(Note: as all my articles are personal thoughts and do not represent any of my professional commitments or organizations I deal with. I have been working in the digital era since 1999, using many tools before that, already. So I have had and still have my share of pain, joy and the everlasting learnings, that I want to try to reflect this way.)
The hypothesis is this: If you believe, we have approached or are approaching a VUCA world for most of our organizations (companies & corporations), you know, we cannot continue with the organization structures for a very predictable future that was our past.
VUCA — the acronym stands for Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity. It was created to describe the challenges we face living in a world/time of exponential technology developments and therefore ever more, and quicker disruptions with shorter product life cycles.
BTW: The term „Taylorism“ is often used to describe the chain-of-command style hierarchical setup of our corporations (although F. Taylor actually also had different setups in mind and can actually be seen as one of the inventors of „continuous improvement“ or an early believer of what was later coined „lean manufacturing“, but that is another story. I suggest reading “The one best way” — an awesome biography about Fredrick W. Taylor by Robert Kanigel from the MIT).
Still — Taylorism is mostly used to describe rather industrial methods and processes of a management philosophy aimed at producing highly productive while attributing the capability to think reasonably only to managers, not to the workers themselves. And honestly, given the average education of the 19th and early 20th century — this made a lot of sense.
But in 2020?
250 years after James Watt introduced his revolutionary adaption of the steam engine? 130 years after the first automobile corporations started highly productive mass production?
Can management philosophies and methods invented to solve the challenges of the industrial age between 1860 and 1960 really solve the challenge we face since the 1990ies?
Until today, these management philosophies have lead to organizational structures as the following:
The typical blue collar worker icon was replaced with the more current view on the people working „in the lower hierarchy pyramid“, today …
Since most of these workers at the bottom interact with the actual markets, technologies (forming anew internal and external realities) and people, they are actually the few in the organization with own contact points with customers, partners and markets overall.
The upper management is primarily dealing with the stakeholders and achieves its version of the organizations reality through reports of the lower management.
Often enough, all management has more than one incentive, not to report the reality, but a lightly tweaked one, that they think secures their jobs and those of „their“ teams or is the portion of truth, the C-level management can digest at the time.
Another metaphor I like to use is the German game „Stille Post“ (direct translation „slient messages“), known in English as „Chinese whispers“, where a group of kids (think birthday) is tasked to relay a message in line, whispering only to the next child, who then relays it to the next. At the end, almost every time, the original message has been distorted, making the children laugh.
In our hierarchical organized corporations we play „Chinese Whispers“ without allowing that the last in line (the C-level) to repeat his understanding to the initiator of the messaging line.
Even worse, we restart the game, with the last now being the first as the C-level responds in his best effort to the distorted message — and sends it back down the line…the whispering distorting again in every relay of the line.
And unlike the children birthday game — this is not funny. For no one.
So how to solve this from the bottom of the pyramid? Some people in the software industry had an idea…back in 2001.
From Agile to Scrum and now back to Agile?
So in the software world, the challenges of delivering high quality products to customers lead to the famous, but seldom read Agile Manifesto, where some people involved in the production of software jointly proposed, that a new way of working was needed.
They formulated in the Agile Manifesto, that
„We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it. Through this work we have come to value:
Individuals and interactions over processes and tools .
Working software over comprehensive documentation .
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation .
Responding to change over following a plan .
That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.“
The Agile Manifesto is actually the starting point for what is today called Agile and lead to process frameworks like Scrum and others (whereas these frameworks solve certain challenges, but are misinterpreted as solutions to the greater challenge, which they are NOT).
As so often though, the idea and vision behind the Agile Manifest lead to its opposite, instead of focussing on the people and interactions, way too many consultants, managers and C-level decision maker opted to go the known „processes and tools“, implying directly, that with a new process framework like Scrum and tools like Jira, Trello, Assana, Confluence, Sharepoint or others, the challenges faced in a VUCA environment would be overcome once and for all.
But it’s not that simple, is it?
What good is it to introduce the processes found fit for a farmer into your car manufacturing corporation?
Yet, with processes fit for software production we do exactly that.
Introducing them into banks, insurances, ad agencies or manufacturing corporations. Why? Because we hope, they will help deal with the uncertainties we face.
So if the process of the software industry might not be the solution — is the philosophy behind it maybe the solution?
Could putting our individuals in charge and making interactions the targetted value be the actually important part? Our individuals would be customers, employees, stakeholders, partners, of course. And the interactions with them/between them, of each in their own peer group.
Could creating products, that work for the customer, writing contracts, that can be understood by consumers, collaborating with our partners and customers openly help us?
Could enabling our colleagues to decide how to respond to change save our organizations more than following plans of C-levels and consultants, that in a VUCA world always have been drafted before the current challenge existed or have just been copied from yet another consultant?
Is this the part, that we could transfer into our own organizations?
Of course, there a blue print for how to achieve it — as there is no target that fits all kind of organizations. But for real managers, that is what the job is about. It should not be about administrating the same every day, but enabling the organization to create value again and again (and then for a time administrating that success well).
But there is a great chance, that we could use our joint knowledge and experience to form something more adequate for the 21st century.
Organizations, that enable their value creators to adapt very quickly, when needed. To be transparent internally as externally to a degree allowing for a new era of customer and partner loyalty. Cutting on costs where needed. Identifying new sources of revenue and profit.
And I think, there are examples, showing us how to actually do it. Not one solution fitting every challenge. But maybe something like a management philosophy, that allows using some important insights to produce the fitting solution for each and every organization.
I call it RealWork. :-)
But that’s another story for another evening, while the kids are watching an old movie. ;-)
Please do share your thoughts with me — here in the comments or directly if you like that more.
