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===Spans and layers===
===Spans and layers===


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:
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></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.”}}Witness the formalist disposition, when the most significant thing you can do is ''manage'', and the most significant part of management is [[Performance appraisal|''appraisal'']]. The ethos is this: ''look after the form and the substance will look after itself''. Take care of the pennies and the pounds look after themselves. But this is to look after the pounds, and to assume the pennies will take care of themselves. Well, of ''course'' they will: that’s what pennies do: they need no licence from the boss for that.


<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>


Witness the formalist disposition, when the most significant thing you can do is carry out a formal process. The ethos is this: ''look after the form and the substance will look after itself''. Take care of the pennies and the pounds look after themselves. But this is to look after the pounds, hoping the pennies will take care of themselves. Well, of ''course'' they do: that’s what pennies do: they need no licence from the boss for that.
Hypothesis therefore: performance comes ''despite'' management, not ''because'' of it.


In any case, you can’t encode mandatory small teams ''and'' a flat structure. There is a mathematical relationship between them: the smaller the average team, the more management layers there must be.
Management focuses on reporting lines — [[formal]] organisational structure — because it can ''see'' them. They are [[legible]]. They are measurable. [[Audit|Auditable]]. There are spans and layers, to be counted and optimised. In this way can those at the top conveniently attribute business success to the formal structure they preside over.  


===The map and the territory===
But formal reporting lines are the most sclerotic, rusty and ''resented'' interaction channels in the organisation. They are the “keep off the grass” signs; vain attempts to coerce inferior modes of communication at the expense of better ones, for if they really were the best lines of communication, you wouldn’t need to formalise them and call them “reporting lines”.  They would just happen.
And besides, this is to miss [[The map and the territory|the map for the territory]]. An organogram is a static map of the firm configured in the abstract, in theory, ''before it does anything''.  This is how the machine functions ''when it is idling''. [[Org chart]]s are the plan you have ''before you get punched in the mouth''.  
 
Communications up and down the chain of command — reluctant, strained, for the sake of it, to fulfil formal, not substantive, requirements for order — are ''reactive'' to [[Commercial imperative|commercial imperatives]]: the firm’s real business is done only when its gears are engaged, and that means its personnel communicate with those who are ''not'' in their immediate hierarchy. The business unit is a cog: what matters is what happens ''when it is engaged''.


Formal reporting lines are usually the most sclerotic, rusty and ''resented'' interaction channels in the organisation. They are the “keep off the grass” signs; vain attempts to coerce inferior modes of communication at the expense of better ones — if they were the best lines of communication, you wouldn’t need to call them “reporting lines”. Communications up and down them — usually reluctant, strained, for the sake of it, to fulfil formal, not substantive, requirements for order — are at best ''reactive'' to [[Commercial imperative|commercial imperatives]], and derivative of them: the firm’s real business is done only when its gears are engaged, and that means its personnel communicate with those who are ''not'' in their immediate hierarchy. The business unit is a cog: what matters is what happens ''when it is engaged''.
But as the complicatedness of our organisations has grown we have developed more and more internal “engines” that engage not with the outside world, but with each other, generating their own heat, noise and movement — frictions and vibrations which wear out parts and fatigue the machinery — and which are lost as [[Entropy|entropic]] energy. Of course, of course: one must have [[legal]], [[compliance]] and [[internal audit]], but when those departments have their own operational infrastructure and are themselves monitored and audited, the drift from optimal efficiency is plain. [[Internal audit]] must periodically audit ''itself''. But who audits ''that'' function? [[Elephants and turtles|Turtles]] ahoy: we approach an infinite regression.  


But as the complicatedness of our organisations has grown we have developed more and more internal “engines” which engage not with the outside world, but with each other, generating their own heat, noise and movement — frictions and vibrations which wear out the parts and fatigue the machinery — and which are lost as entropic energy. Of course, of course: one must have [[legal]], [[compliance]] and [[internal audit]], but when those departments have their own operational infrastructure and are themselves monitored and audited, the drift from optimal efficiency is plain. [[Internal audit]] must periodically audit ''itself''. But who audits ''that'' function? [[Elephants and turtles|Turtles]] ahoy: we approach an infinite regression.  
===The map and the territory===
Reporting lines mistake [[The map and the territory|the map for the territory]]. It is a static map of the firm, configured in the abstract, ''at rest''. That is, ''before it does anything''. This is how the machine works ''when it is idling''.


Management focuses on reporting lines — [[formal]] organisational structure — because it can ''see'' them. They are [[legible]]. They are measurable. [[Audit|Auditable]]. There are spans and layers, which you can count and optimise. In this way can the fellow at the top attribute business success to the formal structure she presides over.
[[Org chart]]s: the plan you have ''[[Complex system|before]]'' [[Complex system|you get punched in the mouth]].  


But the organisation’s resting state overlooks its ''real'' arterial network: ''lateral'' interactions that must ''cross'' whatever boundaries management can dream up, or that leave the firm altogether: these are the communications that employees ''must'' make: between internal specialists in different departments; with the firm’s clients and external suppliers — they make commerce happen and move the organisation along. It is ''in'' these interactions that things happen: it is here that tensions manifest themselves, problems emerge and opportunities arise, and here that these things are resolved. These are not [[Drills and holes|the drill, but the hole in the wall]].
But the organisation’s resting state overlooks its ''real'' arterial network: ''lateral'' interactions that must ''cross'' whatever boundaries management can dream up, or that leave the firm altogether: these are the communications that employees ''must'' make: between internal specialists in different departments; with the firm’s clients and external suppliers — they make commerce happen and move the organisation along. It is ''in'' these interactions that things happen: it is here that tensions manifest themselves, problems emerge and opportunities arise, and here that these things are resolved. These are not [[Drills and holes|the drill, but the hole in the wall]].
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