Template:M intro design org chart: Difference between revisions

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 Closer at hand, there are hundreds people — all of them indistinguishable nodes on the org chart, of course — who know the place would fall apart without people like Dan.}}
-Management can’t see people like Dan. It can’t see how many people go to Dan. Management only sees reporting lines: the most sclerotic, rusty and ''resented'' communication channels in the organisation. They are the “keep off the grass” signs; vain attempts to coerce inferior modes of communication over better ones, for if they really were the best lines of communication, no-one would ''need'' to coerce them: they would just ''happen'', the same way lateral communications naturally flow into Dan.
+Management can’t see people like Dan. It can’t see how many people go to Dan — how vital an informal node in the operation he is. Management only sees reporting lines: the most sclerotic, rusty and ''resented'' communication channels in the organisation. Reporting lines are the “keep off the grass” signs; vain attempts to coerce inferior modes of communication over [[desire lines|better ones]], for if formal reporting lines really were the best lines of communication, you would not ''need'' to coerce them: they would just ''happen'', the same way lateral communications naturally flow into Dan.
-Since they don’t, management exhorts [[line manager]]s to [[one-to-one|meet weekly]] with their directs, populating standing agendas to furnish [[management information and statistics]] fit for injection into [[opco]] [[Microsoft PowerPoint|decks]] and [[RAG status|RAG dashboards]] of handsome looking, but — given the circumstances of its generation — basically useless data.
+Since they don’t, management exhorts [[line manager]]s to [[one-to-one|meet weekly]] with their directs, populating standing agendas to furnish [[management information and statistics]] fit for injection into [[opco]] [[Microsoft PowerPoint|decks]] and [[RAG status|RAG dashboards]] of handsome looking but, given the circumstances of its generation, basically ''useless'' data.
-It is all very [[performative]]. ''Because they wouldn’t do it otherwise, and no-one would miss it''.
+Now this is not to suggest that there are ''no'' meaningful communications between line manager and direct report: that would be absurd. If they are both in the office, they will be ''constantly'' be in contact — one more reason [[working from home]] is not the [[paradigm|paradigm shift]] some would like to believe — relaying important information to each other more or less in real time. But this will be an ''informal'' dialogue: unminuted, off-the-record, oral, instantly evaporating, plausibly deniable and, ''until formalised'', entirely beyond the ken of the management.
-Communications along the formal chain of command do not advance the [[commercial imperative]], but ''react'' to it. They are validations of things the subject matter expert already knows: reluctant, strained, for-the-sake-of-it FYIs; updates and postings serving only to spare the manager’s blushes should she be blind-sided by someone else. Vertical communications fulfil formal, not substantive, requirements for order.
+Consider what it takes to formalise that live dialogue: firstly, it will be highly filtered to weed out the usual interpersonal pleasantries, low-level exchanges about the technical details various projects; updates about deal completions. Then there are the risk items: hitches, [[snafu]]s and brewing ructions. This is the important stuff: here a key objective of any report is to get this information to the boss PQD ''so she isn’t blindsided by someone further up the chain''. If someone outside your chain of command knows about this problem, you best make damn sure your manager knows it, so she can tell ''her'' knows about it, up the chain. But all this, to reiterate, is still informal, off-grid communication.
-The firm’s real business is done only when its gears are engaged, and that means its on-the-ground personnel communicate with those who are ''outside'' their hierarchy. The business unit is a gear: what matters is what happens ''when it is engaged''.
+By the time that communication is formalised into the written record, it has been euphemised, contextualised, narratised and put into an absolving passive in such a way as will give little hint of the enormity of the unfolding situation whilst still allowing one to claim “I did tell you” should the crisis reach its full potential.
-Reporting lines are a bad static map of the firm, configured in the abstract, ''when it is at rest''. That is, ''before it does anything''. This is how the machine works ''when it is idling''.
+Thus, formal communications along the chain of command hardly ''help'' the organisation but are more or less certain to mislead it into a state of gullible complacent.
-[[Org chart]]s: the plan you have ''[[Complex system|before]]'' [[Complex system|you get punched in the mouth]].
+===When the firm is in motion===
+The firm’s business only gets done when its gears are ''engaged''. And that happens when its personnel communicate with those who are ''outside'' their immediate reporting line.
+Reporting lines are a static map of the firm, configured in the abstract, ''when it is at rest''. That is, ''before it does anything''. This is how the machine works ''when it is idling''.
 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]].