had to be conducted. Therefore the barbarians focused on speed and efficiency, then these Green soldiers could not leverage their own strength. Thus flexibility won over structure this time.

3. Then, what's the solution? : Let nothing rule, but build a constructive tension between the two.

I daily face the juggling of structure versus flexibility. Up to certain point, it is an easy choice I choose a structure over a flexibility. By becoming an expert of a process and a structure, I suppose you can be considered as a high performer up to a certain point. In most cases, you even find few people can oppose your assertive comment, "Follow the process!"

However, the true challenge resides how quickly and accurately you assess a return on investment, by advancing flexibility over a structure (process) in certain cases. It takes a courage, leadership, and business acumen to recognize such moments, to navigate the steps through many objections, and nevertheless to maintain a message that structure and process still is a skeleton of the organization, as someone might consider it as an opportunity to bend a rule.

An organization needs a structure. As a company gets bigger, you will find more cases people saying, "We need a better process."

Granted. You need to strive to have a better process that ensures a consistency and efficiency to an organization. At the same time, you also need to be very cautious of a situation that "process-keepers" block every walls of creativity and flexibility. To avoid such situation, I believe it is necessary that the management must demonstrate that they themselves juggle the two always. While process must lead in most cases, please demonstrate there are certain important cases an organization purposely chooses flexibility.

The key goal of the approach is to have a better solution, not an easy one, eventually wins and supported. I truly believe a constructive tension is always necessary, to an individual, to a company, and even to a country.