Bizness

Effective Organizations: Choose It

I’ve been wanting to write some posts on productive and effective organizations.  Probably several, but this is just going to be a sort of brainstorming post to get me going.

I’m defining “organization” fairly broadly here.  Companies, nations, families, churches, clubs, etc.  However, I’ll probably drift in the direction of discussing small to midsized companies, partly because that’s where most of my experience lies, and partly because most of the books and articles I’ve seen focus on either super-huge, multinational corporations.  Of course the big stuff merits discussion, but I’m always annoyed when people hyperfocus on big stuff.  Developers are often measured by scalability or code-base, rather than quality, for example, and most development articles are not targeted at writing, say, a small-to-midsized business application.  Granted, most stuff that applies at a large level can be applied at a smaller level.  But it doesn’t really work the opposite way.  In engineering for example, the bigger the system gets, the more limited you are in the types of things you can do.  The smaller the system, the greater our options, such that we might be able to solve the problem with a paperclip and some duct tape.  Let’s not limit ourselves to what the big guys do.

Decide, Collectively, To Be Effective and Productive

This one is kind of obvious, but I can’t remember ever having worked for an organization where people agreed to make a concerted effort to be productive and effective.  Perhaps they did as individuals or as lip service to a fiat issued from above, but not as a group.  I’ve tried to do it with the small teams I led, and I hope that rather than mandate it, I persuaded everyone that it would be better for them individually to do this.

I was having a conversation with an executive who was charged with creating a “learning organization”.  It sounds just great.  Essential, even.  But it’s kind of like wanting your kids to learn stuff in school, getting horses to drink, etc.  There’s only so much you can lead them to that point.  And if an organization wants not to learn, improve, change, grow, then you’ve got problems.

Given the general societal tendency to find a job and then cruise along, to protect our territory and job security, to  avoid commitment at work in order to throttle our work load or avoid work altogether, I’m not surprised that we do this.  But I am disappointed.  It’s just not a wise decision in the long run.  Perhaps I should write some other posts about this, i.e. “Why You Should Love What You Do” and “How to Love What You Do”.

With a big company, there would be a digression about how to market this idea to the entire company.  Road shows, emails, memos, etc.  Let’s focus on everyone else.  Grass roots.  Conversations.  That’s the best way to get people on board with the idea of pursuing quality and productivity.  Like multi-level marketing.   Get two people on board, then have them get two others on board.

Tags: Management, Organization, Productivity