Warning! 90% of Organisations are Old Fashioned. Old Fashioned Organisations Share the Same 21-level Pyramid Whose Base is Old-Fashioned Thinking.

May I ask you?

Is your organisation a next century organisation or an old-fashioned organisation?

If all was well while old-fashioned organisations dominate the world, I would not bother myself talking about it. But old-fashioned organisations are notorious for their underperformance and some of them for creating inhumane conditions that undermine the happiness of people who work in those organisations. And, as I always say, there is a huge difference between underperformance and poor performance. By underperformance, I mean that over 90% of organisations are not performing at the best based on the potential that already exists in them; the potential of the people in those organisations is grossly underutilised. The results are that these organisations contribute less than they could do to addressing the local and global challenges that they are meant to solve. If these organisations are profiting making, this underperformance means huge financial loses incurred by the companies and businesses. As much as 30% to 50% of revenue is being lost in almost every company on the earth due to this endemic underperformance syndrome; never mind that some of these companies and businesses are declaring profits.

All this is repeatedly highlighted by organisations such as the Gallup Organisation but it seems no one is among the Chief Executive Officers, Board Chairpersons and other top decision-makers in these organisations is listening.

I have already listed the twenty one critical components of an old-fashioned organisation. Now these components are organised into a pyramid; in other words, they have some order or syntax; the same way a building or a house has ordered components, starting with a foundation. And remember, the higher the building, the deeper and the stronger the foundation must be so that the building can stand and endure. This applies to everything else in life. Albert Einstein aptly hinted at this when he talked about levels of thinking. Order is a major part of science and scientific thinking, the basis or Resultsology.

Obsolete, Old-fashioned Thinking

Obsolete, old-fashioned thinking about organisations, their conceptions and how they must operate is a foundation of old-fashioned organisations. The majority of todays organizations are still built on centuries old thinking that, at that time was cutting-edge but is now obsolete. The old-fashioned thinking generated ideas on which organisations where built then, and organisations continue to be built and operated on these very same ideas of yesteryear thinking. Although new or improved thinking has emerged over the past centuries, most of this thinking has failed, and continues to fail, to penetrate the concrete layers of old-fashioned thinking that perpetuation the setting up, running, managing and leading organisations almost the same way things were done centuries ago. Knowledge has overtaken thinking and very few leaders and decision-makers have the ability and the courage to think anew and to generate new ideas on which to build organisations. It is copy and paste through and through since the organisation was conceived years ago.

The problem is not that there is no new thinking about organisations and their design and management. There is a lot of thinking, innovation and invention taking place around the world, both in formal research, education and development spaces including universities, but also in non-academic underground spaces including in consulting firms, private research and development institutions and those knowledge workers seeking the best solutions to help companies, organisations, businesses and economies to perform better and to produce bettter results. The main problem is there is a huge and growing knowledge and innovation gap between organisational leaders those engaged in light years and cutting-edge research and development.

When most people enroll into learning institutions, they take whatever they get from their educators and take it as everything there is to know and everything they must know in that discipline. Armed with their certificates, they get into the real world and pay very little attention to continuous learning and instead use their certificates and academic titles as the seal of knowledgeability. In the mean time, as much as 80 percent of whatever they learnt disappears from their memorable mental libraries or become obsolete. Thinking is almost completely abandoned as people over-rely on raw textbook knowledge; the copy and paste mentality.

The point here, just to be very clear, is not that people in old-fashioned organsations are daft or incompetent. No! Organisations are full of smart, knowledge-packed people. The problem is these people are hoodwinked and misled, like everyone else, but the "global system." If you spent your whole life being told about knowledge, and knowledge and less about thinking and thinking, you end up thinking that only knowledge exists and thinking does not exist. You also end up misled into thinking that knowing and knowledge are more important thinking. You spend the most of your life seeking knowledge and knowing to solve problems and almost zero time on thinking and generating solutions from thinking. But not all solutions work everywhere all the time. Not all existing solutions are the best solutions there are in any discipline or field.

Old-fashioned organisations are designed in an old-fashioned obsolete way because they are based on old-fashioned thinking and are built on old-fashioned intellectual produces of obsolete thinking.

Nowtherefore, friend, getting rid of the old fashioned thinking on which our organisations are built, led and managed is the first critical step to destroy the old-fashioned and in its place built the modern organisation, the next century organisation.

But how many organisational, business and economic leaders are ready to do this? How many even take the deformities of old-fashioned organisations seriously enough? This is for you to ponder.

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?Simon Bere, 2024