They put a man on the moon with IBM 7090s

The outmoded centralized mainframe model is a good analogy for organizational trends. Managers continue to learn that centralization and control surrounded by robotic job descriptions may economize keystrokes and mechanics, but fall short in the much more important spectrum of decentralized, networked discernment where innovation, adaptability and peer pressured ethics flourish.  Centralized software systems struggle to efficiently understand that Mary (the customer’s bookkeeper) runs payables on the last Friday of each month, and that sending out a faceless, automated late notice to her firm only engenders negative vibrations.   More importantly, the centralized system will never replace the local relationship of the firms’ two bookkeepers, engendered because they take their children to the same day care and most importantly, the emergent ideas they come up with over coffee on how they can work more seamlessly together. There is little future in centralizing payables if it takes an emergent agent off the field.  Ant colonies would never dream of it.  Neither would any adaptive, creative complex system.

Adaptation, productivity and self-actualization are local, just like evolving complex systems and markets. Lately large organizations have been leveraging that power by loosening their structures and providing safe harbor for movement, community, and activity. Everyone has the innate ability to innovate, create, fail, and adapt if only the rules allow it.  Given the proper combinations of elements, reliability and creativity can amplify together, much as reconstituted wood chips form a bond stronger than the original tree.

References

Photo courtesy of Library of Congress