Another take on big-ness (and small-ness)
Dominic has a great post on information cost and organisations:
I am sympathetic to the idea that we can try pushing in the other direction. In other words we move away from command and control and towards an organization that naturally aligns the objectives of the employees (participants? inhabitants?) with the objectives of the organization. If it works then the first costs that go are the command and control overheads – the uncounted cost of cost reduction.
Size is a big factor in this. Globalization seems to mean trying to hold together a single enormous edifice. A structure so big it needs flying buttresses to keep it together because the walls aren’t naturally strong enough. Small churches don’t need flying buttresses. Villages need a council of elders and some goodwill from the inhabitants; cities need a police department, a fire department, magistrates, tax collectors and a beaurocracy (sic) to coordinate them.
The gazillion dollar question in my mind is – can you efffectively scale the ‘small church’ model? My guess is that you can. With the internet. With social software. With the cultural framework of the Digital Generation. Etcetera. I also think the first to succeed will be new companies. I just don’t see today’s corporate ‘cathedrals’ reinventing their business models or cultures sufficiently to embrace this new paradigm. (There is probably some sort of long bet in there somewhere, but needs definition…)
