Abstract

Many complex systems reveal a small-world topology, which allows simultaneously local and global efficiency in the interaction between system constituents. Here, we report the results of a comprehensive study that investigates the relation between the clustering properties in such small-world systems and the strength of interactions between its constituents, quantified by the link weight. For brain, gene, social and language networks, we find a local integrative weight organization in which strong links preferentially occur between nodes with overlapping neighbourhoods; we relate this to global robustness of the clustering to removal of the weakest links. Furthermore, we identify local learning rules that establish integrative networks and improve network traffic in response to past traffic failures. Our findings identify a general organization for complex systems that strikes a balance between efficient local and global communication in their strong interactions, while allowing for robust, exploratory development of weak interactions.

Organizational implications

Organizational development remains focused on empowerment and innovation. Lately folks have begun noticing that external relationships aid in the innovation process if they can get over the ‘not invented here’ syndrome. It is interesting to see how nature’s favorite form generally resolves these issues, balancing ‘neighborhood’ or internal efficiency with more global links.

The short message here might be that organizations do not formalize and nurture their external relationships enough, much less view them as a part of their organizational charts.

The subtler message might be how and who we choose to create and nurture those external nodes so as to maximize efficiency and robustness and learning.

Reference

Pajevic, Sinisa, and Dietmar Plenz. “The Organization of Strong Links in Complex Networks.” Nature Physics 8, no. 5 (March 11, 2012): 429–436.

Emergent Approach

Proponents of the emergent approach point out the elemental differences of their perspective than the planning camp, citing empowerment, open cultures and bottom-up emphasis as evidence of their claims.

In reality, the differences are arguably less than they may have realized. But first, let us review the ideas.

Culture-Excellence Ideas

Emergent cultural change: The Temple de la Concorde by National Media Museum, on Flickr

In the early 1980s Peters, Waterman, Kanter and others made the case that formal change management was too slow. Further, the best run companies were those that avoided inflexibility and bureaucracy[i]. The secret to success in an ever changing world was an innovative, experimental culture of ‘excellence’ where instead of small rules based pods or groups, objectives and bottom-up empowerment can be nurtured by a supportive culture with shared values.

The Culture-Excellence wave questioned the utility of a linear, highly planned approach to change, and challenged the concept of stages, arguing that they overlapped anyway. Since Lewin was aware of the ever-changing nature of any group and addressed the issue often, it might be stated in retrospect that the Culture wave preferred to de-emphasize steps altogether.

The lasting contribution to change management of the cultural proponents is the idea that change is “a continuous process which is heavily influenced by culture, power, and politics”[ii]. Their concentration was on developing an open, more flexible culture with leadership as an enabling and assuring force.

Books on Emergent culture change

[i] Jr., Robert H Waterman et al., In Search of Excellence: Lessons from Americas Best Run Companies, Later Printing Edition. (Grand Central Publishing, 1988).

In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America’s Best-Run Companies (Collins Business Essentials) By now, most managers have read this book, as it is generally credited as founding the management guru craze.  Unfortunately, it has also attracted its own critics since most of the companies cited have found their own ways of stumbling. Still, its approach is a contribution to change even if it does not represent as significant movement from Lewin’s Planned approach as the authors might imagine.  Readers are encouraged to re-scan the book with Lewin as their reference. Thomas J. Peters

[ii] B. Burnes, “Kurt Lewin and the Planned Approach to Change: A Re-appraisal,” Journal of Management Studies 41, no. 6 (2004): 977-1002, http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6486.2004.00463.x.

Taylor and Weber brought statistics to management.  Unfortunately the approach also often engendered an unhealthy and unproductive chasm between the new management positions it implied and the workers it no longer asked to think.

Taylor, Weber and others taught us to develop logical and statistical blueprints of work that rationality pounds into efficiency and productivity.

Unfortunately, these philosophies arguably engendered a significant portion of the union movement in the early 20th century, pitting the worker and the manager on opposite ends of a spectrum that destroys innovation and synergy and does not inherently find legitimacy in any organization. No team can be effective when it is split down the middle or harbors adversarial emotion. Much of the legendary works by Drucker in the decades since then consciously form a response to the negative effects of this hierarchical paradigm.

Later we learned that informal social relationships within every organization evolve that have as much or more to do with successful outcomes as the blueprints Taylor taught us to produce. We began investigating matrices, and empowerment, and currently a great deal of research centers on complex networks and differential status structures.  Deming taught us to stop focusing so much on discrete tasks, as Taylor espoused, and measure the total system.  The early adopting Japanese developed a significant manufacturing advantage as a result.

The challenge made here is that the blueprint is not yet quite squarely on-center.  It is missing key pieces of the puzzle that other disciplines have identified as crucial, whether they are the maturation and effectiveness of organisms, innovative free markets, or emergent complex systems.

We shall return to the individual. We shall investigate the model of the individual maturing in a complex, non-linear world and review what we learned in the past hundreds of years about what that means. We shall start at the beginning.

There is evidence that organizations will continue to decentralize beyond multi-disciplinary teams and matrix structures. For it cannot be coincidence that technology continues to find its value in individual empowerment.  When it introduced the personal computer (PC) in the early 1980s, IBM threatened its own existence by subcontracting its birthright to Microsoft and Intel in one of the most spectacularly failed bets against empowerment in the technological age.  It marked one of the only times it did not use its own internally developed hardware and operating systems.  IBM quickly headed towards bankruptcy as the PC and the resulting explosion of technology forced the computer industry into a massive restructuring that left the mini-computer industry in a shambles; companies like DEC, Prime, HP, Control Data, Wang and TI saw their product lines obliterated with their own viability along with them.

IBM under Louis Gerstner saved itself from ruin in one of the most astounding turnaround examples of decentralization ever attempted. It may be that IBM’s present structure now mirrors many organizational fundamentals laid out on this website partly because it at one time so firmly rejected them.  The organization restructured from a hierarchical, unidirectional corporate culture to a broader based, decentralized one in less than 5 years.  They rejected their blue suits, sold buildings and ended up with almost half their workforce working from home in their pajamas.  They re-centered and refocused, and reversed their services and hardware mix of business on services, and sales and profits exploded.

Now IBM has obliterated most of its corporate hierarchy.  It relies on multi-disciplinary teams that reflect combinations of geography, function, customer segment and industry focus, depending on the situation.  They involve themselves in the open source communities which would have been unthinkable in their proprietary days of yesteryear.  But surely none of this expansion of adaptability and profitability and productivity would have occurred if their competitors and the markets had not forced them to react to preserve their viability.

To be fair, who could have predicted the explosion of creativity and innovation of turning millions of PC users into active entrepreneurs? After all, computing economics clearly show that centralized networks with dumb terminals are much less expensive to design and maintain.  That was the overwhelming organization of the computer industry even in the mini-computer world.  That hierarchy looks great on paper and proves more inexpensive to produce, purchase, maintain and deliver computing power.  Those economics remain true to this day.

But one huge factor was left out of the equation.  What was missing was the idea of autonomy. What was missing was the degree that control suppresses creativity. What was missing was an understanding of developmental psychology. What was missing was an in-depth appreciation of just how intrinsic complex systems (in this case free markets) are to innovation.  What was missing was just how incredibly productive users could be if they weren’t sitting around waiting for centralized IT department programmers and instead could themselves develop applications and mash-ups and innovations.

Corporate organizational structure is still hampering productivity, creativity and reliability.  Organizations both in their structure and their strategy often make bets against the individual, and they continue to do so in pendulum like swings in both micro and macro trends. They always eventually lose.  If you don’t believe me, ask IBM.

References

Photo courtesy Wikipedia Commons

The above picture symbolizes both technology and organizational change. Still wet behind the ears, in 1991 I was purchasing used mini-Vax systems as servers for Novell networks. They were faster and more inexpensive than PC’s, and cold room costs were sunk. Those pricing trends foreshadowed mini-computer markets.

If I remember correctly, we were the first in the state to cobble Vax systems together with Novell networks. Back then Peter Norton, not Bill Gates, was a G~d to teenage nerds everywhere, driving Microsoft and Intel innovation, and no self-respecting 80286 PC went without a QEMM-386 to make it effective.

This period also marked the last attempt by IBM’s misguided proprietary corporate policies regarding PS/2, which all nerds knew would inevitably fail.  It signified IBM’s continued denial regarding the structural change PC’s represented for technology.  No programmer I ever knew willingly dealt with it.

The Maslow model is the subject of a great deal of research. What is Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs? Don’t they describe human motivation? No; they form a list of physical, emotional, and spiritual needs that are not necessarily hierarchical as the celebrated pyramid implies, nor do they necessarily belong in a ranking order. [i] And they do not explain behavior, as Maslow himself has explained.[ii] Likewise, attempts to find relationships between satisfaction, success and attention have met with only partial success.[iii] These mistaken assumptions cause significant confusion, perhaps partly due to Maslow himself.  The usefulness of the Hierarchy is not in explaining human behavior, but in understanding the multi-dimensional, inter-causal nature of our existence.

Maslow’s Effect on Marketing

It is in marketing where Maslow’s Hierarchy revolutionized modern segmentation and advertising efforts.  It forever humanized marketing and sales as an experience and fulfillment of needs.[iv] Product marketing changed forever, from pushing product usefulness to advertising associative customer self-perception.  We market life styles and profiles now.  We associate products with needs and aspirations.  We demonstrate reputation and need fulfillment.

Foreign luxury cars, for example, sell the image of intellectual savers who value understated quality.  To reject the car’s appeal, one must reject the profile.  Never mind that some American-made cars equaled or bettered the cost/quality ratio years ago.  Reputation and perception changes slowly absent significant events.

As a result of Maslow, the advertising industry transformed itself to profile and survey potential customer segments, associating key self-perceptions with product inclinations.  Imagery and voice-over are similarly tested.  We are no longer marketing the product, but the motivations and needs behind the product.

While mass customization and adaptive logistics and delivery channels are effective sales and cost drivers, even targeted long tail marketing enjoys greater effectiveness if it remains squarely focused on character.

Structure: the other application

Maslow Hierarchy of Needs reconstituted

But Maslow has the potential to contribute more to the organization than just marketing campaigns and a more humanistic approach to employee development.  It defines essential elements in optimizing organizational charts and structures.  For we live in a world of complexity where we shall learn only through trial and error. Participation is central to living. Relationships define the essential building blocks of life. Emergence is systemic and co-authored.[v] What could be a more appropriate organizational structure than one which characterized adaptive, creative, well-adjusted individuals?

Organizations and Individuals

We are safe in comparing individuals with organizations since they are both sentient complex systems.  They are both organisms living in a complex world.    The fascinating observation is that if we inject components of actualized individuals into an organizational structure, we find that we have also injected the components of a complex system.  They are essentially the same.

Each perspective brings with it its own language and perspective, but the essential structure is foundationally identical.  What results is a quicker, more nimble and creative organization.  In the current language of management science, we immediately find increased empowerment, engagement, productivity and creativity.

In addition to utilizing more traditional methodology in improving businesses and their products and efficiencies, we find Maslow can spearhead growth and profitability in ways where those purely management perspectives struggle.

The above drawing is a symbol of organizational structure.  Contact me for execution and implementation methods that fit your culture.

References

Motivation and Personality Abraham Harold Maslow

Man’s Search for Meaning (4th Edition)[Revised & Updated] Viktor (Author); Frankl

Principles of Marketing (13th Edition) Philip Kotler

Endnotes

[i] M Wahba and L Bridwell, “Maslow reconsidered: A review of research on the need hierarchy theory,” Organizational Behavior and Human Performance 15, no. 2 (4, 1976): 212-240, http://psycnet.apa.org/?fa=main.doiLanding&uid=1976-26106-001.

[ii] Abraham Harold Maslow, Motivation and Personality, 3rd ed. (HarperCollins Publishers, 1987), 27-28.

[iii] Frank K. Gibson and Clyde E. Teasley, “The Humanistic Model of Organizational Motivation: A Review of Research Support,” Public Administration Review 33, no. 1 (February 1973): 89-96, http://www.jstor.org/stable/974790.

[iv] Philip Kotler and Gary Armstrong, Principles of Marketing, 13th ed. (Prentice Hall, 2009).

[v] Peter Reason and Hilary Bradbury, The SAGE Handbook of Action Research: Participative Inquiry and Practice, 2nd ed. (Sage Publications Ltd, 2007), 6.

Organizations are notoriously hierarchical or top-down given principally two age-old models; the family and the military.  Both are instructive models in their own right.  We’ve just learned the wrong lessons from them.

Children find the nuclear family notoriously hierarchical, for good reason.  But business is not made up of children.  A functioning family of adults adjusts their views of its members as they mature and interacts with each other as a small organization of equals with special dispersion and respect for specialty and experience.

The original military command and control model is the oldest form of organization outside the family.  After all, fighting for food amidst a perpetual state of war has been the normal state of human affairs until only very recent history.

Command and Control structures were designed for two basic reasons; expert direction and communication.  Communication involves both dissemination and protection.  Knowledge is power especially in war and business.  While secrecy of some information is still a primary concern of organizations and militaries, it is interesting to note how world class militaries have changed their focus on expert direction and therefore empowerment over the years.

The US military is now arguably the most educated organization in the USA; it has more graduates, MBA’s, PHD’s, etc. per capita than any other private or non-profit organization.  Further, it’s overwhelmingly primary goal in training its recruits is discernment and empowerment.  That is, it is pushing authority and the ability to act as far down the hierarchy as possible.  This is a far cry from the militaries of a hundred years ago, when soldiers were asked to line up, shoot and hopefully not die.

But there are other reasons for the dispersion of power in today’s military, other than just the nature of the enemy and how wars are conducted.  In an organization whose purpose is literally life and death, one could safely say they have a very urgent need to continually search for more effective modes of operation.

A key enabler has been technology.  Today the whole communication paradigm has been thrown out, which for many organizations is the overwhelmingly most important practical reason for retaining large and complex hierarchies.  The military is re-inventing themselves by empowering the soldiers on the ground.  The result is a flatter, quicker, more nimble organization which makes them more adept and productive at execution and alteration of goals and strategies.  Does that sound like your organization?

Unlocking productivity, innovation, new strategies and driving change are all possible in today’s organizations.  But they can’t be done without flatter org charts and engaged, empowered employees.  The age of the worker drone should be well past.

For further insight into outside forces on the military structure:

Victory at Risk: Restoring America’s Military Power: A New War Plan for the Pentagon