Fred Nickols writes this about structures and outcomes:
>Pre-imposed structure always signals intent. Analysis of structure will
>frequently reveal that intent. Sometimes, however, those who impose
>the structure are incompetent and the structure will not match up with
>stated intent, and the intent manifest in the structure itself is not what
>is intended. (That, by the way, accounts for a great deal of what some
>people call "unintended outcomes.")
This stimulates me to comment on an idea I have been thinking about for a
while. It is about organizational structures and self-organizing systems.
It seems to me that it is a natural tendency of people to self-organize to
achieve their common goals. In an organization, if you were to bring people
together whose job it was to complete a project, they would naturally
organize themselves to do that. A problem occurs in many organizations when
the tendency to self-organize into informal results-oriented structures runs
smack dab into formal organizational structures, chain of command, and so
on. What can happen, it seems, is that these formal structures and the
people who occupy places in the hierarchy may feel threatened by such
self-organization. What they do adds little value to the processes by which
the project gets done.
And while we may be able to argue that formal organizational structures
facilitate coordinated performance, I would also suggest that they often get
in the way of it. The purpose of formal structures in organizations can
become their own perpetuation, which can be thought of as unintended
outcome. I would say, though, that even though such an outcome is often
unspoken, still everyone knows that's going on, and it creates a lot of
discomfort and uncertainty. The growing use of project teams is an example
of the self-organizing principle slowly creeping into and obviating the need
for more formal hierarchical structures. I believe this is helped by
information technology that allows everyone to be connected up and have
access to information they need.
Do these thoughts strike nerves?
John Woods
jwoods@execpc.com
--John Woods <jwoods@execpc.com>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>