There's a (Gl)itch in Our Systems
Unsplash, Dylan Nolte

There's a (Gl)itch in Our Systems

I've always had this itch that most business systems today are somehow deeply flawed. It took me most of my work years, a few different industries, a large number of books, courses, and numerous conversations with experts in the field of business organizations to finally understand why that was.

It was not about the people I was communicating with, or the CEOs or the managers. The whole systems themselves were flawed. The best analogy would be that while working in them, I felt like I was tanking up the best quality fuel in a wooden car. And not just me, quality tankers all around me, tanking from Monday to Friday in endless loops.

Sounds pretty useless, right? There is a bright end to this one, just bear with me here!

What is flawed or Pyramids vs. Peach clash

To understand the wider context, we have to go a little back in time. Up until the 1970s the traditional hierarchy systems, the Pyramids were having the time of their lives.

Crafted in the industrial age by the (in)famous F.W.Taylor, they were laid down on a very pragmatic assumption:

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"Liberate the workers from thinking"

Although most of you experienced physical pain just by reading this sentence, at that time and under economic circumstances of standardization in manufacturing, it made sense, and most importantly - it worked.

The thinking was reserved only for the high-level positions, and actual (labor) work for the operational level employees. A Control-and-Command mode was quickly rooted inside almost all business systems and got very comfortable in its royal-chair status. Maybe a bit too comfortable, only to be challenged by a beautiful beast of unpredictable behavior - miss Complexity.

Complexity

Complexed vs. Complicated

Miss Complexity will always surprise you with her whimpers, turns, and turmoils when you least expect it. For example, a robot, a car, or a watch can be complicated with all their parts, but they can not surprise you or behave in an unexpected way.

Complex things can. Imagine today's markets, the weather, and all other unpredictables that influence our lives and business decisions today. Complexity is here to stay and it can not be ignored, only adjusted to.

And maybe the most important thing to know about complexity - it can not be controlled under traditional hierarchical pyramids, which is why the whole era of the Peaches started to evolve as the most logical solution for today's creation of healthy, agile, business ecosystems.

Why so Peachy?

Every organization has these three organizational structures naturally, the moment they start working:

  • formal structure
  • informal structure
  • the Value Creating Structure (or the Peaches)

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The formal structure is the one that represents an official power distribution. The top-down hierarchy makes us easier to comply and work with the means of the law. It is the one we are all too well familiar with and at the same time, although limited in function, a very necessary one.

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The informal structure is the one that builds up organically, by people's natural inclination to one another, unofficial talks, and, most often, is created by pure gossip. Most managers either don't even think about this structure or willingly look away.

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The Value Creating Structure is the Peach, and it represents a decentralized network of decision-makers, where the charge is taken over not by the central positions, but by the periphery ones. These people are the closest to the market and therefore should be the decision makers. This is where we have the power of those with mastery, rather than those with a position.

FUN FACT: all three kinds of these structures are already in your organization, and they should be. The main question is - which one of these 3 is the dominant one?

This is what is called an organization physics, a universal law that is underlying in all systems, no matter the size or industry, and first mentioned by Silke Hermann and Niels Pflaeging.

Every business already has a Peach in it, but as @Niels Pflaeging would say it (I sure never would :), it is covered with bullshit in the formal structure to such a degree that it is unrecognizable and goes under the official corporate radar.

Peach organizations are (among other things), like this:

  • team autonomy is based on being connected with a purpose, not dependency on hierarchy,
  • teams integrate into cells, not divisions in a silos manner,
  • leadership style is self-organization, not management,
  • there is a flow of intelligence, not power obstruction,
  • there are no incentives like bonuses and no targets, only participation,
  • there are consequences, instead of bureaucracy.*

And yes, they do exist. Today some of the big shots like Google, Netflix, Handelsbanken, Germany DM, the Semco, W.L. Gores, the Southwest Airlines, and many others function like peaches instead of pyramids.

So where's the Glitch?

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As a person working in Corporate communications, my job was reflecting on an almost "translating" the messages of the CEO, Board members and middle management in order to help them communicate their way down, engage employees, work on shaping the corporate culture (what a premise!) and always on the hunt for witty and fun ways to motivate employees on actions like volunteering, doing sports and participating in the surveys on how happy they are with their bosses and work environment.

Sounds pretty regular, but here comes the flawed part which is, unfortunately still here and in common for all the wooden car tankers:

The information flow is still top-bottom, there is a mastery of positions instead of mastery of knowledge and skills, people are motivated by bonuses which completely distorts their focus on the client's needs, the systems are awarding individuals, instead of teams, transparency and knowledge exchange is co-dependent on the hierarchy, people are expected to be guided, motivated and developed by their leaders when in fact, they are perfectly capable of doing all that by themselves.

This is a systematic fault, a glitch in which we have almost completely forgotten the true, intrinsically motivated nature of all people to think, participate, communicate, and create in agile, fast functioning teams instead of top-bottom, control, and command, slow and unadjusted pyramids.

Complexity has given us the challenge to redefine all that has aged and belongs in the past. Let's leave it there and start a new chapter.

A big thank you to the Vetturelli team, Niels Pflaeging, Silke Hermann and other Beta Codex thinkers and practitioners for the new knowledge and for broadening my views!

*source: "Essays on Beta, Vol.1", Niels Pflaeging. (a great read!)

Mike Klein FIIC, FCSCE, SCMP

(he/him) Founder, #WeLeadComms; Editor-in-Chief, Strategic; Communication Consultant and Strategist

3 年

Love this

Damir Car

Head of Corporate Security - Rimac Technology

4 年

Nice one!

Sanja Veletanlic

Notion Solutions Partner @go2sanja | Building scalable internal systems your team won't ghost ???

4 年

Who else felt the pure energy snowballing while reading this article?

Wow, thx Anja! If someone is interested to learn more about decentralized organizations, than www.BetaCodex.org is the place

Jelena ?anti?

Corporate Communications || Proofreading || French

4 年

Really enjoyed reading this, Anja! Good job????

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