Management Rewired by Charles S. Jacob

Management Rewired by Charles S. Jacob

Author:Charles S. Jacob [Jacob, Charles S.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781101050255
Publisher: PENGUIN group
Published: 2010-10-25T04:00:00+00:00


GROUPS, MARKETS, AND MINDS

One can envy slime mold. It perfectly balances independence and collective effort. When the depletion of the food supply requires collective effort, the organisms coalesce to form first a slug and then a stalk with a spore mass on top. Each one willingly sacrifices itself for the good of the community and the next generation. No cumbersome organizational structures are necessary to control their behavior.

Human beings aren’t so willing to sacrifice. We have evolved to be selfish and to look out for ourselves. Life is a zero-sum game and we’re locked in competition for survival. Most organizational structures, systems, and processes try to thwart this natural inclination. Paradoxically, the hierarchy, functional specialization, and division into line and staff, created to ensure collective effort, end up producing just the opposite.

But by creating small groups physically co-located and by leveraging reciprocal altruism, our need to be accepted by the group, and the threat of competition, we can eliminate the barriers to collective action. In larger organizations, we can install market-oriented and process-based structures to create focus on the market and enhance workflow. We can go even further and make use of the process of natural selection that governs human activities by using free-market dynamics to manage customer and supplier relationships.

With structure or without structure, our greatest success will come from orchestrating how people think about their groups, by consciously shaping culture through a narrative. The most effective stories target our highest aspirations, are easy to identify with, and make it clear what people need to do to implement the business strategy. In fact, strategy should be the starting point for the design of any organization, and the kind of strategies the cognitive paradigm gives us, as we’ll see, require the cooperation and commitment only a carefully managed culture can foster.



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