A Friday riff about creation spaces and how organizations work, based on a thread by Michael Lewkowitz. Why not design organizations to empower the best employees, rather than control the worst ones?
Work, now. The Economist Human Potential Conference, New York, NY
Michael Lewkowitz, The new threads of ‘Organization’:
Conditioning trumps control
Already back in Heart, Beer recognized the role of management as attending to cohesion, sensing for incipient instability and making the minimum of intervention. In both Future and Pull the authors are more critical of the dehumanizing effect of command and control driven organizations and zero-sum management practices. They all argue that control restrains the creativity, humanity and innovation needed for any organization to thrive and adapt in complex and dynamic environments. Designing and managing organizations is increasingly about creating and conditioning spaces for passionate people to pursue a common purpose.
One of four threads outlined by Michael (@igniter). Read the rest here.
John Hagel and JSB call these “creation spaces”, the physical spaces, digital infrastructure and organizational structure that creates the opportunity for the right people to have the right interactions to create the right things.
Mission statements are one thing, but it’s the real value structures and trade-offs that organizations make in the day-to-day that demonstrate what kind of interactions are valued and what people are hired, supported and promoted.
Org charts and processes are one thing, but it’s the real network of relationships that lies behind the org chart and formal bureaucracy that dictates how influence works and how work gets done.
Wikis, collaboration tools and social networks (in-house and external) are one thing, but it’s when push-comes-to-shove and deadlines hit that show how organizations truly create and ship.
That’s the human way. In times of stress, humans resort to their fundamental ways of thinking and doing to get things done. The entrepreneurial credo of “done is better than perfect” fits the example perfectly; entrepreneurs and startups exist too close to the edge to even strive for perfection, a suboptimal ideal in its own way.
That’s also why conditioning trumps control. Not only is it dehumanizing, but it’s less effective, because control imposes an extra “decision overhead” and strips away the power of purpose that’s embedded in great workers.
Why not design organizations to empower the best employees, rather than control the worst ones?
That’s why management is the next frontier, and why management hacks (such as epic.io) powered by social media are so important. Social media tools are just that: tools”, as Ethan’s told me many times. It’s what we do with these tools that matters.
Technology, systems and structure matters: but what matters more is how all of these infrastructural elements empower us to be better humans.
That’s the frontier.
Seriously, check out Michael’s epic.io Management Innovation Hack. Worth the deep read and think.
