The content of this text is subject to continuous improvement and is updated every 6 months or so. The next content refreshment is scheduled for late 1999.
"Unorganization: The Company Handbook" contains the following sections:
Introduction
A description of the unorganized world
From distribution-driven to content-driven organizational forms
All Business is Logistics
From centralized management to decentralization
From national to global
From top-down decision making to emergent decisions
From emphasis on structure to people
From vertical market structures to communication is structure
From managers to mentors
From micro-management to self-management
From memos to emails
From paper to electronic stream-filing
From office working to teleworking
From formal to casual attire
From organization-based accountability to market-based accountability
From quantity of time to quality of time
From single workstream to multiple lifestreams
From unnatural to natural working
From Human Replacement Management to Human Resource Management
From Secretaries and Receptionists to Chief Logistics and Learning Officers
From specific job titles and descriptions to vagueness
From perks to salaries
From don’t spend anything to spend what you need
From careers to careering
From talent to experience
From organizational socialization to transitional membership and loyalty
From organizational culture to genetic code
From strategic planning to emergent strategy
Implementing unorganization
Justifying downstructuring
Choose downstructuring, not downsizing or restructuring
The bottom line benefits from downstructuring
Downstructuring case studies
On the change process
Business not busyness
Summary
Feedback
Bibliography
Introduction
This book "Unorganization: The Company Handbook" sets out to compare the management and organization practices in organized organizations and in unorganized companies.
"Unorganization" aims to unleash the organization’s full growth potential that is currently trapped within restrictive corporate systems and procedures. We need to align individuals and institutions conceived and created in the orderly organized world with today’s unorganized world. So how has the world has changed and what is this new unorganized world?
A description of the unorganized world
Throughout this text I talk about "the new unorganized world". "Unorganization" is my banner term to describe a number of political, economic, social and technological trends which have occurred and are continuing globally:
Political factors: Respect for and certainty about the purpose, role and effectiveness of institutions such as governments, royalty and work organizations has disintegrated.
Economic factors: Freer market economies have developed internationally throughout the world as the central planning by governments in communist systems has been disgraced. This is the world of global freer trade.
Social factors: Certainty about behavioral norms regarding everything from the role of women to jobs for life has disappeared. The unorganized world combines lifestyle changes (mobility, divorce, working mothers), demographic changes (family, security fears), and technological changes (new technologies such as the Internet).
Technological factors: Technology has changed the way we can live and work. Everything from mobile telephones to the Internet is firmly established in our lives.
Taken together, these trends have bought about a fundamentally discontinuous change that cannot be understood or navigated using received wisdom and traditional ways of thinking, doing and organizing. It is very much the case that whilst these changes have occurred in the wider world, neither business organizations nor individuals have changed their behavior sufficiently to adapt to the new circumstances. We still tend to see the world in terms of red or white, when the reality is various shades of pink.
The retention of organized ways of thinking and doing means that much of the activity that takes place in our organizations is mere busyness and not business. In other words, it is non value adding work. Managers are limiting their organization’s growth and endangering its survival if they persist in viewing today’s world using yesterday’s theories, beliefs, rules and behavior.
Management and organization is going to change significantly in the future- because of the need to realign organized organizations aligned with their unorganized environment. This book refers to outmoded traditional hierarchical formal organizations as "organized organizations" or "organizations", whilst business entities that are aligned to the unorganized world are called "unorganized companies". Let us now explore and compare the organized and unorganized forms of doing business:
From distribution-driven to content-driven organizational forms
Organized business organizations with their integrated, formal employee membership and organization structures are increasingly being replaced in content-driven industries. Traditionally, organization structures took an integrated approach such that new product and customer requirements were handled by formally assigned in-house teams, possibly working with integrated formal suppliers such as consultancies and advertising agencies.
Content-driven industries require content-driven organizations- which increasingly means unorganized companies. Because adding-value through knowledge is at the heart of all businesses in the unorganized world, content is always king. After all, if there is nothing that the corporation does that CANNOT be outsourced, then there is no reason for the corporation to continue existing. As such, the distribution-driven organizational form is giving way to the content-driven organizational model. Today, the process of creation of new products is increasingly being carried out by informal alliances of people working together, often remotely, to deliver the innovation.
Lets look at some examples of industries where traditional organized distribution-driven organizational structures are being replaced by future-oriented unorganized content-driven forms:
Biotechnology. Small start-up biotechnology companies set up and specialize either in treatments for a certain type of disease such as cancer or a particular kind of research methodology such as gene therapy or computer-assisted modeling. They form strategic alliances with the existing global pharmaceutical companies to gain access to their distribution networks. The biotechnology companies basically outsource the production and distribution of their successful ideas for new drugs to the distribution-driven pharmaceutical companies. In so doing, a small start-up biotechnology company gets immediate global reach.
Advertising. The organized world had its integrated global advertising agencies with their in-house media buying and content creation where everything the client wanted was handled in-house. On the other hand, the unorganized world has small creative shops focused on delivering new ideas for advertisements and outsourcing the media buying of space on television to the traditional agencies. For example, one unorganized advertising company could be specifically responsible for sports-related marketing or a certain type of promotion such as direct mail.
(See, for example, Coca-Cola’s move from being using an integrated agency of record globally- McCann-Erickson, to a bouquet of boutiques such as Mother in London for the advertising for its Lilt brand, and its use of Creative Artists Agency, a talent agency, for creative work on its core megabrand in the early 1990s).
Consulting. The age in which a corporate customer goes to a single management consultancy for strategic or other advice on a long term basis is over. In the future, consultancies will take the form of corporate customers subscribing to access a knowledge database that is contributed to by a large number of independent consultants. The idea is to combine the benefits of self-employment with the scale and support systems of employment- if consultants want advice or need to find an assignment in a few months time, they access the consulting clearinghouse for such services. Unorganized companies use different management consultants to solve different business issues. Once again, integrated is giving way to distributed.
Music. Creative artists often prefer to work with independent record labels. But these independent companies are small and do not have the manufacturing and distribution capabilities of the larger record companies- or the cashflow. Nor do they need it, because they can form alliances with the established players. The big organizations get access to the upcoming acts, and the future stars gain the support of the muscle of the large global players, without having to deal with them directly.
(See, for example, Sony Music’s strategy of creating a European network of independent record labels).
Computing. The computer industry is rapidly changing. Computer manufacturers used to design, package, manufacture and distribute new models. Competition has spurred each industry player to focus on its core business rather than continuing with vertically integrated organizations. This change in the industry structure has lead to the outsourcing of computer distribution in particular- manufacturers don’t want to hold stocks or deploy resources distributing them. End customer innovation is their goal.
In these and other industries, distribution is becoming a commodity and content the source of competitive advantage. Companies should concentrate on working with and observing their customers to create new ideas, whose implementation can then be outsourced to suppliers. Computing, communications, media are becoming commodities- what matters is how you use that infrastructure to communicate and implement your ideas. Of course, infrastructure such as distribution can be a specialist core competence that outsourcing suppliers develop excellence in.
This ongoing separation between content and distribution is a fundamental change in the way that companies are organized. It calls for specialization on "core competences"- what the company does best and what makes it unique. The large organizations bring with them their resources- financial, distribution and so on, and the small unorganized companies generate new ideas. The imperative for every company in the unorganized world is to add value- to justify its existence- and to excel in its chosen specialist expertise and get better and better at what it does best.
All Business is Logistics
In the twenty-first century, all business will be logistics. Instead of integrated organizations in which all tasks are completed in-house, increasingly business will be the equivalent of knowledge plus relationships. Those people with the best knowledge and the best relationships will be the most successful- because they will have the intelligence and the people to demonstrate their intelligence to who will recognize and reward it. Business is about making the right decisions about what tasks to carry out in-house and who to partner with externally.
Lets look at the mobile communications in late 1990s to see this central importance of logistics (the unorganization author Simon Buckingham is an expert on mobile communications, see his Internet site at http://www.mobileSMS.com):
Mobile network operators are looking to put together a bundle of products and services to meet their customer’s requirements. They face competition for people and for customers from the increasing number of mobile network operators. As such, time is of the essence and some of these services will be sourced internally, some externally.
The mobile application developers such as software companies are looking for the best way to develop their ideas and the best way to get the most return from their developments through wide usage.
The mobile infrastructure vendors such as the mobile phone manufacturers are looking to design, manufacture, distribute and advertise their products. A mobile terminal consists of hardware, an operating system and applications. Traditionally, all three of these were developed in-house by a terminal manufacturer. However the product life cycle of mobile phones (the time the product is in the market before it is superseded by enhanced products) has shortened. As such, some elements in the product development phase have begun to be outsourced. As phones get "smarter", more expertise will be needed, and therefore more partnerships.
End users need mobile communications to solve several problems. They are looking for suppliers who can make their life easier. They need to decide whether they can get what they need from one company or need to source them from different suppliers.
And companies such as Brightpoint, the world’s largest distributor of mobile phones (www.brightpoint.com), sit in the middle of all these industry players and try to work with them to solve their problems. They package and distribute the mobile phones, offer network operators value-added services such as prepayment and partner with software and hardware companies to deploy their solutions. Brightpoint recognized that it is no longer possible or necessary to do everything yourself in the unorganized world, and acts as the glue that helps everyone in the industry get what they want. They use their knowledge to source best of breed solutions and their relationships to deploy them.
As we can see, the knowledge each player has about their capabilities and the capabilities of other competitors and potential cooperators in the industry is crucial. Creating new relationships or building on existing ones can then leverage this intelligence.
Increasingly, the business of every company in every industry will be all about logistics- having the right people available at the right time to access the right information and act on it in the right way. Logistics are it, so, log into logistics!
From centralized management to decentralization
Whilst the world environment is increasingly unorganized, the attitude and behavior of the majority of managers is stuck in the old organized mode. They falsely believe that they can not only fully understand everything that is going on around them but can also control it.
In the past, market leaders knew every player in the market- competitors and partners, and could influence and even control those companies. This information and its interpretation has always been incomplete, but the dynamic global nature of the unorganized world has worsened this limited understanding of managers. The result is that organized organizations are too rigid, formal and closed to respond quickly enough to market opportunities. Organized organizations cannot quickly, flexibly and closely meet customer requirements and will therefore increasingly lose out to more nimble and flexible competitors.
This greater occurrence of the problem of "bounded rationality", i.e. a limited understanding of events, should be recognized and avoided by all managers. For example, Performance Related Pay (PRP) does indeed sound equitable in theory in that it rewards employees on the basis of their performance rather than mere presence in an organization. However, in practice, flatter organizational forms render Performance Related Pay schemes impossible to implement successfully because of the diverse work that employees perform. Managers are too busy with their own work to monitor their employee's output fairly and effectively. Hence, because bounded rationality prevents the Performance Related Pay system from being effectively administered, simple pay plans should be retained.
In the unorganized world, leadership is about voluntarily ceding control and systematically delegating our responsibilities to others. Managers have to delegate decision making responsibility so widely that their responsibility IN THAT AREA falls, but overall company performance improves. Leaders will not feel insecure about doing this and will not lose out from it PROVIDED they continue to develop their skills and grow and learn as a person. They thereby add more value, perform different tasks and grow both their own and other people’s capabilities. Managers must systematically defunct- and reinvent- themselves.
The secret for managers (and politicians) is to "Be smart enough to know you are not smart enough". They must have the self-confidence and exercise the self-discipline not to intervene. As we will see, managers must recognize their limited understanding of the unorganized world and respond by letting strategies emerge, making reversible commitments and keeping decision making vague.
The limited understanding of managers has implications throughout organizational and managerial contexts. It points to letting employees determine for themselves what tasks they are going to undertake in order to meet their objectives mutually agreed with their company. It is also a good reason why business partnerships are a better way of developing markets than strategic alliances. The markets and partners are always changing yet strategic alliances are often contractual and exclusive. Non-exclusive relations formed through a mechanism such as a business partners program allow faster and more flexible responses to new customer requirements. We will more of the implications of this reduced understanding throughout this book.
From national to global
The problems caused by limited understanding are magnified still further when a company’s business activities are dispersed over a wide geographical area. A transnational is a firm that conducts business in more than one country- as of course more and more firms do in the open unorganized world. When decision making is centralized and the exclusive remit of top managers, problems arise in the unorganized world. Under centralization, the firm’s headquarters is responsible for making the strategic decisions that subsidiaries around the world then adapt to the local environment and implement. Complex strategic demands are broken down into simplistic central and local components with national operations cast as implementers and adapters of global directives, with directors formulating the strategies.
However, such a top down policy direction substantially limits the effectiveness of the transnational. Attempts by managers to impose inflexible decision making processes in diverse and changeable external environment grossly under-utilize the transnational's human assets. (BARTLETT AND GHOSHAL, 1989). As such, top management’s domination of policy making is not sustainable over time. Those transnationals that fully utilize the capabilities of all of their employees around the world perform better than their competitors who do not. If top managers continue with imposed decision making, they run the risk of removal from their positions as shareholders become dissatisfied with the transnational's poor relative performance.
Thus in the unorganized world, top managers are forced by competition to decentralize the transnational's strategic decision making. To overcome the problem of limited understanding, top managers need to implement broad inclusion in strategy conception and delivery. They will have to give more responsibility and influence to employees around the world. Such a decentralization of strategic decision making will be beneficial to the individual’s development, the development of the local economy and indeed the transnational's overall performance. (How to manage in the global unorganized world is explained in detail in "Unorganization: The Global Handbook" on unorgan.com).
From top-down decision making to emergent decisions
Decisions made by managers impact upon other people, yet these managerial decisions are often misguided. Managers do not fully understand and control the external marketplace and yet persist in making irreversible decisions and setting firm strategies. The secret for successful decision making, i.e. choosing solutions to problems, is for managers to have the courage to refrain from jumping in and making decisions which commit significant organizational resources. Rather than the prescriptive "I have a definitive solution to this defined problem" approach, decisions should be reversible and allowed to emerge over time. After all, the right decision at the wrong time is a wrong decision. Be willing and able to change your mind if things change (as they probably will). Remember, there are no magic wands that managers (and politicians) can wave to irradicate problems. Any such promises will only cause problems for employees sooner and the decision maker later.
A useful paradigm explaining the unorganized environment in which managers try to make good decisions is that of garbage can theory. Operating within the unorganized external economic environment, organizational choices can be viewed as similar to selecting litter from garbage cans, in which participants dump various kinds of problems and solutions as they are generated. Dynamic, ever changing corporations are called organized anarchies which are "characterized by three general properties. The first is problematic preferences... The organization operates on a variety of inconsistent and ill-defined preferences. It can be described better as a loose collection of ideas than as a coherent structure; it discovers preferences through action more than it acts on the basis of preferences... The second property is unclear technology. Although the organization manages to survive and even produce, its members do not understand its own processes. It operates on the basis of simple trial-and-error procedures, the residue of learning from the accidents of past experience, and pragmatic inventions of necessity. The third property is fluid participation. Participants vary in the amount of time and effort they devote to different domains; involvement varies from one time to another. As a result, the boundaries of the organization are uncertain and changing; the audiences and decision makers for any kind of choice change capriciously [a lot]". Organized anarchies displaying these three characteristics can be viewed "as collections of choices looking for problems, issues and feelings looking for decision situations in which they might be aired, solutions looking for issues to which they might be an answer, and decision makers looking for work." (COHEN, MARCH and OLSEN). This is a great paradigm for describing the necessarily more dynamic corporate membership, resource allocation and environment, as it really is difficult to make the right decisions in this sort of unorganized environment.
From emphasis on structure to people
Instead of having positions in a hierarchy that people are specifically recruited to fill, unorganized companies hire quality people and let them develop a role for themselves. The job content is shaped around the person’s skills instead of the person being fitted into a mold determined by their manager. The development of roles over time expands and changes according to the jobholder’s own preferences.
In a similar way, in unorganized companies, structure follows business, whereas in organized organizations, business follows structure. Unorganized companies will often try to win business before they have the local structure in place to carry out that business, whereas many organized organizations put a plan in place before they enter a local market.
Instead of the organized approach of following set formal written procedures when carrying out a task, in unorganized companies, discussion between involved employees determines a direction that is then followed. The approach taken by unorganized companies to the same task varies in different markets, depending upon the internal and external circumstances surrounding the activity. The complex, diverse unorganized world requires flexible practices to take advantage of local opportunities.
Unorganized companies are transaction and not procedure oriented- the focus is on results in the marketplace rather than conformance to organizational policies. In unorganized companies, work is organized around external results and outcomes rather than internal tasks or ranks. Organized organizations focus on internal processes, whereas unorganized companies put the emphasis on outcomes. The content is the end, whilst the process is only a means to an end. The big problem with life is that too many people confuse means and ends- they put the emphasis, for example, in commuting to an office to work, whereas in fact work is a location-independent activity. The key problem with process orientation is that it puts the focus on internal matters such as who should attend, how something should happen. By focusing on the content and outcome, the focus is external- how to get the job done in the best way to achieve the end result.
After all, tigers and dogs have the same internal structure- skeletons, tendons etc. but if we treated the tiger as if it was a dog, we would already be dead.
From vertical market structures to communication is structure
Vertical market and matrix management structures are also totally outdated in the new unorganized world.
Many organized organizations continue to make specific employees responsible for managing customers in specific industry sectors, such as health care, manufacturing, finance, transport and service engineering. To be sure, there are some sector specific factors to be taken into account. For example, service engineers often need more rugged mobile field computers, whereas executives on the move can access their e-mail using a normal laptop, but this is easily understood. A network of contacts in the sector does convey credibility, as does the ability to say "I was talking to another firm in the sector yesterday…". However, sector-specific jargon can soon be learnt.
The result from defining employee responsibility on the basis of industry sectors, rather than allocating employee resources according to the amount of activity in a sector, is an under-leveraging of organizational resources. Employees responsible for particular vertical markets are limited by their remit to opportunities arising in their industry sector only. What a wonderful life, just being responsible for one particular sector, but thoroughly boring: spending all that time working on the same type of solution for the same type of customer. Imagine getting lumbered with the public sector!! Activity in their sector may not occupy their time effectively- even if it fills it fully (work expands to fill working time). Busyness rather than business sets in. I’ll never forget the scene when a sector specialist came to a meeting with me and at the end of it after two hours said "Thank you very much: I can’t help, its not my sector" never to be seen nor heard of by that customer again!!
Vertical markets are becoming increasingly meaningless as industries converge. For example, there is not a lot of point in a mobile phone network having separate vertical market managers for the retail and transport sectors as mobile phones are primarily used in the retail sector in the mobile delivery environment. This is making a difference out of a mere distinction. Business opportunities in the unorganized world often involve multiple sectors that, with vertical market structures, turns the focus inwards towards project coordination between the sector specialists rather than customer facing and solution generating. Securing ownership of the opportunity (in other words, organizational politics) takes over.
Such formal structures are the result of knee jerk responses from managers to the increased complexity in the marketplace: divide the market into units that can be comprehended and then assign responsibility. Managers should resist the temptation to try to break down the external market into smaller and therefore supposedly more understandable pieces. It is better to recognize the inevitability of complexity in the unorganized world, and develop horizontal capabilities whose underlying knowledge and resource can be deployed flexibly into all sectors.
Organizational structures based around vertical markets restrict employee and therefore organizational effectiveness. Such structures should be avoided and abolished. Variety in work is the spice of life and the stimulus for learning. And managers should certainly not combine vertical and horizontal responsibilities in matrix organizational structures. As the FINANCIAL TIMES Handbook of Management explains, matrix structures are "afflicted with problems such as power struggles, ambiguity over resource allocation, passing the buck and abdication of responsibility, the cost of support processes and meetings, and frustratingly slow decision making". (CRAINER, 1995). External and not internal focus is of paramount importance.
In fact, all kinds of formal structure are giving way to dynamic, electronic structure in unorganized companies. Effective communication, facilitated by technology tools such as Internet email and mobile phones, is the glue of the unorganized company. Communication is the dynamic structure between the individual members that shapes and guides the progress and actions of the people. It is the communication that coordinates and not formal written procedures. In fact, the success of unorganized companies is inversely related to the quantity and quality of communication between members around the world. Problems arise when communication slows or stops and progress is taken for granted- requiring hyper-communication to achieve subsequent residual recovery of right direction. Problems are just uncommunicated differences- in actions and expectations.
From managers to mentors
The importance of managers in the old traditional organized world is giving way to a need for mentors in the new unorganized world. Managers tell people what to do, how to do it and monitor during and after task implementation. On the other hand, mentors do not dictate what tasks are to be undertaken in which way, instead they give advice when they were asked for it, and let people determine how to carry out their own job.
The differences between the approach that mentors and managers take are quite easily identified:
Mentors keep people informed on what is going on and consult people for their views. Whereas mentors share information, managers protect it and keep it to themselves.
Mentors try to justify their decisions, whereas managers tell people to do what they say "because they are the boss".
Managers seek out, deliberately hire and promote those "subordinates" who say "yes" to them all the time. These rankers agree with everything their managers say and unquestioningly do what the boss tells them to do.
Managers draw upon their past experience ("I have been in the industry fifteen years....."). Mentors realize that the future is not what it used to be and know that new ideas and views are necessary.
Managers are the people who give a presentation to other areas of the company and take the credit for everything that is new and has gone well. They will not even mention the relevant product manager or the person or people who has put the most effort into achieving that success. Mentors will acknowledge that person’s contribution and make it clear that they have driven the project. Mentors will let the person most responsible give the presentation.
Managers tell people exactly what to do. Mentors present people with the choices and let them make the decisions themselves. And a mentor will more than likely just give someone a job to do and not even point out the various ways of getting it done well.
Managers join a new company and try to justify their existence and hide their insecurity by questioning existing practices and suggesting the introduction of new procedures to tighten things up. Mentors on the other hand come in and develop fresh new strategies for going out and bringing in new customers.
Mentors pay more than just lip service to good ideas irrespective of the idea generator’s rank, status or responsibility. They welcome unsolicited approaches and submission of ideas because of the interest and effort they represent.
The underlying difference between managers and mentors is in their level of confidence. Managers lack the self-confidence to include, share and justify. Mentors have the courage of their convictions to realize that they do not know it all. They are smart enough to know when they are not smart enough- and know that these days that means most of the time.
Whereas managers managed in the organized age, we can manage well without them now. Remember, be a mentor, not a manager.
From micro-management to self-management
The organized world was all about control: gaining it and retaining it. This control was sought externally over partners, competitors and customers, and internally over employees. Hierarchies were concerned with putting procedures in place that clearly defined who could do what on whose say so. Organization was a way of slowing people down and controlling what they did. It was all about everyone had a place and there was a place for everyone.
One of the worst features of traditional organized organizations is micro-management, with managers closely supervising every aspect of the tasks that their direct report employees perform. The trouble with internal organizational controls such as close supervision and task prioritization is that they focus efforts on the set list of tasks. Other work is either neglected or carried out but not rewarded. You never get thanked or praised for the work you have done, just hassled over the work that you haven’t yet completed. This level of intervention in the activities of individual employees is excessive. Work effort is distorted towards internally allocated tasks, rather than external customer requirements.
Organized organizations are full of internal controls. Internal organizational controls "covers all day-to-day controls which aim to ensure the smooth operation of your business. It includes checks and balances, procedures, policies and guidelines, rules and structures put in place by management." Examples of internal controls include organization structure, segregation of duties, written procedures and management monitoring.
Managers justify the existence of management controls by saying that they exist to guide and assist employees, rather than to stifle them. However, much of the intervention infringes at such a basic level on an employee’s freedom to act that it could only be designed to impede their progress. All of these internal controls (set by management) simply put the focus on internal procedures and inhibit employees from getting their job of serving customers done. I suspect that the only reason for having a full set of "checks and balances, procedures, policies and guidelines, rules and structures" is to keep managers above their direct report employees in the "hierarchy". I once thought that if management introduces a wrong procedure, I could argue against it and get it withdrawn. I hadn’t considered that management could introduce the procedure with the deliberate intention of constraining subordinates, but many are.
If organizations insist on levels of seniority, there should be at least one intermediate level between a boss and a subordinate. (I apologize for using these outmoded terms). For example, a graduate recruit should report to a senior manager rather than a manager. The senior manager is in a much better position to provide a wider support role. When the boss is only one level up, the manager’s role tends to be non-value adding supervision rather than actually supporting and advising. Managers one level up in rank also tend to worry more about their subordinates getting promoted to their level and hence are not as willing to develop employees fully.
In unorganized companies, managers should work with their staff to occasionally (say, not more than every three months) set objectives and targets for the coming period and review achievement of the objectives set for the past period. Frequent (weekly) meetings should NOT be held to set the top priorities for the next week. This distorts effort, fails to reward for tasks completed but not on the priority list and dictates what activity that person undertakes, infringing their autonomy to think and act for themselves.
In fact, in unorganized companies, decision independence and opportunity exploration by employees are encouraged. Employees should be able to determine for themselves at their own pace and discretion which capabilities e.g. account or product management, they are strong at, and discover how much value they can add in the marketplace. Organizational paraphernalia such as job titles, job descriptions and reporting relationships should not hinder or prevent these discoveries from being made.
In unorganized companies, everyone should manage themselves. Managers cannot know or care about the individual's career or future as much as the employee him or herself knows and cares. The existing system of allocation of an employee to a hierarchical position means that employee development must wait until an opportunity arises in their area of functional responsibility. Instead of managers assigning employees to tasks that seldom challenge their full abilities, each organizational member should select their own tasks and then take them on as far as they can. The process of matching personnel to opportunities should be self-managed and not hindered by organizational structure. Employees should be able to create an opportunity for themselves or move to where the most suitable and interesting and challenging opportunities are.
From memos to emails
In my first job, in the pre-email age, I used to carefully craft memorandums for distribution internally in my company. It took me as much time to arrange the memo as it did to write it. Putting the names in place, writing it, placing it in the right place on the page, printing it out, using the luminous marker to highlight the names of the recipients. Finding internal envelopes, putting the memo into it and then writing on the internal envelope, putting it into the postal out tray. This context is busyness and the content of the memo is the subject matter itself. A couple of years on and all I can really remember is going to through this ritual to get an idea out to my colleagues.
Now of course, there is email, and the world has changed completely. You can fire off an email quickly and easily- there is no paper involves, it is completely electronic. And the emails arrive directly and nearly instantaneously. You can send out a short one line email with a thought or reminder or comment- you don't have to worry about the context- communication is quicker and easier.
It is hard to remember and imagine life without email, even though we have only been using it for a few short years. I will probably never compose a memo ever again. And yet I will use email every day of the rest of my life.
From paper to electronic stream-filing
I recently totally cleared out both my bedroom and office and emptied them of well over 95% of all the paper I used to keep. For a couple of weeks, every time someone asked me what I was doing, I replied "tidying up"! I donated all of my business and economics books to a library, and took the above principles to their limit when clearing my papers out. A couple of months later and I have not regretted this clearing out at all. On the contrary, I can now easily lay my hands on the important documents I need when I need them. Moreover, my mind feels less cluttered by the sight of all the piles of paper surrounding me, and this helps me to think more clearly and feel more relaxed.
Because I often cannot easily locate bits of information when I need them, and because it unsettles me to be surrounded by piles of paper, I sorted out and reduced this mass of paper-based information. It always frustrates me to have to spend a lot of time searching, often in vain, for documents I need.
I decided what to keep and what to recycle based on a couple of principles:
1. The principle of later referral.
The value of information can be measured by the number of referrals it gets. When you publish your own information, you can gauge its quality by counting the number of "hits" it gets, i.e. the number of people who refer to it. Similarly, you can ascertain the value of someone else’s information by counting the number of times you yourself refer to it.
The more referrals someone else’s or your own information gets, the more valuable it is. The fewer referrals it gets, the less point there is in retaining it. Any information I don’t refer to, I get rid of it. The principle is: "Don’t refer, don’t retain".
2. The principle of electronic referral.
I replaced physical information such as paper-based memos with electronic forms of communication such as email. I threw away any paper-based information that is available to me in electronic format. Instead of paper-based filing cabinets which are under lock and key and only available when I am at my desk, I developed an electronic filing cabinet, with customer files containing a link to Internet pages plus all incoming and outgoing email messages with that company or person.
The Internet has an unlimited information storage and retrieval capability anyway. Operating systems and software products will become available which enable us, from our laptop and desktop PCs to store and retrieve information using the Internet as easily as we currently do from our PC’s hard disc drives or local area computer network.
I used to get swamped with paper-based communications at my home and my office. I have magazines, product brochures, letters, junk mail, print outs of "unorganization", birthday cards, newspaper cuttings, memos and much more. I threw away a whole mass of paper-based product brochures and just retained the business cards and other contact details so that I know whom to contact.
Information gets out-of-date so quickly these days anyway: rarely do we pick up a document six months after we have received it and find it is still up-to-date. The most recent information is usually on the Internet such as press releases and new product announcements. It is so quick to update Internet pages that you don’t need a big print run to justify updating a document and it only takes a minute to make changes to Internet content.
I recycled all past (and current) issues of magazines that I currently subscribe to that are also available for access free on the Internet anyway. I also removed all the interesting articles from past issues of magazines I have retained before recycling the remains.
Instead of stockpiling information on the off chance you will need it, off load all information which you do not refer to.
From office working to teleworking
We have moved from the old orderly organized world to a new global, diverse unorganized world. Because the world has changed, so too has the nature and form of work. We need to find ways of increasing the amount of business done in work contexts and reducing the amount of busyness. Navigating ourselves to the office is a transaction cost incurred just to get us in a position to transact and do business. Teleworking- working from home- recognizes the wastefulness of such outmoded systems of work and provides a viable alternative. It saves time and energy and reduces the stress from, for example, congestion. As such, work is increasingly changing from static and office-centric to dynamic and home centric.
In addition to being inefficient to navigate to, offices are often cramped and noisy working environments. Not only that, but offices are expensive fixed overheads that significantly increase the cost of doing business.
Teleworking is facilitated by the recent rapid advances in the power of enabling technologies coupled with a significant reduction in their prices. These technologies include Internet email, Personal Computers, high-speed modems and so on. Remote intranet access using a simple remote password or other security feature is perfectly viable. Technologies are widely available that enable us to work from wherever we are. A person’s availability and presence are no longer limited to geographic proximity, but can be conferred electronically using communication technology tools. With a personal telephone number, people are available at the end of their mobile phone to customers or colleagues calling the personal telephone number at any time. A personal telephone number is re-routable to any other telephone number anywhere at anytime- it can be routed to home OR office or any other phone, without callers knowing my current location (or particularly caring). These technologies mean that the generation and communication of work content is location independent. It is not dependent upon any particular physical, geographical environment.
(Implementing teleworking programs is explained in detail in "Unorganization: The Implementation Toolkit" on unorgan.com).
From formal to casual attire
Teleworkers don't dress up to work from home. In fact, there has been a distinct casualization in what people wear at work. Even in offices, you see jumpers worn over shirts and ties, jeans with a tie, all over casual and so on.
I often get it wrong- I have been to casual clients dressed in suits and worn casual clothes to formal board meetings. When I went to the South African Broadcasting Corporation, they were surprised to see me, the "unorganization" guru, in a suit. I turned up for a regional board meeting at a major IT company in casual attire and with just a magic market pen! I told them that I didn't like luggage: physical, mental or emotional! One of my mentors is rightly cynical about management consultancy and advises me to wear a suit because then I can charge twice as much!
Dress can be a barrier- an opportunity for misunderstandings to arise before the important business of collaboration has even begun. Like all problems, this needs to be recognized and even commented upon- I used to explain to the SABC that I had other meetings later that required a suit and did not want to have to go back to my hotel and change. Such communication helps to overcome misunderstandings that are not important enough to get in the way of interactions between individuals in business contexts.
As far as I am concerned, your outer appearance only matters if it hinders the extent to which your audience listen to your internal ideas. If your ideas are good enough, you can usually generate interest and earn some respect from an audience fairly quickly. Appearance should be neutral or mildly positive- but it should not be overpowering- people can lose trust if they see someone in a 1000 dollar suit dripping in jewelry. People need to signal their self-worth, and they can do that by getting across their internal ideas or projecting an outward appearance.
When selecting clothes, I try to select this that I know I look fine in, that are functional and comfortable, so that I can forget about them. Like many other things, the clothes we wear are a means to an end and not an end in themselves. Too many people think they are the later, and make mental associations on the basis of appearance alone- but the fact is, having a perfect outer core is only that important if you have nothing much in your inner core.
It is important to make an effort to put some smart clothes on when visiting a customer. Somehow this confers more respect too- you mean business and do business. I always put a suit on when visiting Coca-Cola factories to collect items for more collection (See www.BottleBank.com) because I find that I am always helped more. It did not ought to be this way, but it is. Emphasis on clothes is rightly changing over time towards casualization. It is what is in your head that counts.
From organization-based accountability to market-based accountability
There are two ways of making people accountable- via organizational mechanisms and via market mechanisms. Organization-driven accountability is all about putting in place the internal mechanisms that make people accountable for the things that management want them to achieve through formal reporting relationships and explicit task setting and task completion monitoring. Under organization-based accountability, procedural mechanisms are used to make an individual channel their efforts in the direction and be accountable for certain specific results. Accountability in this formal way was the typical mode of accountability in organized organizations. Employees often resent the existence of the procedures that make them do certain things and do not reward them for doing other things. Many people do not like the fact that organized accountability means having a manager breathing down their neck monitoring their behavior and performance.
Under market-based accountability on the other hand, people are equally accountable but for the results they achieve and their contributions. Teleworkers may rarely see and do not necessarily receive many direct work instructions from their manager. So what was it that compels them to work in such a free and autonomous work environment?
When teleworkers tell their friends that they work from home, many immediately reply that they think that they need to be supervised in an office. Given complete freedom to determine their own workload and schedule, they suspected that they would be too lazy and do little or nothing. However, the fact that people are no longer paid for their mere presence in an office does not mean that they are not accountable for their results. People are accountable through market mechanisms because:
They are accountable to themselves- their pride and conscience and interest in their job spurs them to be well prepared for meetings and go a little bit further for a customer. Reputations soon fade if you don’t keep adding to your knowledge base and your network of contacts. And if you aren’t fully briefed, then you could well lose the business. Nothing recedes like success.
They often want the job to continue. They know that an extended period of time without paying their way and earning back their wages would endanger the continuance of their freedom (and employment). There is little job security in the unorganized world- if employees neglect to do any or sufficient work over time to kept their bosses happy and earn their wages, then the company only has to give one month’s notice and the employee would be out of that job. It does not matter how much you are earning and how good a job you have today because you could be fired tomorrow. We are only ever one trade away from humility.
Because people are no longer rewarded for mere presence in an office, all their colleagues see is their results- not them in action, just what they achieve. In fact, it is offices that encourage laziness by insisting that employees stay busy- even if they are not being productive. The pressure to perform under market-based accountability is greater, not less, because employees can no longer hide behind busyness and justify the continued receipt of their wage packet by mere presence that may be totally unrelated to effectiveness.
As such, there are two ways of achieving accountability- through organizational mechanisms or market mechanisms. In both cases, accountability is a social construct- people are accountable to other people. However, under the market-based model, it is your external reputation and internal self-worth that you are protecting, whereas in the organization model, it is more hassle avoidance. It is my personal belief that market-based accountability is both more humane and more effective.
Special people deserve special, minimal rules because they generate special results. But if they abuse and take advantage of their special rules such that they fail to achieve those special results- then they end up back as "rankers"- replaceable employees- again, as average people producing average results and deserving close supervision. The special rules are contingent upon special results. Amazingly but crucially, autonomy creates accountability.
From quantity of time to quality of time
Instead of working hard, people should increasingly work smart. Instead of judging contributions according to quantity of time spent in the office, people should earn their money for the quality of ideas for strategies and market approaches that they communicate. These days, employees are knowledge workers, providing detailed and comprehensive analysis and clear opinions about how to win business and which companies to partner with and invest in. Quantity of time worked no longer matters, the important thing is the quality of output.
Because work loads and output are dynamic, what matters is not necessarily ensuring that employees are working now but that they earn their wages over time and get work done in a timely manner as it arises. These days, being in the office between 9 to 5 is irrelevant and unnecessary. My 9 a.m. was somebody else’s midnight. Instead, people should be able to work at whatever time they work best and at whatever time is convenient for them and their customers around the world in different time zones.
From single workstream to multiple lifestreams
Full-time work can get very repetitive. Employees can soon got tired of the same office, the same people and similar tasks every day. It often seems as though we are either working all day long or not working at all. There is no middle way- no balance between work and non-work activities. One day of work ends and before you know it, another has begun. Weekends are then spent catching up with the things that you had postponed during the week because of work commitments. It does not matter what the weather is like outside when employees are in their air-conditioned, artificially lit office buildings oblivious to anything other than the work they are doing.
In unorganized companies, employees are able to take control of their time and reintroduce some balance into their life. Instead of spending all their time dedicated to a single workstream, people will increasingly divide their time between multiple lifestreams, such as their personal hobbies and interests. This will end the division between work and non-work activity, allowing people to do both at the same time, interchangeably.
(The concept of lifestreams is explained in detail in "Unorganization: The Individual Handbook" on unorgan.com)
From unnatural to natural working
In organized organizations, working practices are unnatural. People are told where they will work and with whom and at what. People are made to fit into positions and job descriptions and tasks are assigned to them by others that they have to carry out. People are routinely and semi-automatically moved around from one division to the next to get a broad base of knowledge about the organization. People may not be interested in or good at finance, but they are assigned to the finance department for a couple of years before being moved on again. Employees who are found to have weaknesses in certain areas are held back or forcibly encouraged to improve their attainment in those areas. It is like being in schools where there is a curriculum that all pupils must follow irrespective of ability or aptitude.
Unorganized companies on the other hand operate "naturalized" work practices. Under naturalization, the differences between people are explicitly recognized and catered for. Different people work better at different times and in different places, and different people are more interested in and inclined towards, and therefore tend to be better at, certain tasks. Rather than punishing people for not being naturally good at certain tasks and having certain inevitable imperfections, leaders in unorganized companies explicitly recognize these traits and work around them. They look for ways to develop and leverage the specific strengths of each individual whilst minimizing the allocation of tasks which the person is unsuited too. Work naturalization recognizes that different people have different strengths and weaknesses. The function of work contexts is then to facilitate the amplification of the strengths- for the benefit of both the individual and the collective grouping. One person’s weakness is someone else’s strength, so someone is hired to fill the complementary role.
For example, more analytical and relationship-oriented people could be given major accounts that need researching and developing. The "natural-born" salesmen are assigned to cold-calling telephone sales that they find comes easily. And not only that, but they are assigned to the region that they come from- Welsh sales people talk to customers in Wales for as long as geography matters to the customer. The result: employer, employers and customers benefit by doing and dealing with people and products that they have a natural affinity with.
The simple fact is that not everyone works best in the same environment, some people work better in the morning, some late at night, some work better in supervised environments, some create better autonomously. People should be able to work wherever they can naturally produce their agreed output. Employees should not be expected in a certain place day in, day out when location does not affect the quality of output. Teleworking considers and meets this requirement for diversity.
"Unorganization" therefore advocates that different people be able to do different things, that the system should be flexible and dynamic enough to support and amplify people, according to their abilities, needs and wishes, rather than the system predominating over the people with "one size fits all" job functions. In pursuing work, each individual should be able to do what comes naturally.
From Human Replacement Management to Human Resource Management
In what is in theory an outward-facing sensitive "people-centered" role, personnel employees in organized organizations are too often simply administrators, only interested in filling vacancies. They add very little value in a positive way, they just take defensive measures to avoid legislative non-compliance and liability for the way employees are treated. In organized hierarchies, "HRM" stands not for human resource management but for human replacement management. "One manager termed the [personnel] function "Inhuman nonresources" because of its focus on maintaining personnel statistics rather than developing human capital, and its tendency to cite reasons, regulatory and otherwise, why something cannot be done. At the same time, managers in other functions have hidden behind human resource systems and policies as a way of avoiding direct responsibility for performance appraisals, compensation, and promotions. Dealing directly with people in a candid but nonabusive way is invariably the hardest part of a manager's job." (BRADLEY S, HAUSMAN J AND NOLAN R, 1993).
In unorganized companies, individual employees are often left to manage themselves and fend for their own interests after recruitment. Employees have to proactively request any information they want about stock plans, bonus programs and so on. All personnel issues of an administrative or career development nature are often decentralized and handled directly between the employee and their manager. This direct relationship and delegated responsibility starts with recruitment and ends when the employment relation does.
From Secretaries and receptionists to Chief Logistics and Learning Officers
Just like everyone else, the role of receptionists, secretaries, clerks and other support staff is changing in post-hierarchical organizations. These people have always been important, but recognition of their importance needs to increase.
Currently, secretaries are typically under-appreciated for all of the work they do: the telephone calls they answer, the letters and memos they type, the cups of tea and coffee they make for staff and visitors, the meetings and flights they organize. Secretaries are in fact logistics coordinators: organizing people, packages and communication in organizations. Secretaries are already the most flexible employees in terms of their ability to do something different at a moment’s notice.
Some of the grunt work that secretaries and receptionists now undertake is being reduced. People are getting personal telephone numbers that follow them around so that phones do not ring on desks when the person is in the car. Everybody types his or her own email messages: neither Dilbert nor I have come across anyone dictating an email message yet!! It is often less time consuming for people to type their own correspondence and retrieve their own documents. After all, we can each best read and understand our own writing, and know what document we need. Electronic agents will soon start to organize meetings. The "Why have a secretary and type yourself" attitude is giving way to "if you want the job done quickly, do it yourself".
As with every other employee, receptionists and secretaries should be empowered to act on their initiative and develop still further their importance within the company. This means downstructuring: removing the systems and job descriptions that limit their job function.
Secretaries currently add a great deal of value for other people. In the future they must add more value for themselves. Support staff should take an interest in the actual work that is going on, rather than simply helping other people with their work.
They must stop saying that "There’s no point asking me, I am only the receptionist". They should understand the terminology in the memos they type and be able to answer frequently asked questions.
They should be engaged in a continuous process of learning, just like everyone else. As the department central through which most documents pass, they are in a great position to learn. The very word "secretary" should be replaced with Chief Quality Controller or Organizational Intelligence Coordinator.
"Secretaries" should be able to be promoted not just to a "senior secretary", but into the department itself. Their efforts should be rewarded, with thank you notes and, as they add more value, with higher wages.
From specific job titles and descriptions to vagueness
In too many organized organizations, job titles and job descriptions are so detailed and specific that they limit the deployment of organizational resources to meet customer requirements. They also limit the extent to which individuals in that organization can develop their role and learn new skills. A lot of people rely on a few sales people to go out and bring in the business that keeps the support staff such as development, administration and public relations people occupied. Instead, everyone should be in a position to bring in new sales. After all, everyone has a social context outside of work that could contain new customers. Non-sales people should be given the mandate and rewards for bringing those customers into the office and presenting the company’s capabilities to them. Neither should there be territorial suspicion when someone from another department enquiries about a particular new project or customer.
A job description explains the position in the hierarchy that a job holds (who the jobholder reports to) along with a listing of the key tasks and responsibilities the job entails. I don’t believe that people are insecure enough to gain reassurance from a piece of paper which is usually so vague that it was not representative of a typical job in a fast changing company. In downsized organizations, employees carry out too many different tasks for job descriptions to mean anything. Indeed, most job descriptions are so ambiguous that they may as well not exist. This is not a bad thing- better an ineffectual procedure than a effective one. Having said that, when a procedure serves no purpose, it should be abolished.
In unorganized companies, job titles should be broad and vague, with business cards stating nothing other than the company and employee name and area of the company in which that employee works, thereby giving an indication of technical or commercial orientation. Additionally, employees in unorganized companies should no longer be bound by the fact that they belong to some department's payroll and typically only get access to information necessary for completing their immediate tasks. Instead, employees should be on a central, single payroll and "rented out" to the area of the company in which they are currently working. Those who are relatively static are still paid by the same department just like they always were. But simultaneously, the problem of paying those shifting employees needed for innovation will no longer be constrained by their allocation to a specific department. A flexible payroll system facilitates flexibility in the selection of projects in which employees participate, with employees shifting around depending on where customer opportunities exist.
From don’t spend anything to spend what you need
Organized organizations frequently have very strict cost control measures that bordered on penny-pinching. For example, in some hierarchies, all expenditure had to be signed off by three people- purchase authorization forms for the smallest amounts were signed by manager, finance director and managing director.
In unorganized companies, commitment for expenditure on projects is often given verbally, with the requesting person knowing that the person giving the approval has the authority to make it, and the approver knowing that the requester knows what they were talking about and thought the expenditure to be worthwhile. For example, in one unorganized company, the head of the Information Technology (IT) department had blanket authorization to make IT-related purchases at his discretion. The attitude was spend what you need to get the job done quickly.
From perks to salaries
The membership of unorganized companies should not be associated with employee benefits such as company cars, pensions and medical insurance. These benefits increase the fixed costs of employment and tie the employee into a particular organization for derivative, secondary reasons alone. As in, the job may be lousy, but the mort-gage has to be paid, and the bank I work for gives me preferential mort-gage interest rates. These benefits act as a entry and exit barrier to employment. As redundancy becomes increasing commonplace, people will realize that it is better to manage their own welfare payments such as in private pensions, thereby reducing their cost to employers and increasing their flexibility in the labor market, so that unemployed people can quickly gain new employment.
Organized organizations often deliberately set out to lock people into staying with their organization by providing gradually increasing benefits in the form of both salaries and share options. Employees, especially at senior manager level or higher, are particularly well provided with benefits- so much so that a lot of honest, intelligent and lively people can easily get trapped in organized organizations. This is the defensive form of organization described in the "careering" section.
One organized organization had been losing so many Information Technology (IT), project management and marketing staff that they introduced a "Millennium" share option scheme for every one of its employees on "permanent" contracts. All such staff received share options worth half their basic salary and would receive the shares if they remained in the organization for three years. That organization’s chief executive officer commented "Our staff are our most important asset, and this will be an important benefit to them as well as setting us apart from all our competitors and making us a leader in benefits provision". Few unorganized companies covert leadership in this area!
Unorganized companies tend to take the opposite approach and offer (considerably) higher basic salaries, but without providing benefits such as health care and pensions. Employees still do often get company cars, primarily because many of them are used to such perks from previous positions in other organizations. Individuals are often expected to sort out and pay for their own benefits, for example, pay into their own private pension scheme out of their salary. Increasingly in the unorganized world, people will send out their electronic agents (programmable software programs) to find the most suitable deal for their requirements. Insurance companies would then only exist if such actors chose their policies, encouraging the insurance companies to closely meet the customer's needs. In this way the individual gets a wide choice of policies rather than only that offered by the unorganized company in which they are currently (but temporarily) a member. This is the "prospecting" form of company we will now explore further.
From careers to careering
These days, careers are unpredictable because of the change in the environment in which careers are performed. For example, mergers and acquisitions have increased the uncertainty facing employees: their career could be affected by unforeseeable events that radically alter career and employment stability. The range of work patterns is rapidly diversifying, with part-time, full-time, flextime and teleworking options amongst others. New organizational forms such as unorganized companies mean that careers are shaped in alliances and ventures and projects rather than by functional positions and serial tasks. Social trends also affect people's career flexibility, their values such as doubts about authority and rejection of hierarchy affect career decisions, as well as the types of career that people have. (MAYO).
In their book, "Managerial Job Change: Men and Women in Transition", NICHOLSON AND WEST found that (British) managers were committed both to the work and the non-work aspects of their lives. Most managers changed their job every two or three years. Half of the job changes were into newly created positions, and involved a change in employer, function and status, or even radical transitions with triple shifts. Given the unpredictability in the unorganized world, careers are not smooth and continuous ladders up hierarchies but hills and valleys with ups and downs. Promotion up a single function seemed a slower and less certain path to executive status. Organized organizations failed to fulfill their employee’s need for achievement, recognition and feedback, and this encouraged some of the moves between companies. Managers received more tangible feedback and more valuable guidance about their performance from visible work results such as the number of visits other employees made to their pages on the company’s internal Internet site.
Faced with these changes, the traditional organized definition of a career as a sequence of positions held in a lifetime of work is being replaced in the unorganized world by the notion that careers are a sequence of learning discoveries, roles and relationships in work-related organizations. (DALTON AND THOMPSON, 1986). Traditional lifespan career models focused on work-related activities, with work divided into periods from preparatory pre-work to initial part-time work to trial first full-time job to stable permanent employment to post-work retirement. (MILLER AND FORM, 1951). However, in the unorganized world it is less likely that stable permanent employment will ever be found, and the stages are unlikely to be progressed through with a single employer.
Traditionally, organized organizations were so called analyzers, which acted as good long-term career managers and developed their human resources through training and other opportunities for personal development. An internal labor market focused on individual performance with recruitment from outside the existing organizational staff only at entry level. Career stability was high and employee turnover low, with many people spending their entire career in the same company.
Even such analyzing organizations fare better than defensive organizations that tried in the organized world to dominate a market sector and control it. Their aim is to retain their human resources by locking individuals into the organization through long-term benefits such as a good pension and promotion on the basis of seniority. Defenders are like clubs, with emphasis on social aspects, organization as community if you will, with performance measured on a group rather than individual basis and promotion from within the organization. Both analyzers and defenders look increasingly under threat in the unorganized economy because their outdated career paths are out of synchronization with employee expectations and global market complexity. There are only two types of corporation, the quick and the dead.
Prospectors are the quick unorganized companies constantly seeking new markets and products and opportunities around the world. They aim to recruit people who can add value to the company’s current and future ventures. These unorganized companies see little sense in investing in a long-term integrated career development system when product and market requirements are uncertain. Creative, independent experts are in demand, with people central to competitive advantage, rather than systems or anything else. Some procedural inefficiency is rightly accepted if innovation ensues. External labor market hiring is pursued based on individual contribution. (SONNENFELD AND PEIPERL, 1992). This view of careers is much more suited to the unorganized world. High performers are likely to look toward prospectors who give them the opportunities to excel.
In the unorganized world, there will be increasingly fewer analyzers willing to manage careers, and more prospectors who seek to retain key employees for as long as those individuals add more value than they cost to retain. In addition, employees will be less willing to be retained, especially if they have some qualifications. (HANDY, 1989). Employers are less likely to offer employees permanent employment and employees are less likely to want to accept it.
The practical implication is that individuals should be open-minded but skeptical towards employers and their working relationships with them. Loyalty can best be seen a transitional commitment from the employee to the employer and vice versa, whilst both are mutually benefiting from the alliance. Loyalty has to be earned, by employers and employees. Commitment to an employer exists but is provisional, with loyalty shown by a favorable mindset towards a certain employer at a certain point in time. Employees need to be resourceful and resilient in the face of change. They must drive the development of their own skills in order to remain employable and successfully manage their career changes. Of course, within this instability lies personal growth for those prepared and mobile enough to exploit career opportunities involving radical transition.
Some commentators suggest the need for a mutual partnership between the employee and employer to develop an individual's career. It could be argued that the individual has tasks to perform in managing his or her career, such as implementing self-development plans and pursuing continuous learning. Conversely, the employer has other separate tasks to perform such as allowing individual employees the opportunity to carry out new tasks from which they can learn. Additionally, there are joint career planning processes that link the individual and employer’s objectives. The key joint process is the regular appraisal and development review that looks at past performance, future prospects and how to facilitate further development of the individual in the corporate context. (MAYO, 1992). A joint approach is seen as necessary because it is difficult for individuals employed by organized organizations to engineer opportunities to exploit their knowledge and make new discoveries without organizational support given the existence of organizational practices and procedures. In unorganized companies where actions create structure, such barriers do not cause such a problem.
Instead of the traditional focus on employment and career dependence, the focus in the unorganized world should shift to employability and career resilience. (WATERMAN, 1994). A single job, company and career path is no longer relevant. Instead what matters is that individuals have the skills required to find work when they need it. Again, both the employer and the employee have roles to play in this. Individuals must manage their own career development and enhance their employability inside and outside the company. Employees should not be dependent on the employer for employment, as this leads to a relatively static workforce with static skills.
Employers need full commitment from individuals to engage their energies in achieving the company’s goals. Nowadays employers should give individuals the freedom and opportunity to develop greatly enhanced employability in exchange for higher productivity. Every corporation should aim to maximize the potential of each and all of its employees. Potential means the ability to perform a broader or deeper role in the future. Employers provide their employees with the open and flexible environment necessary for assessing their skills, testing their self-concept, and developing further expertise. The result is a self-reliant and career resilient workforce dedicated to continuous learning and willing to transform itself to keep pace with organizational change and radical career transition. This is a better interpretation of career management applicable in the fast and furious unorganized world.
Instead of organized careers, nowadays we have unorganized careering. Careering means frequently shifting the work that people do between industries and companies.
From experience to talent
The importance of having "experience" is touted around so much these days that its importance bears close consideration. Many graduates cannot get a job for lack of experience, but neither can they get experience because of a lack of experience. Organized organizations persist in promoting employees merely because of their age and experience. As such, seniority depicts old age and someone who has sold their soul to the corporation. Many organized organizations still have arbitrary rules that govern promotions at all levels of the organization. For example, in some organized organizations, employees can’t move up to the next level of the hierarchy until they have spent a fixed amount of time in their current position or reach senior management rank until they are thirty years old. These days, people should be promoted (and hired) according to their competence and ability. If you’re good enough, you’re old enough.
I responded to an article in The Economist magazine about experience. It was subsequently published and read as follows:
Beyond experience
I was surprised to see you advocate the overriding importance of managerial experience, which "nothing can ever substitute for". How important is it for someone to have experience in a world where tomorrow will not be like today? How necessary is it for me to have been in my industry (the manufacture of laptop computers) five years ago when everything has since changed: the technology, competition and customer expectations.
It is more difficult to unlearn received wisdom that is no longer relevant than to learn new truths; hence the importance of executive recruitment from other industries. Increasingly, given the nature of the more chaotic external economic environment and the internal, less hierarchical internal structures, the need for experience is a myth perpetuated by 37-year-olds to keep 27-year-olds from getting ahead.
If middle-class, middle-aged, white, male, experienced executives had proven themselves managing organizations (economic and political) then fair enough. Alas, they have not. Therefore, the only prejudice is talent- not age, not sex and certainly not "experience".
SIMON BUCKINGHAM
[ECONOMIST, 27/07/96]
A few people misread this letter and interpreted it as being sexist, racist et cetera, whereas in fact of course I meant it to communicate my view that talent is the most important factor in achieving success. To clarify my view, I would add the following points:
Talent with discipline is a better situation than discipline without
talent. Ideally, we would all have both, but this doesn't happen that often.
Average people produce average results. In my view, talent is extremely
important- much more so than experience- because the important thing is the
outcome and not the process- talent and experience and wisdom are means to
an end- means to learn new truths and not ends in themselves.
People without talent are doomed to be rankers in hierarchies, whereas
people with talent have the opportunity to be self-employed branders.
Experience is not that difficult to acquire- I think that if you have
just seen both extremes then you can understand any of the situations
in between. You can see a lot in a short space of time- just go to India!Perspective is essential in determining business from busyness. Knowing which battles are worth fighting is important. I find that children help put things in perspective- the real importance of careers for example. Children do not have perspective or experience and yet they are superbly adept learners- they do not assume. Example, driving along to the seaside with a nine year old child. We pass a car with a boat on the back. I say "they must be on their way to the beach", child says "Why?". I reply (thinking the child is slow) "because he has a boat on the back of the car and is heading for the seaside". But child replies (thinking I am slow) that "He could just have borrowed the car and be taking it back home".
Human attitude lags far behind technological development. This is part of the problem- and it is perpetuated by the assumed importance of experience. In Wieck's theory of "enactment", things have to be believed to be seen- we fail because we do not try. By assuming that a response to the situation is the same as we responded in our past experience, we limit what we can learn from today's events and if the world has changed, our ability to take advantage of them.
Culture too is a barrier that hinders effective communication- it is
important to recognize its existence, but experience is not necessarily
going to help overcome cultural barriers- it may hinder them if someone
comes from a non-global era and is not globally sensitized.Knowledge grows over time- but because knowledge may be defined as applicable information, experience may hinder the deployment of that "building block", either because experience says that that knowledge will not apply to that situation (and therefore is not applied) or because the knowledge has been superseded by events.
Experience in past generations of technology is rarely useful in current
generations. In fact, it is more likely to hinder novel application of new
technologies because of the retention of old ways of thinking and doing. New
technologies first get applied in old ways because of experience, limiting
the end results.White, middle class males (known sometimes as WASPs) have been the predominant holders of business and political power. As such, because they were in a position to fail, they very often did. Anyone who can succeed should be able to- be they WASPS or anyone else as well. Hence "the only prejudice should be talent".
I spoke to a couple of organized organizations about experience. They were market leaders but facing new competitors and technical challenges as the communications and computing industries converged. Both organizations stated that the reason to continue working with them was their many years of experience, one even said that collectively the organized organization had 120 man years of experience!! Apparently, one man year is one person working an ordinary working week for say 47 weeks a year after taking holidays into account. It is not much consolation that you have tried and tested product if that product has been superseded by new advances! Experience is a precarious competitive advantage.
The need for experience is a relic of the organized traditional world when things did not change much and what happened in the past therefore remained more relevant. Work experience is not important in the unorganized world. It should not be the basis for justifying decisions such as promotions. In a fast changing world, learning is more important than experience. We need to substitute the need for experiences with a need for discoveries because whilst experiences look back in time discoveries evoke positive future-oriented images. Experience is irrelevant, talent and discoveries matter!
From organizational socialization to transitional membership and loyalty
Organized organizations try to socialize newcomers into their corporate culture and operating procedures. Every time new employees step outside their bounds of authority, the hierarchy hits back. Non-routine behavior that does not conform to organizational norms is punished through peer pressure or disciplinary measures. Finding out the norms and boundaries of behavior that organized organizations will (or rather won’t) tolerate is a crucial stage in organizational socialization. New recruits soon learn what their managers will accept and tolerate. They then stop trying to change the rules and innovate. Doing your job well is not enough in an organized organization, you have to play the game as well. You can find the perfect job in the perfect industry, and the hierarchy stills makes it intolerable.
And if you stay in the organized organization for a few years, you stop thinking about your silent compliance. You perfect the art of doing enough for the organization to earn your salary and keep management satisfied. You console yourself with the fact that you can make appointments with customers located on the coastline and take clients out to lunch on expenses. And as you follow convention and become stable enough as a personality that your "permanent" job is secure, you are of value to the opposite sex and get married. And when you have long term fixed payment obligations such as mort-gages, you have no choice but to tow the corporate line. To pay for our possessions, you play by the rules and accept what the hierarchy tells you to do.
In such organized organizations, promotions up the rank are a reward for managing to subsume your personal beliefs to those of the hierarchy. Too often, promotions are a reward for compliance with the organized organization’s policies and not for exceptional performance. All the title "department head" really means is that you have managed to desensitize your thought processes and move your way up the hierarchy especially well, being particularly adept at playing the corporate games and getting your own way. In other words, you get promoted if you let yourself be socialized by the organized organization.
People simply do not remain in any one organization long enough for socialization to be worthwhile these days. Socialization was fine when you knew you would spend your working life in just one organization. Nowadays work success is all about horizontal skills rather than understanding how a particular organization works and what its culture is.
From organizational culture to genetic code
Organizational socialization is just one part of a wider corporate culture. The question arises as to the importance of corporate culture in the unorganized world. Let's take a look at a couple of definitions of corporate culture:
"Corporate culture can be defined as the pattern of basic assumptions that a given company has invented, discovered or developed in learning to cope with its problems of external adaption and internal integration." (SCHEIN 1985).
Organizational culture occurs when "... individuals interacting with each other build up a fund of mutual knowledge, which is largely tacit [unstated] and embodied in institutions: that is, shared rules of conduct, social structures, patterns of relationships, procedures, routines, habits, rituals, and myths. These institutions, or the culture, embody the previous experience of a community of people- what they have learned together. (STACEY, 1996). This was the sentence which turned me against the concept of corporate culture: the use of "institutions", "habits", "experience", "community" and so on in one sentence!
The culture of a firm is defined as its customary and traditional way of thinking and doing things which is shared to a greater or lesser degree by all members. New members must learn this culture and at least partially accept in order to be accepted into the services of the firm. (ELLIOT JACQUES).
Some commentators view culture as being a positive factor that facilitates corporate effectiveness. In their view, an identifiable corporate culture makes employees feel like they belong to a meaningful entity and helps them to know what is expected of them and navigate their way successfully through the organization. Culture is seen as a social construction which reduces ambiguity and facilitates social interaction by gluing the organization together such that members do not continually question organizational purposes and authority. However, organizational purpose should certainly be continually questioned as should managerial authority. I do not believe that corporate cultures are positive constructs in the unorganized world. They are too inward looking, too oriented towards the past and too prescriptive towards individual behavior. A strong corporate culture with ingrained traditions prevents corporations from changing rapidly in response to the unorganized environment.
The former president of Apple Computer John Sculley has put forward a useful concept to replace corporate culture with. "Instead of giving us a vocabulary of action, culture limits us by an emphasis on tradition, on yesterday’s heroes, on myths and rituals... I suggest a better concept lies in the idea of genetic change. As cells grow and divide, genetic code is always present, yet the code’s message is always expressed differently in different organisms. Genetic coding imprints notions of identity and values as culture does, but in so doing suggests a sense of forward-looking, a sense that everything done today is an investment in the future, not an expression of the past. The code is constant over a lifetime, but cells can change; metaphorically, this becomes a forward looking model." (SCULLEY, 1987).
Organizational cultures hinder more than they help. Genetic coding is more applicable in the unorganized world.
From strategic planning to emergent strategy
It is necessary to reassess the role of organizational strategy in the new unorganized world. Strategy is the broad direction that a firm takes: it is not concerned with operational issues such as the measures taken to implement the strategy. Traditionally, strategic planning was used to set the organization’s future direction. The old style strategic planning process consisted of several stages:
Determine overall objectives, e.g. become number one revenue earner in laptop computing sector
Forecast the extent to which these objectives would be met if you continued with current strategies
Appraise the external and internal organizational environment
Generate strategy options and evaluate the extent to which they would meet your objectives
Make strategy decision
Implement the strategy by drawing up plans and budgets
This is a sequential, rational and formal approach that carefully followed these separate stages with decisions made at every stage. At the end of the planning process a strategy has been fully developed which could then be formally implemented through detailed operating plans and procedures.
Such strategic planning models prescribed by management theorists such as Ansoff (1965) have many problems in practice, including:
Strategic planning is a very hazardous way of setting strategies because it relies on the cognitive capabilities of strategy setters at every stage. In other words, its success necessitates that top managers (or politicians) have the brain power to observe and analyze all of the multiple market trends fully.
The rational approach does not take enough account of the separation between the people who formulate strategies and those who implement them. The planners are divorced from both the external market and the internal actions. The implementers may well be influenced by social, cultural and political factors that were not taken into account by the planners. Formal procedures and plans cannot forecast discontinuities such a sudden changes in the external economy. Strategies may never be fully implemented because no strategies are fully explicit and no instructions passed down the hierarchy are sufficiently detailed that they cannot be evaded. No directors have full control over decisions and actions- which can deviate from those prescribed intentionally and unintentionally. This is especially so where there is no commitment and buy-in from the people implementing the strategy. Because the strategic plan has been set from the top of the organized organization, there may be no ownership of and belief in the strategy below board level.
The planning process may be based merely on a historical extrapolation of the previous year’s resource allocations. In that case, planning simply became a goal setting exercise not embodying any real understanding of a corporation’s unique differentiators or incorporating creative thinking and vision and new technologies. Planning and budgets conspire to prevent the corporation from committing to a goal that lies beyond the range of currently available resources. Strategic planning is a "feasibility sieve" used to reject goals when the means for achieving those goals are not readily available. What is feasible drives out what is desirable. (HAMEL AND PRALALAD, 1995).
Given these fundamental limitations, let us now explore less prescriptive ways of formulating strategies more applicable for the unorganized world. One such model is known as the art of "muddling through" (LINDBLOM, 1959). Rather than following a planning approach, this model describes how in practice strategy is made through successive limited evaluations of factors such as competitors and technology trends. Indeed, many possible strategy options are not even considered. Given the complexity of the external environment and the likelihood that it will change again very quickly, it is preferable to proceed using a series of incremental changes to avoid making serious and lasting commitments.
Another similar alternative to formal strategy formulation is that of "logical incrementalism" (QUINN 1980) which points out that all of the variables affecting the strategic outcome cannot be formally analyzed. So called discontinuous precipitating economic events such as the establishment of Internet have a major impact on strategic direction. They are outside of any manager’s control and therefore force decision makers to react by making urgent, piecemeal decisions. Furthermore, premature measures to deal with such events can be hazardous and irreversible: hence, unorganized companies tend to make only broad and reversible commitments, deliberately keeping decisions vague so that the unorganized company can explore an otherwise unknowable future. Logical incrementalism is therefore a process of gradual strategy evolution deliberately pursued by management. This is not viewed as negative and inevitable because it admits the inability of managers to understand and dominate the future. Rather it is the best approach in unorganized environments.
Another commentator on corporate strategy, MINTZBERG, has argued for "emergent strategies" in which strategic direction emerges over time from multiple unrelated decisions and actions made within the unorganized company. This process leads to significant changes in strategy, but gradually. Strategic change is a continuous process occurring through relatively small adjustments to activities within the unorganized company. In this way, strategy is crafted, with formulation and implementation merged into a fluid process through which strategies emerge.
This discussion has described how strategy should be formulated, but has not questioned whether formulating a strategy is a necessary and valuable process in the unorganized world. We have seen that strategy formulation is far from perfect in predicting the future and placing the corporation successfully there. Some commentators do however believe that the process of setting strategy helps the corporation meet its corporate objectives by providing a framework that assists in identifying the principal factors that affect the corporation’s success. Strategy formulation is therefore superior to intuition and discovery alone. I think that strategy should not be the sole responsibility of top management but do think that setting a broad direction for the corporation is a good idea. It does help to put the focus on where the corporation is going and what it wants to achieve.
Traditional strategic planning is far too static for the unorganized world. Strategy should be limited to broad mission statements stating the reason for the company’s existence and its key values such as creativity and intelligence. The extent to which these values are met assists in the selection process between different strategy alternatives. Once evaluated, these decisions should be implemented by whoever in the unorganized company has the best skillset to pursue that opportunity. Selected strategies should be implemented incrementally with reversible commitments the order of the day.
Implementing unorganization
This is a short guide to some of the steps that need to be taken to turn the ideas in this book into practical measures for implementing in your own specific circumstances.
1. Understand and embrace the thinking behind unorganization by taking the time to read and think about it. To turn an organized organization into an unorganized company, managers need to implement several of the changes described above. The effectiveness is related to the quantity and quality of these measures taken- there is a lot of synergy between these changes.
2. Work out the best way for unorganization supporters to share the insight with their colleagues. Usually, one or two people discover the unorganization web site, discuss it with their colleagues and then look for opportunities to explore those ideas more widely and deeply. This may involve an open meeting with a presentation from someone conversant in the unorganization philosophy.
3. Organizational honesty- determine openly and honestly what the strategic and operational challenges the corporation faces are. Different corporations have identified different policies and procedures that are hindering effective employee development and organizational performance. There are a large number of potential issues and hot themes such as an inability to recruit and retain people, dependence on superseded offerings, low or slow sales and unbalanced distribution of workload between employees. Many of these issues emerge from conversation, observation and discussion.
4. Identify the unorganization measures to overcome that issue. For example, develop employee learning by turning rankers into branders by assigning time to explore areas not directly related to work activity. Implement a business partners program, outsource, a teleworking program, lateral networks based on work activity rather than hierarchies based on geography. Remove job titles so that everyone can sell, remove vertical market responsibilities. Look at new routes to market such as the Internet, change the emphasis from managers to mentors by changing internal procedures so that people are rewarded for results and not presence.
Many companies practice what I call "domino theory" where one outmoded static procedure or practice is removed and this subsequently highlights the ineffectiveness of other procedures and stimulates other changes. For example, in one company, open and effective communication to all employees through, for example, an intranet subsequently allowed restrictions in press access to be lifted- employees were briefed on issues and were no longer therefore passing on rumors and gossip to the press. Domino theory entails finding the central contentious issue in your company and changing your structure, procedures and policies to eliminate it.
5. Read "Unorganization: The Implementation Toolkit" on unorgan.com which explains the main tools and technologies for turning an organized organization into an unorganized company. Techniques include teleworking, mobile working, knowledge management, outsourcing, partnering and customer service.
Justifying downstructuring
The main barrier to turning organized organizations into unorganized companies is usually the vested interests of managers keen to maintain their existing power bases. The technologies certainly exist to realize unorganized companies but this fact is insufficient if there is little willingness to exploit them. Attitude lags reality. However, as we have seen, leaders need to give their power away before it is taken away.
Top managers often claim that if there were no controls over employee’s actions then chaos would reign, with everyone pursuing their individual aims with no managers to coordinate the response to opportunities in the external environment. However, the fact is that when left to their own devices, free systems naturally sub-divide. That is to say, some people are naturally more attuned to certain roles than others. The trick is not to distort this process by artificially intervening. Managers should simply let the allocation of responsibilities emerge. Just because you give everyone a choice, for example, as to where they can work from, does not mean that everyone will exercise that choice.
The management theorist Peter Drucker has described the reasons why large organized organizations such as IBM and General Motors no longer pack the economic clout that they once did. "By and large there are no more advantages to big business. There are only disadvantages... Big companies had three advantages, and they are all gone. The first was they could get transnational or international money that a medium-sized company could not. Now everyone can."
"Number Two is information. It used to be that nobody had any information. But as you go more international, as the economy becomes global, the access to good information becomes crucial. If you are a medium-sized company, then the CEO [Chief Executive Officer] still knows every customer and still knows the industry. You can’t know that in the US$10 billion company; you get reports. Reports tell you what your subordinates want you to know."
"The last and most important factor is that young, educated people do not want to work in the big institutions. That’s even true in Japan today. I have an old habit: every September I go into the registrar’s office and ask them to give me the folders of some of my very good students from 10 years back, 8 years back, and then I call them up. They almost all started in a big company for the simple reason that big companies have campus recruiters and training programs. But it used to be that three out of five changed from a big company another big company. Now more than half have changed from a big company to a small or medium-sized company."
"They often say, We would really like some security, but there ain’t no such thing. All of them know that those days are gone. So they say: If there’s no security in the big companies, then why should I be bored to death? In that medium-sized company, I don’t have the big job, but when somebody has to go to Shanghai to straighten out a distributor, I go. And I have fun." (SCHWARTZ AND KELLY, 8/96, see www.wired.com/4.08/drucker/).
Choose downstructuring, not downsizing or restructuring
When a corporation faces a transition phase, i.e. the level of change in the external environment has risen to the stage where internal adjustment is needed, they face the choice between restructuring, downsizing or downstructuring:
Restructuring (changing structure) means new configurations of business units or operating regions.
Downsizing (reducing employees) means reducing costs by cutting the number of employees through voluntary and compulsory redundancies. Employee costs are often a significant component of overall cost levels (along with property).
Downstructuring (removing structure) means implementing the changes listed above and thereby removing static organizational systems and procedures such as job descriptions. Basically you let the employees themselves decide by their actions who stays in the corporation and which areas the corporation remains active in.
To understand the differences between these transformation techniques, imagine an organization chart with its formally assigned boundaries and borders. Well, downsizing is removing some of those areas altogether. Restructuring is changing them around and reconfiguring them. And downstructuring is removing the edges of the boxes and letting the mass naturally reconfigure itself. All three lead to considerable change in the organization compared with the starting position, but downsizing and restructuring are top-down measures which involve senior management making arbitrary decisions about who stays and who goes, whereas downstructuring is a natural, bottom-up, emergent means of changing. The end result of the transformation is likely to be similar- for example, in the downstructuring case of Channel Africa described below, 20% of all employees decision to leave the company voluntarily.
Corporations have nearly always adopted restructuring or downsizing in the past, or a combination of both. These approaches involve painful interference by top managers or consultants. They entail top down change and rely on the assumed but often absent wisdom of these change dictators. Restructuring and downsizing are also indiscriminate, with people having their employment arbitrary terminated irrespective of talent because they happened to be working in a business unit which has suddenly been categorized as non-core and sub-strategic. People matter, not their place in the hierarchy. Downstructuring recognizes this truth.
Downstructuring is the primary means to turn an organized organization into an unorganized company. Downstructuring is basically the introduction of freedom into business organizations. The removal of static structure is necessary to distribute the corporation’s workload fairly between its employees, rather than trapping resources in-between boxes on an organizational chart. Instead of rules and policies to coerce compliance and constrain employee growth, downstructuring frees each employee, and therefore the corporation as a whole to grow and realize their full potential. Corporations should activate the unrealized potential of each employee to maximize individual and performance.
Unorganized companies should simply be a means to an end. They are a way of efficiently allowing groups of employees to combine to meet the needs of other people, customers. They should be nothing more than vehicles by which employees serve customers and stages upon which individuals perform. Obstacles such as static structure and systems that prevent this flexibility in deployment should be removed, through the practice of downstructuring.
Downstructuring is achieved by removing the organizational structures, systems and procedures that inhibit the creation of value such as the provision of tailor-made customer solutions. I advocate the disbanding of organizational processes and systems that limit the remit of organizational members to a particular role and micro-management of employee activities. Systems have been defined as "proceduralized reports and routinized procedures such as meeting formats" and structure as the "characterization of the organization chart i.e. functional, decentralized etc." (PASCALE AND ATHOS, 1981). The 7 ‘S’ model is useful for describing the core features of all corporations. It depicts an organization as consisting of "hard" factors of strategy, systems and structure and "soft" factors of staff, style, super-ordinate goals (also known as shared or societal values) and skills. (PASCALE AND ATHOS, 1981). Downstructuring is all about eliminating the hard side and emphasizing the soft side of the corporation: its people and capabilities and reason for existing.
Downstructuring is the natural form of restructuring. This is a bottom up, emergent approach, rather than a top down prescriptive approach. In the unorganized world, bottom up approaches are superior and top down approaches are subordinate!
The bottom line benefits from downstructuring
I strongly advocate downstructuring, but many people ask me to quantify the benefits from removing static structures such as job descriptions, job titles, the need to be in an office between 9 and 5 and so on.
The benefits from downstructuring are:
1. An increase in revenue from increasing the proportion of work activity which is business and not busyness.
Effectively, business is that time we spend in our work contexts which is directly associated with making progress towards our goals: it is not the transaction costs in getting to the meeting but the meeting itself. These work contexts are increasingly outside of traditional and outmoded static forms of organized organization such as hierarchies and offices.
As we have seen, so much of what we do in our outmoded organized systems such as offices and jobs is busyness. We find that because we are allocated a certain vertical market industry sector to look after we are not very busy when that sector isn’t. Our work is dictated by our job title rather than what is happening in the marketplace. We are inward looking spending all our efforts on persuading people and playing political games rather than bringing in the business from new and existing customers. We spend all our time writing business plans and setting budgets which make hopeful grabs at an unknown future rather than creating that future: people giving their undivided attention to developing five year strategic plans for Internet development! Cumulatively, this busyness leads to actual company performance being far below the potential performance that could be achieved if these outmoded organized constraints were removed.
It is a rule of thumb to say that if government accounts for 50% of total economic activity then actual economic growth is only half of what it could be. It is however harder to quantify this under-performance accurately for business rather than political organizations. The revenue increase from downstructuring is the value of business activity and ideas per person which do NOT get generated or pursued because of busyness. The increased growth can be calculated as the percentage of inputs generated or processed but suppressed, delayed or rejected as outputs by organizational systems. The lost growth is the percentage of work effort expended that is busyness and not business. The good news is that the more organized you are, the greater the benefits from downstructuring that you can unleash. The bad news is that the more organized you are, the less time you have to give your structure away voluntarily before the market takes it away by force.
This revenue increase from unleashing the full potential of the organization’s people is the primary benefit from downstructuring.
2. Reduced costs. Running an office is costly, however, the fixed costs of doing business van be reduced by decreasing the use of outmoded offices and static organizational structures which cause busyness. For example, costs fall by having fewer desks per number of employees and letting people work from home. Hot desking is a better utilization of space because the same people use different desks at different times: work is location independent these days, both inside and outside of traditional offices.
3. Human benefit from reduced stress, reduced pollution, increased freedom. This is a benefit to the individual and to society from reduced hospital bills, sickness absence, time spent getting to work using transportation and so on.
There are, of course, some increased costs in certain areas: telecommunications may be one. People working from home may take more than their one hour’s lunch and the employer cannot regulate and monitor such activity. But as we have seen, work outcomes are more important than quantity of time spent anyway. Ideas can be generated anywhere at any time and only take a moment and yet can earn a lot of money. Formally accounting for that sort of behavior is nearly impossible.
There is significant trapped growth in your corporation’s organized systems and structures. To unleash that growth, unorganize through downstructuring and realize a significant boost to your profits.
Downstructuring case studies
Let me now describe a corporation that has already transformed itself from an organized organization into an unorganized company by downstructuring. Channel Africa, part of the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), radically downstructured to adjust to the post-apartheid unorganized world.
Since the early 1990s, South Africa has been undergoing a fundamental transition from the restricted, old, organized apartheid world to a new, largely unorganized society with freedom of movement and universal elections. As was to be expected, this revolution has permanently affected all individuals, companies, institutions and politicians in South Africa. In response, the country’s monopoly radio and television broadcaster, the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), engaged in radical downsizing, including the compulsory sale of many local radio stations and liberalization in particular of local commercial radio. These efforts further stimulated the establishment of numerous private and independent community radio stations throughout South Africa.
Among the South African Broadcasting Corporation units grappling with this revolution is Channel Africa, a pan-African short-wave radio network, broadcasting in English, French, Portuguese, Kiswahili and two other African languages. Radio, especially short-wave radio remains a vital means of communication and information dissemination in Africa. The general lack of infrastructure means that there is heavy reliance on battery operated, and, more recently, wind-up radios not requiring batteries (designed in England and built initially in South Africa before being moved to Brazil).
Executive Editor at Channel Africa is Hans-Dieter Winkens, the essential architect and visionary behind the move to cope with the new unorganized world by downstructuring. 54-year old Hans has seen both sides of the coin, having emigrated to South Africa from the post- world war two ruins of nazi Germany as a young boy. Decades later, he worked as an administrative assistant in the former Afrikaner-dominated regime in Soweto, where Johannesburg’s black people were forced to live under apartheid.
It was the injustice that Hans observed during his work in the townships that ultimately led him to join the South African Broadcasting Corporation, which was then one of the prime organs of preservation of the status quo. He soon took on the role of full-time shop steward in a trade union, which was seeking economic equality through traditional, organized routes. As one of the prime movers in negotiations between the union and the SABC management, Hans helped smooth the SABC’s transformation to the unorganized world at a time of radical management changes. The fairness and integrity he showed in those negotiations established his reputation to such an extent that he was called on to take on the job of Executive Editor of Channel Africa. The low worker morale caused by an absence of leadership and vision appeared to be beyond help.
Shortly after joining Channel Africa, and grappling for a method to bring about the necessary fundamental change in the corporate culture, strategy and structure, he turned to the Internet and located the unorganization web site www.unorgan.com
Intuitively following "worker-centric" sentiments and reading "unorganization" spurred Hans to use downstructuring, RATHER THAN restructuring or downsizing, to less painfully achieve the necessary transition. To this day, and despite a continued absence of firm state assurances, he has steadfastly maintained a policy of not engaging in forced retrenchment. The pressures of change have nevertheless moved more than 20% of Channel Africa’s total work force to either resign or accept a voluntary retrenchment package. Among them were quite a few people who Hans knew would thrive on the challenge of "work" versus "job and position" and were therefore encouraged to leave Channel Africa.
Downstructuring within Channel Africa involved the following initiatives:
1. "Learn to live your dream!" was the message to the small [more than 90] group of broadcasters in six languages. "Channel Africa is in the business of enhancing capacities for informed decision-making in the daily lives of millions of Africans all over the continent. It does so by way of providing appropriate news and information upon which such decisions may be based. Let’s get ourselves empowered to become excellent performers in that area. Let’s foster the African unity that will be so essential for the continent’s future, by becoming the foremost "afrocentric" news and information content providers to broadcasters all over the continent and the world. Let’s make that vision and mission WORK!"
2. "Positions" and the rules and policies entrenching the hierarchy, such as job descriptions - which coerced employee compliance and constrained employee growth - were abolished. All employees were encouraged to assume the title of "partner" and each partner was set free to change and expand their role and to explore their full potential. Basically, Channel Africa’s "employees" were told to decide for themselves by their actions who stays in the company and in which areas the company will remain active.
Crucially, however, the company’s leadership did not merely abolish administration and controls, but provided the newly liberated employees with the technological tools to support them in the transition. Downstructuring is not simply cutting administration, it is also providing people with the technology tools that amplify their presence and effectiveness and let them be all that they can be. To downstructure, you cannot just cut the employees loose. You cannot simply turn up and announce that all of those people not fully occupied and keeping busy rather than doing business are now free to find themselves some other real work to do and thereby expand their work and responsibility and learn more. Downstructuring must be accompanied by the use of new technologies both within the office and by remote employees. At the host, technologies such as intranets are needed to automate paper-based processes and simultaneously informate and liberate those employees carrying out administration. Mobile workers out of the office need laptops, mobile phones and personal telephone numbers so that they can work from wherever they are. (See "Unorganization: The Implementation Toolkit" for a detailed explanation of these technologies.)
3. Digitalization - Channel Africa had been the first unit at the SABC headquarters to install digital audio recording and broadcast technologies. Despite clear advantages over the old analogue production techniques, Hans found that the systems had been severely under-utilized. Fear of the unknown and of their own capabilities - as well as uncertainty of management reaction - had essentially suppressed system utilization and development. The rapid switch to digital technology meant that some analogue specialists faced the choice of learning to use the digital technology or to transfer to other units still using analogue technology.
Hans dispelled the handicapping myths and replaced "We can’t!" with "Let’s DO it!". Virtually all Channel Africans, even partners who had for years been cooped up in administrative desk jobs, are now doing digital audio editing and are harvesting program material. Soon, they will all be challenged to try their hand at web authoring and webcasting via Channel Africa’s new web site. And their personalities, capacities and capabilities will also feature, perhaps opening up new opportunities for them and for Channel Africa.
4. Supply of mobile field technologies - Hans told Channel Africa’s employees that, despite relatively good line links, newsgathering did not start and stop at the company’s headquarters. [Incidentally, the structure of the SABC headquarters building still bears stark reminders of the old, rigidly structured apartheid days, when its elevators were separated for white and non-white people]. The newly mobile correspondents, liberated from their office desks, were given access to cellular and direct-to-satellite mobile telephones. When traveling around Africa on assignment, the correspondents now use the mobile phones to file their reports from wherever they are, and occasionally call in and ask for advice or help.
Channel Africa "employees" were also encouraged to purchase PCs with modems and sound cards so that they could start working from home.
5. Partners are given access to all but the most private and personal (e.g. salaries) data pertaining to Channel Africa’s operations in a concerted effort to encourage debate around expenditures and value for money activities or ventures. Hans argues that such openness is essential in building team accountability and will eventually act as a self-regulating force, preventing misuse of funds. He says: "All our partners are perfectly capable of maintaining their complex economic lives. So why should they not become involved in the economics of Channel Africa? We are all mutually accountable to the South African people in the application of their tax Rands!"
Different "employees" responded differently to these changes according to the personal instincts and beliefs. As Hans e-mailed Simon Buckingham, the author of this book:
"Apropos unorganisation, I’m having the normal backlash from people who would prefer to be employees rather than partners and would like to revert to titles and positions linked to remuneration. Also finding it slow going with progress on entrepreneurial incentives. Establishing criteria for performance excellence through consultation and consensus is also an uphill battle, what with the multitude of perspectives brought to the discussion by so many different cultures. Non-performance linked incentives I have introduced relate mainly to Channel Africa’s [new Technology] partnership infrastructure, like sponsored Internet access, peripherals such as CD-ROM, sound cards, software, etc. IF prospective partners acquire their own PCs. That way, I can provide links for them to study and be inspired by while they are at home and set the scene for their greater independence and participation."
"So many changes, so little time! What with a dozen people climbing off the bus this month due to fear of the unorganised future, new people clamouring to be part of our new way of life, new people starting, people coming for basic introductions to the wonderful world of technology, etc. In the latter category, I now have a TV and film set designer/ dresser/ marionettist/ effects maker/ .... in her 40s learning to manipulate the mouse herself through playing solitaire on one of our machines and thus acquainting herself with the new tools in order to acquire the vital skills and thus ensure her own future.
Many regards Hans."
[That PC-trainee, NOT a Channel Africa employee, was subsequently forcibly retrenched by the South African Broadcasting Corporation on recommendations by McKinsey consultants. She became one of more than 1,000 victims of outmoded bottom-line driven downsizing].
Those partners who were able to change their attitude and who were flexible and energetic enough to accept the challenges and opportunities from their newfound freedom thrived. For example, a young female reporter with a sparkle in her eyes took a satellite mobile phone and went off to cover some political elections in a remote African country. This was exclusive and groundbreaking coverage of a significant, yet virtually ignored event. As a result of the quality of such exclusives, this reporter subsequently received two job offers from other broadcasting companies covering Africa. She declined both offers, and remains with Channel Africa, but both she and Hans know that she and other such partners now have job choices and alternative stages upon which they can perform and earn a living doing what they do best.
However, many Channel Africans felt neither willing nor able to reinvent themselves and left Channel Africa altogether. They accepted severance packages, known within the SABC generally as "retrenchment packages". Their future is uncertain though, and dependent on personal attitude change: some took the sizable sums for leaving and invested in new businesses based on their hobbies and interests. These people no doubt found new enthusiasm and drive. Others simply went home and wondered how they could get their economic life onto another track.
But then again, the positive transition to the post-apartheid world necessitated a fundamental transition from outmoded organized ways and means can never be achieved without some difficulties. You simply cannot reverse decades of folly overnight.
The greatest advantage of using downstructuring rather than downsizing or restructuring to reinvent Channel Africa was that the new leadership put "employees" in charge of their own destinies and future prosperity. Instead of being helpless at the hands of their managers, and subject to their decisions, hapless victims when decisions turn sour, the employees were given the choice: "Reinvent yourself and your job … or leave!".
On the change process
And above all else, remember that it is not sufficient to simply deploy new technologies and continue with the old management practices. Management and organization need to be aligned, just as environment and organization do. Harmony is the goal- do what comes naturally. As someone rightly said, you have to combine "high tech with high touch". The technologies are just a means to an end, as are the practices. At the end of the day, the key thing is that everything we do in organizational contexts is business and not busyness! All companies and individuals must repeatedly ask themselves whether their actions are business or busyness and ensure that they eliminate existing and imminent busyness whilst maximizing the business that gets done.
Change is very often difficult. It cannot be said that change is always a good thing or always a bad thing, it all depends on the circumstances. Change for the sake of change can be a good or bad thing, many things change because they need to, some changes are steps in the wrong direction which are not good at all.
In the old orderly organized world, change involved unfreezing, changing and refreezing company and personal practices. Inflexible systems and structures made it difficult for organizations to respond to changes in their external environment. Inflexible practices and policies locked individuals into their jobs and homes. The need for change currently tends to build up over time. As such, change occurs when it can no longer be avoided and is therefore transformational or revolutionary rather than evolutionary.
The frequency and novelty of change is of course increasing in today’s open, complex, diverse, global unorganized world. That’s why we need to expect it and take advantage of it through our flexibility in strategy, systems and structures.
Change should not take you by surprise or catch you unprepared. The changes that triggered that change are nearly always visible if the circumstances are viewed honestly and frequently. A company does not suddenly get taken over overnight: something happened in the past to make that company prone to takeover: either a change in the industry or market structure somewhere along the line. Such small changes build up and accumulate and cause radical change further down the line. That is why formal strategic planning and similar practices are being eliminated in the unorganized world- we need to be more aware more of the time about changes and their potential implications.
There is no reason for economizing people to fear necessary change. In the unorganized world, we should constantly be preparing for change by building ideas and choices. In that way, the boulder in the road is not an obstacle, but a stepping stone. If we have kept ourselves flexible and mobile and teachable, we should see the change as an opportunity and not a threat. Those people who find change threatening are those who cannot respond to it or run the risk of being defunct by it. External change is only threatening if we cannot or will not change ourselves.
It is a challenge for managers to change their company- to recognize that in fact the same ends of profits and income can be achieved via very different unorganized ends. Decision makers have to recognize that in setting their employees free from their offices and desks, they are in fact also making them more and not less accountable. It is also hard for individual employees to make the change- they need to motivate themselves to work from home, discipline themselves to communicate routinely and regularly with people and overcome the guilt they feel about not continuously working at their job all day long. Everyone in the company that is unorganizing needs to get the right attitude and the right execution- to see what is possible and then make it happen. Change in the unorganized world is inevitable. So make sure it is enjoyable.
Business not busyness
The aim of unorganization is to maximize business and minimize busyness. There is a small difference in the spelling of the two words, but a huge difference in their meanings.
We tend to get embroiled in meeting after meeting, serial task after serial task, call after call, fax after e-mail after voice mail after memo. We flip between tasks without thinking about them in advance, which just makes us more busy when we forget something and have to retrace our steps.
The reason for all of this sudden busyness is that the unorganized world keeps generating lots more opportunities and activities. Yet we continue to respond to these opportunities in the old organized way by calling a meeting, writing a memo and generally trying to fully understand and take control of the opportunities.
We must recognize the need to replace busyness with business and then strive for simplicity in all that we do. We need to systematically avoid complexity, for example, we should:
never chase someone around on their different telephone numbers
never go somewhere unless we have got more than one thing to do when we get there. Always kill at least two birds with one stone
immediately recycle half of what arrives in our in-trays
Recycle the paper-based files of information we keep but don't refer to
never discuss unconfirmed future plans or negotiate meeting instructions far in advance of getting together as chances are our plans will change in the meantime
never ring and ask someone something that we can find out from a piece of paper or on the Internet
never dictate or draft something when we know the subject matter (and our own handwriting) better than the typist
stream-file
The principle is that there is nothing so wasteful as doing well that which should not be done. Always take a step back and ask whether a task someone is giving you is worthwhile, or whether it is more trouble than it is worth.
We need to channel our interest and focus our attention on worthwhile, value adding, external facing tasks and not internal politics. Don't get stressed out about things that don't matter.
Once we have identified which tasks are worth undertaking, we need to consider the best way of getting the job done. The simplest way is the best way: achieving maximum benefit at minimum cost, or in other words, the most business for the least busyness.
You know when you have achieved business and not busyness when you feel an inner state of calm despite an in-tray piled high, and have your work under control rather than it controlling you.
Instead of rushing from one task to the next, you have the time before going anywhere to sit back and spend a couple of minutes thinking about what you will need when you get there. I often used to leave the office and get home only to find that I had forgotten something I needed that evening or weekend.
Focusing on business not busyness puts us in control of our personal and professional lives, gives us the time to think again, reduces stress and saves energy, and simply makes the process of daily life much more manageable and rewarding.
Next time someone asks you if you are busy, be in a position to say that you are not. Remember, business not busyness!
Summary
The world business is conducted in has changed- mergers with national or international competitors can come at any time, external economic shocks can surprise even the best managed companies. New competitors are creeping up on traditional market leaders using the Internet to market and distribute- and finding themselves with larger stockmarket capitalizations than the incumbents!
In such a changed world, there is a clear imperative for organization and management to be changed from the old organized ways to the new unorganized ways as described throughout this book. Instead of prescriptive arbitrary rules, individualized work practices are being introduced. This increased flexibility and autonomy will simultaneously increase profits and employee satisfaction.
Feedback
Closely related to "Unorganization: The Company Handbook" and also published on unorgan.com is "Unorganization: The Implementation Toolkit", a book that explains how to unorganize companies in practice by implementing practices such as teleworking, mobile working, outsourcing, partnering, knowledge management and customer service. This book, "Unorganization: The Company Handbook", explains the need for change and indicates some of the necessary changes, whereas "Unorganization: The Implementation Toolkit" details a practical guide to the tools and technologies that can be used to implement unorganization. The author of this book, Simon Buckingham, hopes that you will not just read about downstructuring, but also implement it in practice in your corporation. Feel free to email him at simon@unorgan.com with any comments and queries.
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