Timehop, which takes me on a nostalgia trip everyday, reminded me recently that it has been a year since I wrote The Change Imperative. The opening slide features a quote – “If you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance even less“- attributed to Gen. Eric Shinseki. In the times we work in, I believe this cannot be overstated, not just for individuals but for organisations as well. Even as business dynamics force changes on the external manifestation of an organisation – the brand – any organisation that faces a client/consumer will also be forced to adapt its internal structure and practices to suit changing needs.
For a long while now, I have been ambivalent about processes. I have worked in an era, and in organisations, where processes had a way of getting things done. But in parallel, I have also felt that many a time, processes have a way of forgetting what they were made for. The output overshadows the outcome. Over the last few months, my surmisal has been that, to use a Taleb classification, processes can make an organisation robust, but not anti-fragile. This very informative post by Aaron Dignan of Undercurrent – The Last Re-Org You’ll Ever Do -highlights many ways that organisations have tried to change standard structures and practices, and even suggests a six step path to reorganisation.
Intuitively, this does seem a great approach, but practically I wonder how many organisations will have the entity (product/subset of customers) that can be subject to this without getting affected by business-as-usual. Also, what works in one domain and for a set of people might not work for others. In essence, can it scale if implemented this way? Or should the organisation focus on providing enough autonomy across the board to disrupt standard operating practices at will so long as there is a solid hypothesis on increasing effectiveness? We still come back to the old question though – how would this affect efficiency?
P.S. A meta level observation I would be very interested in carrying out over a period of time would be Slack. Meta because at one level, it seems to be a device that is supporting/catalysing organisational changes from a collaboration perspective, but at another level, it is also a growing startup that is undergoing many rounds of iteration as it adapts to different clients and their needs. (read)
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