“Adopting a networks perspective… changes how we see the world and our place in it.” In this post we look at how that applies to organizations and their design.
Revolutions in thought have been part of our human development, from Copernicus’ unveiling how the sun does not revolve around the earth to Darwin’s theory of evolution, through to Quantum Mechanics. With every new discovery, we have to adjust our understanding of our world and how it works.
An illuminating article in Scientific American explains how our understanding of our world is shifting thanks to Network research. We can no longer think of ourselves as isolated individuals because we are all essentially connected in networks. Humans are a social species. The implications of this are profound for every aspect of our lives.
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2014/12/12/how-networks-are-revolutionizing-scientific-and-maybe-human-thought/
At Intelligent Management, we have for some time now incorporated the information from Network Theory into an approach to operations and organizational design. This is the natural direction from over 15 years of applying a methodology based on Deming’s Theory of Profound Knowledge and Constraint Management. A truly systemic approach to organizations recognizes that organizations are inherently networks, and this emerges clearly when we organize the work of an organization around projects. (See our book ‘Sechel: Logic, language and tools to manage any organization as a network’)
When we understand how everything an organization does can be thought of in terms of repetitive projects and new projects, we can identify hubs and nodes among resources as well as the projects themselves. No aspect of the organization is separate or siloed off.
Every time an organization tries to improve, whether it be through a Quality System or other means, but it does not move out of the artificial barriers of silos, it will inevitably achieve fundamentally less than it could. Unveiling the truly network nature of an organization is what unleashes its real potential.
For more information about a systemic approach for sustainable prosperity, see our new business novel+website ‘The Human Constraint’.
Inspired by real life events, this novel provides a fast-paced narrative and an online Knowledge Base of tools and insights for systemic management. Written by Angela Montgomery, PhD.
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