A 4 inch single cell organism is not science fiction?

Scientists say xenophyophores are the largest individual cells in existence. Recent studies indicate that by trapping particles from the water, xenophyophores can concentrate high levels of lead, uranium and mercury and are thus likely resistant to large doses of heavy metals. They also are well suited to a life of darkness, low temperature and high pressure in the deep sea.

The researchers spotted the life forms at depths up to 6.6 miles (10,641 meters) within the Sirena Deep of the Mariana Trench.

“The identification of these gigantic cells in one of the deepest marine environments on the planet opens up a whole new habitat for further study of biodiversity, biotechnological potential and extreme environment adaptation,” said Doug Bartlett, the Scripps marine microbiologist who organized the expedition.

Deepest ocean trench home to race of giant amoebas – CSMonitor.com

Xenophyophores are not the only creatures living down there. The seafloor forms an entire ecosystem of organisms adapted to conditions alien to the rest of the world.

4 inch amoeba (from Christian Science Monitor)

In the movie Jurassic Park, scientist Ian Malcolm neatly sums up the entire theme when he says, “Because the history of evolution is that life will not be contained. Life breaks free. It expands to new territories. It crashes through barriers. Painfully, perhaps even dangerously. But life finds a way.”

Indeed.

Adaptation, gradualism, and innovation

How does adaptation actually work? Do we really have a workable, tested understanding of how nature achieves innovation? Are the constructs of natural selection settled? Dear reader, please consider that biology does not yet understand adaptation either in process or principle. For adaptation is not random at all. But it will not be denied. We all wish we could characterize innovation in the same way in our own organizations.

Adaptation and Natural Selection by George Williams This is one of the more important works on natural selection. The book opposes certain of the generally advocated qualifications and additions to the theory.

Peering into the near future of technologically aided productivity.

Microsoft posts a near future video, highlighting integration and screen technology which is already imminent. Most of the showcased technology is already developed and can be accomplished now, albeit with a tad more clumsiness.

It is the software integration that we do not have.

And screen prices are falling through the floor while sizes are growing just as astronomically. That should tell you something about how much you spend on current TV and computer screen technology, since the half life of those products is dropping like a stone.

The technology story unfolding in the video offers a statement of the broader story unfolding around us; more autonomous, decentralized, globalized action. It is more than ironic that our teams and organizations are decentralizing while our world governments are building ever larger bureaucracies. For the same forces that are driving the one should be driving the other.

Innovation is not necessarily revolutionary. But it is almost impossible to plan, and requires a supportive culture.

Neil Patel pens an interesting article about innovation. IMHO he gets it mostly right, although his use of ‘creative destruction’ seems a new subset of the accepted definition, and most innovation is not revolutionary although the results often are.

Innovation is the result of attitude and perseverance (from Stock.xchng)

I also notice he uses a photo of one of my favorite books, The Innovator’s Dilemma, although he does not refer to it. I have written a fawning review of what I consider a revolutionary book for management science, but have not posted it to the Internet because it is stuck somewhere on a discarded virus bitten hard drive which I’ve been too busy to clean.

I especially like this portion of the article:

Some people will tell you that true innovation isn’t centrally planned. However, I think they are wrong because you can build a culture in your company that makes innovation an important characteristic.

What people mean when they say innovation isn’t centrally planned is that you can’t say from the top we are going to innovate in this particular way, and then get the job done. As you’ve seen, innovation isn’t planned and usually comes about in surprising ways.

Typically, innovation starts with a simple idea. From there you just start working on that. You don’t have it spec’d out, but you begin to test ideas on people and the innovation occurs as you toy with that original idea.

Neil Patel is the co-founder of KISSmetrics, an analytics provider that helps companies make better business decisions.

11 things every entrepreneur should know about innovation – GeekWire
Fri, 28 Oct 2011 02:35:06 GMT

Exactly, fantastically, succinctly correct.

Read the whole article, and read the Innovator’s Dilemma, despite some of its seemingly obvious conclusions. Because they absolutely are not obvious to many organizations.

The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Failby Harvard Business School Press

Invariance and replication are essential to science. To the extent that science is beautiful, it demonstrates universal laws which conform to theories hard won by historical giants of intellect. The symmetry of science is its universality.

Innovation is essentially different. The concepts of adaptability, evolution and emergence all center on building blocks that produce aberration, variance and eventually, hopefully, inevitably something new. Science studies replication. Innovation is unexpected.

There is something inherently contradictory in the application of scientific method to the study of innovation and complexity, which at least partly explains the adjectives of mysticism hurled at complexity research, most assuredly as an insult. But is it?

Complexity, despite its frustrating results, remains the focus of organizational science research simply because of its obvious promise. Unfortunately most of that research is bent on identifying mathematical formulas and constructs for innovation. Is that approach self-defeating? But what other approach is there? My research and experience suggests that there is an alternative.

Someone once said that if we are extremely lucky, we have one original idea in a lifetime. I would go further. If we are really lucky, we realize it is an original idea, and we convince someone it is not absurd, and we work like hell until we see it in action.

Think. Build. Measure. Start again.

An article in the McKinsey Quarterly describes the practice of ‘Knowledge brokering[i],’ wherein organizations gain product and process ideas from other organizations outside their competitive space. It seems this ‘open source’ (why obfuscate this term?) approach must meet certain parameters to be effective:

• Define the issue or problem at an appropriate level. If the challenge is too complex, outside sources will not have the context or experience to solve it. One of the methods to accomplish this task is to break the issue down into separate, discrete parts.
• Evaluate potential brokers. Concentrate on industries where the context free issue is prevalent and success depends on successfully dealing with it. The example given is where a bank suffering long customer lines approach a Disney theme park manager, a grocer, and a traffic expert.
• Engage the whole team to listen to the broker’s story, inspiring questions, new contexts, and breakthroughs.
• Develop a plan of action.

This consulting trend is at least partly inspired by another trend named ‘design thinking[ii],’ popularized by the folks at IDEO, another consultancy firm.

Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss

The folks at McKinsey have done a good deal of work on the concept. After all, why re-invent the wheel? This article suggests that knowledge brokering, far from being an innovation strategy, is just good organizational structure.

On the contrary, the concept is more fundamentally understood if we view it as a systemic organizational approach rather than a new process to plaster over existing functions. And integrating key external relationships into team organization charts produces additional benefits than solving the latest challenge. It benefits from organizational support, and if one takes the proper stance, the relationships produce synergistic and emergent properties.

Begin with Actualization and Belonging

Maslow taught us the ingredients of an actualized individual. His Hierarchy of Needs is one of the most recognized psychological constructs outside the discipline. Any team or organization hoping to function at optimum levels must address that hierarchy or remain deficient in some aspect. Therefore all organization structures must actively design those components into their structures, or forever fight the deficiencies that ensue.

One of the pillars of actualization is ‘Belonging,’ which implies close ties to family and friends. In the organization’s case, those ties would be team members and intra-departmental contacts.

But belonging is much more than that.  Actualized individuals gain contacts and respect from a wide variety of constituents outside their immediate field of influence or expertise. Their contacts provide them with affirmation, ideas, direction and access. Sound familiar?

Implications for Brokering

Maslow’s definition of Belonging is the underlying premise of brokering in organizations. It implies that external connections are more fruitful if at least some of them are deep and lasting.

We all understand the importance of a wide swath of social networks in the development of our own personalities and careers. They not only provide us with self-interested access to opportunities, they provide us with balance, and hopefully mentors from a variety of life experiences and approaches. They imply the rich and fruitful product of diversity. They imply a symbiotic and synergistic relationship that is beneficial to all involved.

On a related note, some companies encourage a percentage of ‘personal’ or ‘undirected’ time to innovate and experiment and explore. We speculate that this practice is often just another aspect of encouraging a connection of non-work relationships and thoughts; another form of belonging at work. An issue does not have to be pressing or urgent for solutions to arise.

Like individuals, all teams and organizations (any group with a purpose) benefit from a well developed sense of belonging in a very broad range. It is an integral component of their structure just as it is integral to any individual’s actualization. And like any organizational component or functional expertise, it benefits from formal development and nurture by team and hierarchical support, viewed as an organizational extension of the team itself.

The Complexity Approach

Key components of scale free networks are connections to other nodes.

Likewise, complexity theory[iii] supportively stipulates that emergence or adaptability in any organism or system must by its nature include external nodes or vertices. It is this property that nurtures new associations and connections.

These connections often threaten the concept of context. Emergence is very often the product of tenuous and often previously unconnected strands of information. Therefore the ant many times forages in what seems to be unfruitful ground. And yet its exploration is directed. It stays out of the water. It returns to established, previously covered ground as well as venturing into new territory. And like any actualized individual, it communicates its discoveries and stories with its comrades, their collective information forming a cohesive whole which eventually bears fruit. This is assuredly the same ‘aha!’ moment for them as it is for extending teams.

As another example, the Internet is a scale free network (a complex system’s structure) of web pages, linked tenuously at best through links and semantically associated tags. Any dedicated web surfer knows that following those links is a major source of inspiration and therefore innovation. A website aptly named Stumbleupon gains its popularity based on this emergent phenomenon.

Implications for Brokering

Optimal organizational structures that exhibit emergent properties are cascading scale free networks that conform to power laws. It is mathematically impossible to develop an effective, emergent complex system within the confines of one’s own organization; the network nodes are already too closely connected.

The properties of emergence demand all teams and organizations formally cultivate external clusters of networked connections in order to facilitate emergent exchanges of ideas, culture, spirit, approaches and ‘breakthroughs.’

The implication is also that the connections are more persistent and involved than the Knowledge brokering article implies. This thought makes much intuitive sense but is also proved in available research.

Additional observations

Knowledge brokering highlights the synchronous similarity of both complexity and psychology to predict effective organizational structures.

The disciplines also imply that external relationships for teams and organizations have a broader benefit than meeting particular business challenges, although that is certainly one product of the connection. But seeing the relationship through this lens arguably limits the full advantage of the construct as more intimately defined elsewhere.  The full range of benefit of networked connections is only gained when context is challenged and the seeker takes on an exploratory stance.

This article implies a much deeper inspection of what those implications are and how to implement them. For more information, contact Jim Leis.

End Notes

[i] Corey Billington and Rhoda Davidson, “Using Knowledge Brokering to Improve Business Processes,” Consulting, McKinsey Quarterly, January 2010, https://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Strategy/Innovation/Using_knowledge_brokering_to_improve_business_processes_2512?gp=1.

[ii] Andrew Hargadon and Robert Sutton, “Building an Innovation Factory – Harvard Business Review,” Harvard Business Review 78, no. 3 (n.d.): 157-66, http://hbr.org/2000/05/building-an-innovation-factory/ar/1.

[iii] Jim Leis, “Complexity,” Leis Network, July 19, 2010, http://www.leisnetwork.com/science/complex-systems/complexity.

Qualifications

I have held consulting, technical, and executive positions in systems design, strategy, finance, marketing and business development in a combination of private equity, public and private firms.  I managed product lines totaling $4 billion in my last formal position.

In the hundreds of product lines I have developed, our teams at least doubled previous growth rates while increasing profitability. Even the storied consulting firms can not equal my track record. My experience includes wholesale, health care, banking, food and beverage, agriculture and retail industries.

I have also been intimately involved in quite a few turnarounds. Although I must warn you, if I discover fraud, my engagement ends:)

My degrees include a B.A. in Psychology from the University of Waterloo, which I obtained while pursuing my career, and an MBA with a focus in Finance and Marketing from Kenan Flagler Business School at UNC.

Currently I am reconciling my personal experience with formal research on the ability of organizational structure to simultaneously increase both reliability and innovation.  Some of that work appears on this website.  As with anything, execution is everything.

Please use the Jim Leis Contact page if you would like to have further discussions or employ my services.  I am passionate about many topics and an inveterate learner.

More general history

For those interested in more detail, here is a partial list of projects I have led:

• New business ventures
• Marketing campaign development, measurement and execution
• Organizational development
• Operational efficiency and realignment
• Market and situational analysis
• Business and product valuations
• Turnarounds
• Product and business strategy
• System design and programming
• Accounting and measurement system design

My passions include nurturing team mate development and discernment, and plans that exceed expectation.

Personal

My first job at age 12 was working for a landscaper / florist. In the spring, I would go to work at 5:30am before school to take the straw off the hot beds.  After school I would work until 6:00pm.  I have been working in flower beds ever since. What does that mean:)

I have hitchhiked from Washington DC to Bolivia.  I hiked through jungles, sailed on Lake Titicaca, explored Mexican pyramids, hiked Machu Picchu, and slept on the top of a truckload of coconuts under the Southern Cross.

I have also hitchhiked through Western Europe, traveled behind the Fallen Iron Curtain, and worked on a Kibbutz in Israel. Who needs a Euro Rail pass?

When I was quite young, I wrote an integrated accounting package (GL, AP, AR, Payroll) for the Olivetti PC.  At the time all accounting software was sold in modules which required double posting processes, much like manual ledgers.  I thought I would get rich and move to the Caribbean and live on a boat.

After completion of my MBA, I attempted to gain equity funding for software that allowed unlimited remote access to listings of products. The products could be sold by fixed price, commission, highest bid, or live auction. No one was interested. Shortly after, E-Bay was born. Does that mean I am not an effective sales person?

It has been my good fortune to become intimately involved in hundreds of companies, some small, some large, spanning many different industries and cultures.  There is no single, best way to build a world class organization, but there are certain principles that must always be present.

Observations

Organizational behavior is endlessly fascinating. In investigations of cash flow, inefficiency, morale, conflict, or profit, there are inevitably holistic system and priority opportunities. Focus, clarity and realignment breed reliability, engagement and creativity.

The smartest businessman I ever met never went to high school.  The best mentor I ever had was an accountant.  My son teaches me more than I teach him.  The best sports coach I ever had was a preacher. Are these statements contradictory?  I do not think so and the reason is on the Leis Network page.

Most people misunderstand the inherent benefits of change, obsession, and competition. The concepts have been inadequately taught, inappropriately implemented and publicly maligned. It is a shame, since they are all hugely powerful in building character, ethics, and productivity.

Someone once said, “Our first move will be to decide what our first move will be.”  Let’s do that.

Special interest at the expense of the majority increases bureaucracy, destroys morale, and impedes progress.  It also threatens culture and viability.  KISS.

Like many of you, I have been educated, trained and tested all my life, including for Aptitude, Personality and Leadership.  I have never seen a priority in teaching the two most important lessons that lead to success; spiritual and emotional perseverance and engagement.

In an age of change, innovation must be coddled and nurtured as much as sales.

Most companies have not leveraged 50% of available, inexpensive technology to increase productivity.  The issue is predominantly systemic or organizational.

——————-

Please enjoy this website, and make suggestions.  I reserve the right to convert interesting comments into posts, citing you of course.

Please use the Jim Leis Contact page if you would like to have further discussions.

Contact Leis Network

Services

Potential of IT

Homeland security organization chart from Wikimedia commons

Information Technology’s (IT) ability to add value to organizations is significant and growing. It is estimated that organizations typically leverage less than 40% of current technology. With such a powerful vehicle running at half speed, IT must remain the highest priority in increasing productivity and innovation.

But with any substantial and multi-faceted tool, IT is as often misapplied as it is under utilized. Ignorance and impatience play a role. But the potential lies deeper than further education. Systemically, our departmental hierarchy model is inadequate in utilizing a resource that should pervade every business process, product and project in which we engage.

The question quickly becomes how to change the paradigm in order to shift IT into high gear. The answers are synergistic.

First, replace traditional IT metrics with the organization’s strategic list of operations and projects. It is only from the organization’s perspective that IT can meet its potential. IT projects are more appropriately viewed as components of business initiatives; they are subsets of strategic initiatives and should be treated and measured as such.

Second, given the pervasiveness of technology’s potential, IT professionals should be embedded in every organizational endeavor. While each situation must be considered individually, most IT members should be actively working under dotted line authority for other operating and support groups. RFP’s and department silos are not adequate to the task of continual improvement and innovation by a specialized field. Emersion is the only answer.

Integrated technology can contribute to virtually every circumstance. IT must come out of the back room and participate in every group on the front line where they belong.

The Issue of Hierarchies

Departmental divisions regardless of their reasoning form an increasing challenge as organizational tentacles grow; ignorance, misunderstanding, incivility, lack of communication, priorities, culture, grand standing, politics, personal ambitions, etc. all tend to create obstructions. But no animosity or indignity is needed to reduce their synergy.

The systemic effectiveness of command and control hierarchies is inversely proportional to an organization’s size and complexity. Size increases the distance between departments and complexity acts as a barrier to entry between them. This is a foundational issue of large organizations exemplified by government programs with multiple delivery systems to the same customer all blissfully unaware of each other and their cumulative effects. It could be said that all federal measurements of poverty and their programs are rendered inadequate because they do not measure the totality effect of programs and the ineffectiveness of their disconnected disparity. Only a large organization can afford to ignore multi-channel effectiveness.

IT and legal departments are especially prone to becoming bottlenecks in organizations since multiple divisions and departments tend to depend on them because of their high rate of change (one through innovation and the other through proliferation). If we’re not careful, the whole organization ends up waiting in line like patients at a doctor’s office.

The doctor’s office analogy extends to the stimulus response cycle as well. Like the patient, departmental hierarchies depend on the lay person to decide when they should request help of specialized personnel. There are two problems with this model. First, the person with the least knowledge is initiating the contact. Ideally for the consumer it should be the doctor or specialist who decides when they can add value and only then should the billing begin. Doubtless doctors get paid more money by charging for petty consultations (like wiping runny noses), however organizations do not. Surprisingly enough, the doctor-patient analogy does not break down here because it is a third party transaction while the IT-department relationship is internal. The challenge in both cases is the same; lack of information.

Doctor visits imply the second issue with the model; the inefficiency of the stimulus or request for proposal (RFP) itself. In addition to opportunity costs (think doctor visits), RFP’s are also intricate and time consuming (especially if they are denied, like the useless doctor visit). Perhaps most importantly they are purely a function of the isolated silo hierarchy in the first place, since their primary purpose is to educate IT on the finer details and purpose of the organization. IT, like the doctor, is not close enough to have sufficient information. The time spent formally communicating and educating increasingly complex issues to departmental support staffs can quickly become enormous in project definition and execution. Put another way, as our prescriptions become more sophisticated, so does our need for information.

The issue gets worse. It is impossible to determine how much time middle management and other associates spend educating, negotiating, pleading and otherwise waiting for inter-departmental aid. Eventually the organization loses both speed and productivity. Soon it affects morale, and the organization learns to settle and complacency sets in. Now the organization sits on the precipice of bureaucratic hell, moving slower with lowered expectation, and running the risk of reduced engagement and therefore input and innovation. At least the patient in the doctor’s office in our analogy has their own health concerns to remain motivated.

How shall we address the organizational issue as it grows?  See the next article in the series to to see alternatives.

Articles in this Series

Manage IT Costs and Culture

Alternatives to Address Departmental Inefficiency

Metrics to Manage Informational Technology

Should Your Organization Program Enterprise Software

Individuality and Team Dynamics to Innovate

Creativity is not born in a boardroom or a meeting. Brainstorming is vastly over rated. There is nothing quite so laborious and ineffective as ten people sitting in front of a blank page, even if they have a goal in mind. When it comes to first ideas, it is more productive to allow one or at most two people to first produce a straw model. They are encouraged to obtain as much input as they wish, with the caveat that ownership of the kernel of the idea always remains theirs to develop. A straw model has at least fleshed out major headings, and preferably more than that.

The strength of a well informed, collaborative group comes after the straw model stage, where different viewpoints in a collaborative setting can innovate and critique a defined idea. As with all group and meeting activities, facilitation ensures the group remains controlled and focused. Especially in incubation periods, groups are susceptible to scope creep.

How does the Lightbulb go on?

Emotional Investment and Avoidance on Change

The human mind is extremely powerful and emotionally preservative. Only a very small minority of management groups acting alone and of their own volition change course during turbulent times, even when they’re on the verge of bankruptcy. This is a normal human response. Like the seven stages of grief, the first and most enduring emotions are shock and denial. Especially in emotional situations, it is inspiring, logical and helpful to seek specialized consultation. There is nothing wrong or embarrassing about it. It is actually the appropriate response given what we know about the human condition.

In an example closer to home, it is interesting to note average golfers’ reasons for not taking lessons. They also mirror the seven stages of grief, with embarrassment an additional factor. Virtually all of them are in contrast to the fact that professional golfers rely on trainers and coaches throughout their career. We are reminded of the male stereotype that refuses to ask for direction, preferring to drive around lost.

It is difficult to over-emphasize the value of emotionally detached feedback. Seeking advice or consultation does not mean you are mediocre or untrained or uncreative. It means you are intelligent enough to realize how emotionally difficult it is to critique yourself and be creative in situations where you are attached. Psychologists have psychologists, and PR firms often hire PR firms. It is an essential foundation of the idea of mentors.

If your organization does not employ consultation on a number of levels, it would be at least a helpful exercise to understand why you do not. You may well find your reasons are predominantly rationalizations of Shock (paralysis), Denial (Avoidance), Anger (Emote), Bargaining (way out), or Depression (realization of the issue but feeling alone or unique). Getting to Testing (beginning to seek) or Acceptance (finally finding the way out) with consultants jump starts the creative process and speeds up progression through the other stages(Kubler-Ross, 1997).

Tension between New vs Existent Products

The examples above also give us some idea of the psychological hill to be climbed when it comes to developing creative atmospheres in organizations that are already thriving. Even in failure, or abstract mediocrity, the human mind tends to balk. And original thinking both to create and re-engineer is first and foremost an act of destruction, with all the emotional and psychological inertia that implies.

Creative destruction has implications on existent programs, along with its attendant failures in their attempts. Occupationally, creativity must find safe harbor. It is illogical to ask Associates invested in current products or programs to create their own demise. It would be like giving tax dollars to oil companies in an effort to invent alternate fuel sources. There is a foundational and psychological reason Microsoft is not the driving innovator of web technology. Their priority and strength lies in preserving and optimizing existing annuities.

Existing product managers may be expected to actively participate in model revisions or re-engineering efforts rather than eclipses. Besides, in an era of change optimizing current revenue streams will occupy all of a product managers’ time, and define the organizational corporate culture. That is entirely appropriate, and a worthy occupation.

True creation is effectively accomplished in separate multidisciplinary project groups dedicated to the task. Notice we are explicitly describing a network architecture of specialized participants; not a silo approach with administrative and technical support ‘on loan’ or ‘on call’ from various departments. That traditional organizational structure inevitably leads to bottle necks and inordinate management intervention.

Separating new and existing functions has many benefits outlined below, not least of which is avoiding the cognitive dissonance and emotionality of destruction. If performed in organizations of considerable existent annuities, it may be necessary to occupy separate building and hierarchical space in an effort to divorce cultures and provide safe quarter. Reporting directly to the President is also a practical alternative.

10 Benefits of Creative Segregation

The benefits of separate and distinct development or ‘creation’ groups are immense. Notice that if separate accommodation is not arranged, and adequate resources allocated, the costs to the organization are the mirror of the benefits itemized below:

1. Nurtures the learning curve and specialization required for creativity and re-engineering, as well as the process of doing so. Separation means speed, production, and excellence. It also means less cost.
2. Measurements of current product management and creative investment is more accurate.
3. Encourages consistency and timeliness of deliverable.
4. Acknowledges workloads and priorities. While very small projects in maintenance positions may work, the emotional preference for the present over the future relegates even high priority projects down the list as the work day progresses.
5. Acknowledges the psychological difference between process requirements and projects.
6. Reinforces different talents necessary for detailed, repetitive work vs. project and creative work.
7. Allows different incentives between line and project work.
8. Creates safe psychological and cultural harbor by separation from existent product management hierarchy. Notice that reporting to the President or a suitable Senior Executive may be necessary if the organization is consumed with current annuities.
9. Allows a convenient and appropriate discussion for adoption or denial of ideas by the organization. Failure to approve does not mean failure of the work.
10. Provides a welcome berth and process for new ideas to aggregate.

Organizational structure or best practice is characterized by dedicated teams formed of varying number and disciplines depending on need supplemented from various organizational positions for exposure and training purposes. Detach the hierarchy from existent product management. Depending on the size of the organization, separate roving groups by specialization; re-engineering, product development, market enhancements, strategy development, etc.

Other Articles in this Series

Creativity

Practical Implications of the Biology of Creativity

7 Ways to Stifle Creativity and Innovation

My Personal Discoveries Exploring Creativity

This articles is the third in a series on creativity beginning with the first one here.

It is remarkably easy to stifle ideas and the atmosphere required to instill a nimble, innovative culture. Beyond the natural hesitancy inherent in speaking ‘truth to power’ following is an effective way to build a culture devoid of innovation:

1. Ignore ideas, or better yet, tell people with ideas it’s not their job.
   1. Treat ideas by Associates as unworthy. Tell them it’s never been done. Speak in terms of requirements that ignore shifts in paradigms. Innovation is best confined to hierarchical boundaries.
   2. Don’t bother to look at the data. Go with your gut and group anecdotal sentiment. After all, it has gotten you this far. Tell them of cultural history and consensus. Happiness is the status quo.
   3. Imply their job is in jeopardy if superiors don’t like the idea. Frustrated or frightened superiors are superiors who fire people.
   4. Send them to someone else. Tell them you won’t support them but they can keep searching for support on their own. But remind them that going around you is not good team play and will reflect badly.
   5. Don’t applaud their attempts, especially when you know they won’t work. Snuff them out immediately instead of providing feedback and encouraging them to seek feedback of others.
2. Suborn and undermine the idea, or gain brownie points by bad mouthing it to others:
   1. Shoot the messenger with ad hominem attacks. Best of all, use your stealth efforts to question the person’s career.
   2. Compartmentalize the idea if it crosses hierarchies.
   3. Treat all ideas as threats and insubordination to the hierarchy. Demonstrate why that’s true.
3. Make comportment and congeniality Job 1.
   1. Conflict is generally something to be avoided. Nothing really good comes from conflict. Share with anyone continually debating something that there really is a limit to it, and it’s fairly low.
   2. It’s much more important if everyone treats their colleagues like good sales people approach customers; just give them what they want. No need to ‘fight’.
4. When someone generates an idea, give them all the next steps.
   1. If an Associate does come up with an idea, or better yet, develops it in their spare time, convene a meeting to discuss it and force them to work harder to develop or implement it. After all, everyone else is busy already, and since it’s their idea, they should do all the work to retain ownership. Their name will be lost if someone else becomes accountable.
   2. Giving people more work when they have ideas is a great way of punishing them for volunteering and giving everyone more work. It’s a time proven method of keeping people’s hands down and mouths closed in the future.
5. Ask everyone for ideas, then don’t do anything with them.
   1. Don’t communicate, or communicate inconsistently and then quit altogether.
   2. Implement the simple, easy, quick wins, and ignore the foundational and capital intensive ideas without explanation. That way you can shape the kind of ideas you’re really asking for.
   3. Develop contests for ideas in which the winner presents flashy but non-intrusive ideas that don’t interrupt the status quo. Window dressing and marketing solves everything.
   4. Don’t keep a public list of prioritized ideas. After all, Associates should keep track of their own ideas, and re-introduce them at appropriate junctures. Managers do not have time to keep track of things like that for everyone.
6. Don’t create or fund a group or process for collecting and dealing with ideas. That will be a message in and of itself. Plus, the chances of dropping the ball or otherwise de-motivating Associates will rise dramatically if ideas are treated as an exception.
7. Make all decisions and new priorities for groups behind closed doors without their input, or only with the input of your friends, or rising stars. Consulting the group is frustrating and a waste of time, and their ideas may conflict with upper management, which is unacceptable. Besides, the boss must have all the answers. That’s what leadership is.

Other Articles in this Series

Creativity

Practical Implications of the Biology of Creativity

Organizational Implications of Creativity

My Personal Discoveries Exploring Creativity

The dichotomy of bureaucracy

Mancur Olson’s authorship is a perfect example of the natural dichotomy of bureaucracy. For in his first book, he turned the world on its head by logically convincing us that special interest could tarnish a society. By his third and last book, he argued that the underpinning of quality institutions founded on individual liberties and the absence of predation by private or public sectors was foundational to economic growth.

Rise and decline of nations by Mancur Olson

Is it possible to make both an argument for and against institution and bureaucracy? Olson did. In his middle and now hugely famous book, The Rise and Decline of Nations(Olson 1984), he highlighted the potential for democratic institutions to lead to economic stagnation. In his final work(Olson 2000) he would affirm their fundamental importance in guaranteeing long-term economic growth.

His arguments remain compelling, insightful and easily read.

Collective action

Mancur Olson remains the first reference in collective group action even though his masterpiece, The Logic of Collective Action(Olson 1971) was published a generation ago. In it, he lays out the issues for larger groups to attain alignment and achieve optimum results for their members.

Since at least the New Deal, conventional wisdom had viewed special interests and pressure groups as a positive force in governments and societies (Commons 1950). Olson argued the opposite.

Olson argued that special interest groups representing small numbers of firms in oligopolistic industries could support monopolistic or protectionist legislation. This regulation often harms the broader economy, especially groups with difficulty self-organizing, who would then suffer without clear access to restitution. Similarly, any vocal or influential minority group can influence regulation to their own benefit, causing other groups to shoulder inordinate shares of the economic burden.

Later, a whole new branch of economics would be developed called public choice theory, with its concepts of rent seeking and incentive distortion. Olson’s ideas are in alignment with them.

Distributional and encompassing coalitions

In the Rise and Decline of Nations, Olson expanded these themes. He made a critical distinction between distributional coalitions, which are seen as leading to outcomes inimical to economic growth, and encompassing coalitions, which are seen as potentially aiding economic growth in a society.

Stable democracies would over time tend to accumulate rent-seeking distributional coalitions that engage in cartelization and protectionism that distorts incentives and impedes technological and organizational progress, hindering economic growth.

But in any society there are also encompassing organizations whose interests may correspond broadly with those of society at large. These groups find their interests difficult to pursue for the simple reason that they are large and unwieldy, and have a difficult time focusing their members’ coalition around the topic at hand.

9 implications of special interest

Armed with these concepts, Olson proposes 9 implications (1984, 74):

1. There will be no countries that attain symmetrical organization of all groups with a common interest and thereby attain optimal outcomes through comprehensive bargaining.

2. Stable societies with unchanged boundaries tend to accumulate more collusions and organizations for collective action over time.

3. Members of “small” groups have disproportionate organizational power for collective action, and this disproportion diminishes but does not disappear over time in stable societies.

4. On balance, special-interest organizations and collusions reduce efficiency and aggregate income in the societies in which they operate and make political life more divisive.

5. Encompassing organizations have some incentive to make the society in which they operate more prosperous, and an incentive to redistribute income to their members with as little excess burden as possible, and to cease such redistribution unless the amount redistributed is substantial in relation to the social cost of the redistribution.

6. Distributional coalitions make decisions more slowly than the individuals and firms of which they are comprised, tend to have crowded agendas and bargaining tables, and more often fix prices than quantities.

7. Distributional coalitions slow down a society’s capacity to adopt new technologies and to reallocate resources in response to changing conditions, and thereby reduce the rate of economic growth.

8. Distributional coalitions, once big enough to succeed, are exclusive, and seek to limit the diversity of incomes and values of their membership.

9. The accumulation of distributional coalitions increases the complexity of regulation, the role of government, and the complexity of understandings, and changes the direction of social evolution.

Stable democracies without exogenous shocks or substantial internal upheaval tend to accumulate more and more of these distributional coalitions over time.

Olson’s crowning example is that West Germany and Japan enjoyed much faster growth than Britain after WWII mainly because their cartelized groups were destroyed forever. Britain’s situation was not a sudden development; after leading the world in economic growth during the Industrial Revolution (1688-1834), they fell behind in the mid-19^th century compared to such rising powers as Germany and the United States, and this deceleration only worsened in the aftermath of World War II.

Organizational implications

In Olson’s country research, the dangers of unions and cartelized industries alike are identical. 

And every bureaucracy must be eternally vigilant against diversion of the organizational mission by powerful self-interested coalitions.  Like parasites, they threaten the life of the organism as a whole.  Coalitions in bureaucracies make it more difficult to adapt and change during calamities, construct barriers to entry, build edifices where sanity would fear to tread, and preclude solutions that would more quickly bring restoration after adversity.  The reason is simple; coalitions do not have the mission in mind.

Most clearly, midst globalization and increasing rates of change, special interests and rules and regulations in organizations tend to restrict empowerment of individuals to increase productivity, innovate, and adapt.  Increasing control during historic rates of change is adversarial to both the individual and the long term health of organizations.

References

Commons, J.R. 1950. The economics of collective action. Macmillan.

Olson, Mancur. 1971. The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups, Second printing with new preface and appendix. Revised. Harvard University Press.

———. 1984. The Rise and Decline of Nations: Economic Growth, Stagflation, and Social Rigidities. Yale University Press.

———. 2000. Power And Prosperity: Outgrowing Communist And Capitalist Dictatorships. 0 ed. Basic Books.

The Rise and Decline of Nations: Economic Growth, Stagflation, and Social Rigidities by Mancur Olson