Cooperation, Interaction, and Networks: A New Awareness
We are becoming increasingly aware of the need for collaboration and cooperation. Techniques such as Agile and DevOps require it. Collaboration as a principle is not yet mainstream for management and organizations, but the more complexity becomes the backdrop and context of what we do and experience, the more we need to find up-to-date ways to exist within that complexity. Certainly, there is an increasing number of technological tools available to support people working together, but is collaboration just about being open to working and sharing with others?
Organizations are living systems, but they go well beyond the biological. A colony of ants may well cooperate in their daily existence, but they do not have the level of consciousness of humans. Organizations are made up of individuals, each with their own complex needs and desires. You can bully and coerce people into doing things and that is one way to get things done. Sadly, some organizations still employ this model. Today, we consider ourselves much more evolved and we require a more evolved way of managing and interacting.
Organizations, and the individuals within them, have the possibility to choose self-determination. In others words, they can decide on a goal and they can embark on the steps to achieve that goal. However, the mental and physical energies required to create change can quickly dissipate if there is no structured method to harness those energies in the direction of the goal. Entropy exists and it needs to be addressed.
The Theory of Constraints provides a set of Thinking Processes to guide and structure the planning and implementation of projects toward a goal. Moreover, the more statistically stable (hence predictable) are the work processes underpinning the execution of tasks and the more we understand and manage their variation, the more possibility we have to achieve our goals and grow.
A great deal of effort is being put into discussions and meetings in organizations to arrive at shared intentions. This is undoubtedly important, but we need to go further. For those with an interest in spirituality, there is a parallel we learned from a Rabbi friend: in prayer, intention (Kavanah) is important, but not sufficient. You also need structure for that intention to be most effective. And even if the intention is confused, the structure will help make up for that.
Whatever the intentions and goals are for an organization, in order for the people in that organization to work together fruitfully, collaboratively, and fairly, they need to structure their efforts with method and suitable tools. This is the best recipe for making your intentions work in an organization. As Dr. Deming would repeatedly say: “Our good will and best efforts are not enough.”
How can we then structure our collaborative efforts? How can we mold our good will and efforts to transform them into sustainable results?
Some Help from Network Theory
In the last 15–20 years, the studies in Complexity have unveiled a wealth of commonalities among different phenomena whose understanding is facilitated by Network Theory. From the Internet to condensed matter physics, Network Theory seems to be able to shed a light on what happens when “things start to get together.”
Networks are made up of interconnected nodes (through links). There are various kinds of network in the real world. Some occur in nature, such as a beehive. Other networks are manmade, such as the London Underground (Figure 4.1).
Figure 4.1 A simple subway network
Figure 4.2 A network with a hub
These “simple” networks are not designed with a specific goal that affects how the nodes interact with each other. They simply allow connections to occur randomly; hence they are called random networks.
The statistical distribution that describes the probability with which these nodes are connected to each other follows a Gaussian-like (bell shaped) distribution.
A different kind of network exists where the number of interconnections among the nodes is not distributed around a mean. Some nodes have a much higher number of interconnections than others. The nodes with more nodes connected to them are called hubs. These networks, known as scale-free networks, thus have a hierarchy based on the frequency with which nodes are visited.
Such a hierarchy of connections can be coherent with the goal that this network is trying to achieve or, as often happens in organizations, can simply be the result of the way informal communities of practices congregate to “get the job done” (Figure 4.2).
Functional Hierarchies in organizations are created out of a Newtonian paradigm of mechanical interactions and, ultimately, they trigger a power game separated from the goal the hierarchy was designed to achieve, the goal of the organization. Hierarchies within scale-free Networks, on the contrary, are what happens when individuals with competencies work together to accomplish a common goal. Said in a different way: Collaboration is what people with different skills and competencies seek in order to accomplish a common objective and it can be greatly enhanced by a Network-like structure.
These Networks are also called “oriented”; how can we then “orient” the components of an organizational Network?
We need a protocol to lead this Network toward its goal and allow collaboration to take place. The 10 steps of the Decalogue, briefly described in the previous chapter, serve precisely this purpose; they allow us to measure, design, and manage organizational systems:
- Measure: Throughput-based, operational measurements for the performance of the whole system
- Design: a Network-like Organization Design
- Manage: Establish statistical methods and finite capacity–based algorithms to synchronize available competencies and resources
The 10 steps of the Decalogue are, then, the protocol to support the Systemic Organization Cartoon (i.e., the organization as a system where interdependencies are designed around a strategically chosen constraint). They represent the way out of the complexity conflict in organizations (Figure 4.3).
When Deming and Goldratt: The Decalogue was published, Oded and I did not have a “generic” (universally applicable within a defined realm) solution for Step 7 “Create a suitable management/organizational structure” (Figure 4.4); we did not have a clear-cut answer to what a suitable organizational structure would look like. This solution came much later. Before one can truly appreciate the value of the solution, some preliminary language (and the meaning it creates) must be introduced as we will see in the next chapter.
Figure 4.3 The complexity conflict “injected” by the Systemic Organization Cartoon
Figure 4.4 The 10 steps of the Decalogue method
Summary of Chapter 4
- Complexity requires new ways to collaborate.
- The thinking processes from the Theory of Constraints can support self-determination in organizations to achieve a goal.
- Entropy exists and people’s efforts need to be structured through an appropriate method and tools.
- Network Theory can help us understand how to structure organizations better for collaboration.
- A protocol is required for a network to achieve its goal.
- The 10 steps of the Decalogue provide a protocol that overcomes the complexity conflict.