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{{a|devil}}Newsletter cribnotes | {{a|devil|}}Newsletter cribnotes | ||
===[[Modernism]], formalism=== | ===[[Modernism]], [[formalism]] versus [[pragmatism]]=== | ||
*Vertex versus edge | *Vertex versus edge | ||
*Text versus meaning | *Text versus meaning | ||
*[[Algorithm]] versus [[heuristic]] | |||
*Formal versus informal | *Formal versus informal | ||
*Tool versus application | *Tool versus application | ||
*Innate versus emergent | *Innate versus emergent | ||
*Obvious versus subtle | *Obvious versus subtle | ||
*Simple versus complex | *God versus Darwin | ||
*Quantitative | *[[Simple]] versus [[complex]] | ||
*Quantitative versus qualitative | |||
*Calculated versus interpreted | *Calculated versus interpreted | ||
*Static versus dynamic | *Static versus dynamic | ||
* | *Stocks versus flows | ||
*Things versus interactions | |||
*Nouns versus verbs | |||
*Trees versus wood | *Trees versus wood | ||
*Permanent versus ephemeral | *Permanent versus ephemeral | ||
A running theme in the [[JC]] is the distinction between top-down and bottom-up models of organisation. We are increasingly becoming obsessed with [[modernism]] as a prevailing dogma, about which few people talk directly, though there is much talk ''obliquely'' — John Kay’s {{br|Obliquity}}, for example. But [[systems theory]], [[complexity theory]], even, for all its obsession with algorithms, [[evolutionary theory]] line up with pragmatism: | |||
====The illusion of permanence and the Ship of Theseus==== | ====The illusion of permanence and the Ship of Theseus==== | ||
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====The illusion of significance==== | ====The illusion of significance==== | ||
Because we can see the formal structures easily we tend to | Because we can see the formal structures easily we tend to imbue them with significance, and assume the static connections between the formal structures are what matters. For example the [[org chart]]: this places every person in a firm in a logical, hierarchical relationship to everyone else, and can be neatly and easily controlled, that’s not to say many organisation charts become positively Byzantine. | ||
There is much management theory around optimal organisation charts no more than 5 layers of management; no more than 5 direct reports and so on. This, from [https://peoplepuzzles.co.uk/news/ive-got-too-many-direct-reports/#:~:text=Around%20five%20direct%20reports%20seems,really%20hold%20the%20business%20back People Puzzles], is pretty funny: | There is much management theory around the relationship of “spans” and “layers”<ref>[https://www.google.com/search?q=spans+and+layers Let me google that for you].</ref> optimal organisation charts no more than 5 layers of management; no more than 5 direct reports and so on. This, from [https://peoplepuzzles.co.uk/news/ive-got-too-many-direct-reports/#:~:text=Around%20five%20direct%20reports%20seems,really%20hold%20the%20business%20back People Puzzles], is pretty funny: | ||
<small>{{quote|'''How many is too many?''' <br>Around five direct reports seems to be the optimum number, according to Mark and Alison, although there are some scenarios where up to nine can work.<br>When it comes to the senior team in a company, however, too many people reporting directly to the owner manager can really hold the business back. Alison recalls working with someone who had 13 people reporting directly to her. “She had to do 13 [[Performance appraisal|appraisals]] at the end of every year!” she says. “It simply wasn’t an effective use of her time.”}}</small> | <small>{{quote|'''How many is too many?''' <br>Around five direct reports seems to be the optimum number, according to Mark and Alison, although there are some scenarios where up to nine can work.<br>When it comes to the senior team in a company, however, too many people reporting directly to the owner manager can really hold the business back. Alison recalls working with someone who had 13 people reporting directly to her. “She had to do 13 [[Performance appraisal|appraisals]] at the end of every year!” she says. “It simply wasn’t an effective use of her time.”}}</small> | ||
But you can’t encode mandatory small teams ''and'' a flat management structure. There is a mathematical relationship between them: the smaller the average team, the more management layers there must be. | |||
In any case this is largely to miss [[The map and the territory|the map for the territory]]. An organisation chart is a static map of the firm configured in the abstract, in theory, ''before it does anything''. [[Org chart]]s are the plan you have ''before you get punched in the mouth''. Formal reporting lines are often the most sclerotic, rusty and ''resented'' interaction channels in the organisation. Communications up and down them — usually strained — are at best responsive to commercial imperatives, and derivative of them: the firm’s business is done only when its personnel communicate with those who are ''not'' in their immediate hierarchy. Focussing on reporting lines misses the organisations real venal network: lateral communications that ''cross'' the organisation’s internal and external boundaries: these are the communications that employees ''must'' make — between internal specialists in different departments and with the firm’s clients and external suppliers — to get their job done and move the organisation along. Note: it is ''in'' these interactions, themselves that things happen: it is here that tensions manifest themselves, problems emerge and opportunities arise, and that these things are resolved. It is not the drill, but the hole in the wall. | |||
This map of interactions, which is not a top-down, God’s-eye view cascade of authority, but a point-to-point multi-nodal network, is a far richer organisation chart.Yet no firm I know of even considers it. Yet, with data analytics, it would not even be hard to do: Log the firm’s communication records for data to see where those communications go: what is the informal structure of the firm? Who are the nodes? | |||
Typically, ''vertical'', staff-to-manager communications don’t have those qualities. Reporting lines are more an interaction ''constraint'' rather than an indicator of productivity. They ''impede'' the firm from interacting freely. | Typically, ''vertical'', staff-to-manager communications don’t have those qualities. Reporting lines are more an interaction ''constraint'' rather than an indicator of productivity. They ''impede'' the firm from interacting freely. | ||