The Pyramid, the Hive, and the Neuronal Network: Command and Control in Organizations

This article is not a scientific paper. While it contains my observations, I have not even tried to put this subject on a scientific foundation. But I wanted to suggest a model to look at the way organizations behave, and how this behaviour can be controlled. I am not saying that this model is perfect, and encourage everybody to disagree, agree, amend or in any other way contribute to this discussion. (BTW this article also has nothing to do with my current job or employer and is not commissioned, sanctioned or representing the view of the organization I work for, but only my own.)

First of all, why does this matter? I would suggest that poor alignment and disjointed action of an organization is a waste of its resources and efforts. If an organization does not understand where it is going and why, not all parts will fully support this effort, with some quite possibly working in a direction that is counterproductive. In German, there is an expression epitomizing this, saying that we all have to pull the same rope. If the organization is not aligned, we might all pull on the same rope, if we are lucky, just not in the same direction.

If you want a case study, Raffaela Rein of CareerFoundry posted a piece on LinkedIn with the title "How flat hierarchy almost killed my startup". In it, she very colourfully illustrates her attempt to keep a flat hierarchy organization in her rapidly growing start-up. Her take-away is, that hierarchy is needed to provide alignment throughout an organization. That is the part where I disagree with the conclusion. What is needed to steer an organization is leadership, providing direction, and what I would like to call Command and Control to steer the entire entity.

Now what do I understand under Command and Control. I am transferring this term from the military realm, and interpret it a bit loosely. "Command" means how the highest leadership, once it has determined the strategic direction for the organization, elicits action from the whole entity to deliver the desired results. "Control" means a process loop, whereby the leadership monitors the status across the organization to inform further Command activity and keep the organization on track, especially as this track does not really exists.

The classic Command and Control model falls in between two extremes, which I want to call the Pyramid and the Hive.

The Pyramid represents the classic hierarchy with narrow top widening into broad base with intermittent layers of management. Communication typically emanates from the top down along chains of command, is in the parlance of business "rolled out". However the transmission mechanism resembles more that of gravity force starting from the weight at the top, which is then, amplified by the weight of the intermediate layers, supported essentially by the entire structure and its foundations. Hence the choice of the Pyramid as illustration. But what are the implications of this building-like structure? It is supremely stable and can tolerate gaps such as windows and doors, but it is also essentially static. As an example, the classic military army, built following this structure had as primary task to move as one following the orders of its general officer. So monolithic behaviour was an accepted or even desired feature. However neither in the contemporary military nor general organizations is this lack of ability an advantage. The added complication is that the intermediate layers add their own weight, distorting the force from above and creating possible local imbalance. So different parts in the structure are exposed to the load from above differently, depending how their immediately superior layers distribute the force from above. This can in extreme cases lead to large areas completely unexposed to the force exerted by the top layer. In practical organizational terms, this means that, depending on the intermediate leadership layers, whole departments can "not have gotten the memo", either inadvertently or on purpose.

(Pyramids By Amjahed [CC0], from Wikimedia Commons)

On the other side of the spectrum is the hive, a number of independent units acting in a common interest. The main driver for each unit is its DNA, a set of rules that it has received at its conception. Common peer-to-peer interaction can exist, such as the dance of the bees indicating direction and distance of rich sources of food, but the main control mechanism is the DNA-encoded set of information, so that control can be exercised only through each new generation with an evolved genome. This guerilla-like approach has the benefit of full alignment of every part in the organization, at least at the point of conception. The drawback is, that there is no communication channel to realign the different operating cells once circumstances change. The only way to achieve this is by continuously rejuvenating the organization with new cells programmed with a new DNA adapted to the changed conditions.

(Picture By AITHEMOU [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], from Wikimedia Commons)

While this sounds quite esoteric for business organizations, this approach is practiced by certain companies within limits. Boston Consulting and McKinsey & Company for instance foster organizational rejuvenation by practicing up-or-out or grow-or-go as a policy for staff development. Also my former employer Schlumberger had a reputation for being the "training center for the industry", not because of industrial altruism, but because the staffing management relied on three-year traineeship to identify suitable candidates and letting the others go, and accepted fairly high attrition rates well into middle management ranks. Industry downturns with an approx. three year period contributed to the rather larger staff turnover over short periods of time. A recent Paysa survey reported in Business Insider found an average retention time in established tech companies (with IPO more than 10 years ago) of less than two years, which indicates that this is becoming the accepted practice

The disadvantage of this approach is, that this type of organization struggles maintaining experience levels, informal networks and benefits that are generally associated with grown structures, such as reputation, community connections etc. In extremis, these organizations will have to reinvent the wheel every time, leading maybe to innovative solutions, but also wasting resources.

So how can these two approaches be balanced, trying to salvage the best of both worlds? I would propose a model leaning on living organisms. The body is an integrating overall structure, which keeps the parts together and allows a "mechanical" transfer of force in multiple directions. In that sense, it allows exertion of influence of controlling parts on the rest as well as the collective use of the body weight's momentum, similar to the pyramid model, but more versatile in direction. The control comes through a network of sensoric and motoric nerves, which allow an extremely fast flow of information and instructions to any part of the body.

What would this look like in the context of an organisation? While maintaining an overall organisational hierarchy to keep the lights on and the wheels spinning, there should be a network of small, highly connected elements, located at mid-level, with enough altitude to get a big picture view and stay above the madness of the daily routine, but close enough to the operational business to be entrusted and receptive to the situation at the "coal face". 

These organizational elements, while comparatively small, can, like nerve cells,

• accumulate, bundle and distill information into knowledge
• analyze and digest knowlege with time and capacity to think in- and outside the box
• offer an effcient location to provide support capacity and subject matter expertise to operational, managerial and functional support units on demand, without loading up each unit with the full cost of maintaining the expertise
• provide sensory input to the senior leadership of the organization as requested and suggestions for solutions and courses of action (vertical upwards)
• provide a faster and directed multiplication channel for communication from the senior leadership to relevant operational units (vertical downwards)
• faciliate networked learning through fast communication with other, similar elements in other geographies, disciplines or business lines (lateral)

I have had the pleasure to be tasked with the experimental conception and realization of such a unit, and can say that, while not universally adopted, it survived several rounds of scrutiny in times of difficult business conditions and established itself as a saought after source of knowledge and support. The connectivity was not equally efficient in all directions of the organization, but inside the business line, it had standing in terms of expertise, capability and networking. And it was an exciting place to work in.

Sidenote:

• The article "GE's Turnaround Plan Should Look At These 4 Areas" published on Forbes online explains this example of command and control on the examples of US Special Forces and transfers that to GE.