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*Permanent versus ephemeral | *Permanent versus ephemeral | ||
A running theme in the [[JC]] is the distinction between top-down and bottom-up of organisation models. The former — we call them “[[modernist]]” — view organisations as complicated machines, controlled from a homunculus sitting at the bridge of some kind of [[Cartesian theatre]]. Form determines function; the better regimented and disciplined the components of your contraption, the better | A running theme in the [[JC]] is the distinction between top-down and bottom-up of organisation models. The former — we call them “[[modernist]]” — view organisations as complicated machines, controlled from a homunculus sitting at the bridge of some kind of [[Cartesian theatre]]. [[Form]] determines function; the better regimented and disciplined the components of your contraption, the better it will navigate the market. The latter, which for want of a better world, I’ll call “[[Pragmatism|pragmatic]]”, sees the organisation as an organism, responding dynamically to an organic market which is a dynamic, incomplete, unpredictable energy, forever shape-shifting into new configurations in unexpected, and unexpectable, ways. | ||
Practical control can only live at the points where the organisation interacts with its environment. The hey is to have talented, well-equipped people — [[subject matter expert]]s — to handle those interactions. The central control function has the time and space to take a holistic view and provide aspirational suggestions for how the subject matter expects should, all other things being equal, react; but real decision making is done by those experts at the edges, not the middle. | |||
The [[JC]] is a pragmatist. Intellectually, the battle ought to have been won by the pragmatists long since, but the modernists keep devising new ways of getting themselves back into the game. The latest is by means of data and technology. | |||
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: | 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: | ||