#sociotechnical — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #sociotechnical, aggregated by home.social.
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v1.2 of Organisational Dysfunctions is out today, and it's the final release.
Twenty-two entries and essays that have been out on Mastodon since the last update are now part of the book: "Nobody wants to own this," "The org chart nobody uses," "Innovation theatre," "The talent myth," and more, spread across every chapter. One new objection has been added, along with two new perspectives.
Clocked in at 97 dysfunctions, which is a nice place to end. The material didn't run out, but I think I managed to say what needed to be said.
This is the last planned update.
Get your digital copy at https://www.organisationaldysfunctions.com/ -
v1.2 of Organisational Dysfunctions is out today, and it's the final release.
Twenty-two entries and essays that have been out on Mastodon since the last update are now part of the book: "Nobody wants to own this," "The org chart nobody uses," "Innovation theatre," "The talent myth," and more, spread across every chapter. One new objection has been added, along with two new perspectives.
Clocked in at 97 dysfunctions, which is a nice place to end. The material didn't run out, but I think I managed to say what needed to be said.
This is the last planned update.
Get your digital copy at https://www.organisationaldysfunctions.com/ -
v1.2 of Organisational Dysfunctions is out today, and it's the final release.
Twenty-two entries and essays that have been out on Mastodon since the last update are now part of the book: "Nobody wants to own this," "The org chart nobody uses," "Innovation theatre," "The talent myth," and more, spread across every chapter. One new objection has been added, along with two new perspectives.
Clocked in at 97 dysfunctions, which is a nice place to end. The material didn't run out, but I think I managed to say what needed to be said.
This is the last planned update.
Get your digital copy at https://www.organisationaldysfunctions.com/ -
v1.2 of Organisational Dysfunctions is out today, and it's the final release.
Twenty-two entries and essays that have been out on Mastodon since the last update are now part of the book: "Nobody wants to own this," "The org chart nobody uses," "Innovation theatre," "The talent myth," and more, spread across every chapter. One new objection has been added, along with two new perspectives.
Clocked in at 97 dysfunctions, which is a nice place to end. The material didn't run out, but I think I managed to say what needed to be said.
This is the last planned update.
Get your digital copy at https://www.organisationaldysfunctions.com/ -
v1.2 of Organisational Dysfunctions is out today, and it's the final release.
Twenty-two entries and essays that have been out on Mastodon since the last update are now part of the book: "Nobody wants to own this," "The org chart nobody uses," "Innovation theatre," "The talent myth," and more, spread across every chapter. One new objection has been added, along with two new perspectives.
Clocked in at 97 dysfunctions, which is a nice place to end. The material didn't run out, but I think I managed to say what needed to be said.
This is the last planned update.
Get your digital copy at https://www.organisationaldysfunctions.com/ -
Organisational Dysfunction of the Day
The org chart nobody uses
Context: A new hire joins. In the first week, someone shows them the org chart. Departments, reporting lines, clear boxes. A few weeks later, a colleague pulls them aside and explains how things actually work. Which team to ask when something is needed from infrastructure. The person in finance who actually understands the product. The architect who is technically in a different division but is involved in every decision that matters. The Slack channels where the real coordination happens. The org chart is still on the intranet. They have not looked at it since that first week.
OST explains: Most organisations operating on DP1, the bureaucratic structure, are divided by function, with development, operations, finance, and product each sitting in their own department. This makes sense from a resource management perspective. It makes almost no sense for getting actual work done, which routinely requires coordination across every one of those boundaries. So people build a second structure informally, a network of relationships, shortcuts, and workarounds that lets work flow despite the formal design. This is not culture, and it is not initiative. It is what purposeful people do when the structure they are given cannot support the work they are asked to do. The result is three organisations running in parallel: the formal one on the org chart, the informal network of relationships that moves things through the system, and the actual unit of work, the project, the product team, the initiative, where value is created. None of them was designed to fit together. All three generate overhead. In a DP2 structure, the team is defined by what it delivers, so the formal structure and the working structure are the same thing. There is no gap to fill with workarounds. The org chart nobody uses is the cost of designing for function rather than for flow.
#OpenSystemsTheory #SocioTechnical #OrgDesign #networking
***
The series has become a book, available now on Leanpub.
https://www.organisationaldysfunctions.com -
Organisational Dysfunction of the Day
The org chart nobody uses
Context: A new hire joins. In the first week, someone shows them the org chart. Departments, reporting lines, clear boxes. A few weeks later, a colleague pulls them aside and explains how things actually work. Which team to ask when something is needed from infrastructure. The person in finance who actually understands the product. The architect who is technically in a different division but is involved in every decision that matters. The Slack channels where the real coordination happens. The org chart is still on the intranet. They have not looked at it since that first week.
OST explains: Most organisations operating on DP1, the bureaucratic structure, are divided by function, with development, operations, finance, and product each sitting in their own department. This makes sense from a resource management perspective. It makes almost no sense for getting actual work done, which routinely requires coordination across every one of those boundaries. So people build a second structure informally, a network of relationships, shortcuts, and workarounds that lets work flow despite the formal design. This is not culture, and it is not initiative. It is what purposeful people do when the structure they are given cannot support the work they are asked to do. The result is three organisations running in parallel: the formal one on the org chart, the informal network of relationships that moves things through the system, and the actual unit of work, the project, the product team, the initiative, where value is created. None of them was designed to fit together. All three generate overhead. In a DP2 structure, the team is defined by what it delivers, so the formal structure and the working structure are the same thing. There is no gap to fill with workarounds. The org chart nobody uses is the cost of designing for function rather than for flow.
#OpenSystemsTheory #SocioTechnical #OrgDesign #networking
***
The series has become a book, available now on Leanpub.
https://www.organisationaldysfunctions.com -
Organisational Dysfunction of the Day
The org chart nobody uses
Context: A new hire joins. In the first week, someone shows them the org chart. Departments, reporting lines, clear boxes. A few weeks later, a colleague pulls them aside and explains how things actually work. Which team to ask when something is needed from infrastructure. The person in finance who actually understands the product. The architect who is technically in a different division but is involved in every decision that matters. The Slack channels where the real coordination happens. The org chart is still on the intranet. They have not looked at it since that first week.
OST explains: Most organisations operating on DP1, the bureaucratic structure, are divided by function, with development, operations, finance, and product each sitting in their own department. This makes sense from a resource management perspective. It makes almost no sense for getting actual work done, which routinely requires coordination across every one of those boundaries. So people build a second structure informally, a network of relationships, shortcuts, and workarounds that lets work flow despite the formal design. This is not culture, and it is not initiative. It is what purposeful people do when the structure they are given cannot support the work they are asked to do. The result is three organisations running in parallel: the formal one on the org chart, the informal network of relationships that moves things through the system, and the actual unit of work, the project, the product team, the initiative, where value is created. None of them was designed to fit together. All three generate overhead. In a DP2 structure, the team is defined by what it delivers, so the formal structure and the working structure are the same thing. There is no gap to fill with workarounds. The org chart nobody uses is the cost of designing for function rather than for flow.
#OpenSystemsTheory #SocioTechnical #OrgDesign #networking
***
The series has become a book, available now on Leanpub.
https://www.organisationaldysfunctions.com -
Organisational Dysfunction of the Day
The org chart nobody uses
Context: A new hire joins. In the first week, someone shows them the org chart. Departments, reporting lines, clear boxes. A few weeks later, a colleague pulls them aside and explains how things actually work. Which team to ask when something is needed from infrastructure. The person in finance who actually understands the product. The architect who is technically in a different division but is involved in every decision that matters. The Slack channels where the real coordination happens. The org chart is still on the intranet. They have not looked at it since that first week.
OST explains: Most organisations operating on DP1, the bureaucratic structure, are divided by function, with development, operations, finance, and product each sitting in their own department. This makes sense from a resource management perspective. It makes almost no sense for getting actual work done, which routinely requires coordination across every one of those boundaries. So people build a second structure informally, a network of relationships, shortcuts, and workarounds that lets work flow despite the formal design. This is not culture, and it is not initiative. It is what purposeful people do when the structure they are given cannot support the work they are asked to do. The result is three organisations running in parallel: the formal one on the org chart, the informal network of relationships that moves things through the system, and the actual unit of work, the project, the product team, the initiative, where value is created. None of them was designed to fit together. All three generate overhead. In a DP2 structure, the team is defined by what it delivers, so the formal structure and the working structure are the same thing. There is no gap to fill with workarounds. The org chart nobody uses is the cost of designing for function rather than for flow.
#OpenSystemsTheory #SocioTechnical #OrgDesign #networking
***
The series has become a book, available now on Leanpub.
https://www.organisationaldysfunctions.com -
Organisational Dysfunction of the Day
The org chart nobody uses
Context: A new hire joins. In the first week, someone shows them the org chart. Departments, reporting lines, clear boxes. A few weeks later, a colleague pulls them aside and explains how things actually work. Which team to ask when something is needed from infrastructure. The person in finance who actually understands the product. The architect who is technically in a different division but is involved in every decision that matters. The Slack channels where the real coordination happens. The org chart is still on the intranet. They have not looked at it since that first week.
OST explains: Most organisations operating on DP1, the bureaucratic structure, are divided by function, with development, operations, finance, and product each sitting in their own department. This makes sense from a resource management perspective. It makes almost no sense for getting actual work done, which routinely requires coordination across every one of those boundaries. So people build a second structure informally, a network of relationships, shortcuts, and workarounds that lets work flow despite the formal design. This is not culture, and it is not initiative. It is what purposeful people do when the structure they are given cannot support the work they are asked to do. The result is three organisations running in parallel: the formal one on the org chart, the informal network of relationships that moves things through the system, and the actual unit of work, the project, the product team, the initiative, where value is created. None of them was designed to fit together. All three generate overhead. In a DP2 structure, the team is defined by what it delivers, so the formal structure and the working structure are the same thing. There is no gap to fill with workarounds. The org chart nobody uses is the cost of designing for function rather than for flow.
#OpenSystemsTheory #SocioTechnical #OrgDesign #networking
***
The series has become a book, available now on Leanpub.
https://www.organisationaldysfunctions.com -
Organisational Dysfunction of the Day
Nobody wants to own this
Context: There is a service that seven teams depend on. It was built three years ago by a team that no longer exists. The code lives in a repository that has eleven different people listed as contributors. When it breaks, everyone notices. When it needs updating, everyone waits. Slack messages go out asking who owns it. The answers are variations of "we use it, but we didn't build it" and "I think that was the old platform team." Someone eventually fixes the immediate problem. Nobody fixes the underlying one. The service is not on anyone's roadmap or in anyone's OKRs. It is not neglected because nobody cares. It is neglected because the structure has no place to put it.
OST explains: DP1 organises work by splitting it into owned pieces, services to teams, components to people, functions to departments. The logic works for things that fit neatly into boxes. It breaks down entirely for things that are shared, the platform everyone uses, the legacy system too expensive to replace, the cross-cutting concern that belongs to the whole organisation rather than any part of it. These things fall into the gaps between the boxes and stay there. Nobody is incentivised to invest in something that appears on nobody's performance review. In a DP2 structure, where a team owns its whole task end-to-end, the boundary location principle requires that the team controls everything it depends on to do its work. Shared dependencies are a structural signal that the boundaries are wrong, that the work has been sliced in a way that leaves essential things ownerless. The abandoned service is not a prioritisation failure. It is a design failure. The organisation drew the lines in the wrong places and then wondered why nothing fills the gaps.
#OpenSystemsTheory #SocioTechnical #OrgDesign #agile
***
The series has become a book, available now on Leanpub.
https://www.organisationaldysfunctions.com -
Organisational Dysfunction of the Day
Nobody wants to own this
Context: There is a service that seven teams depend on. It was built three years ago by a team that no longer exists. The code lives in a repository that has eleven different people listed as contributors. When it breaks, everyone notices. When it needs updating, everyone waits. Slack messages go out asking who owns it. The answers are variations of "we use it, but we didn't build it" and "I think that was the old platform team." Someone eventually fixes the immediate problem. Nobody fixes the underlying one. The service is not on anyone's roadmap or in anyone's OKRs. It is not neglected because nobody cares. It is neglected because the structure has no place to put it.
OST explains: DP1 organises work by splitting it into owned pieces, services to teams, components to people, functions to departments. The logic works for things that fit neatly into boxes. It breaks down entirely for things that are shared, the platform everyone uses, the legacy system too expensive to replace, the cross-cutting concern that belongs to the whole organisation rather than any part of it. These things fall into the gaps between the boxes and stay there. Nobody is incentivised to invest in something that appears on nobody's performance review. In a DP2 structure, where a team owns its whole task end-to-end, the boundary location principle requires that the team controls everything it depends on to do its work. Shared dependencies are a structural signal that the boundaries are wrong, that the work has been sliced in a way that leaves essential things ownerless. The abandoned service is not a prioritisation failure. It is a design failure. The organisation drew the lines in the wrong places and then wondered why nothing fills the gaps.
#OpenSystemsTheory #SocioTechnical #OrgDesign #agile
***
The series has become a book, available now on Leanpub.
https://www.organisationaldysfunctions.com -
Organisational Dysfunction of the Day
Nobody wants to own this
Context: There is a service that seven teams depend on. It was built three years ago by a team that no longer exists. The code lives in a repository that has eleven different people listed as contributors. When it breaks, everyone notices. When it needs updating, everyone waits. Slack messages go out asking who owns it. The answers are variations of "we use it, but we didn't build it" and "I think that was the old platform team." Someone eventually fixes the immediate problem. Nobody fixes the underlying one. The service is not on anyone's roadmap or in anyone's OKRs. It is not neglected because nobody cares. It is neglected because the structure has no place to put it.
OST explains: DP1 organises work by splitting it into owned pieces, services to teams, components to people, functions to departments. The logic works for things that fit neatly into boxes. It breaks down entirely for things that are shared, the platform everyone uses, the legacy system too expensive to replace, the cross-cutting concern that belongs to the whole organisation rather than any part of it. These things fall into the gaps between the boxes and stay there. Nobody is incentivised to invest in something that appears on nobody's performance review. In a DP2 structure, where a team owns its whole task end-to-end, the boundary location principle requires that the team controls everything it depends on to do its work. Shared dependencies are a structural signal that the boundaries are wrong, that the work has been sliced in a way that leaves essential things ownerless. The abandoned service is not a prioritisation failure. It is a design failure. The organisation drew the lines in the wrong places and then wondered why nothing fills the gaps.
#OpenSystemsTheory #SocioTechnical #OrgDesign #agile
***
The series has become a book, available now on Leanpub.
https://www.organisationaldysfunctions.com -
Organisational Dysfunction of the Day
Nobody wants to own this
Context: There is a service that seven teams depend on. It was built three years ago by a team that no longer exists. The code lives in a repository that has eleven different people listed as contributors. When it breaks, everyone notices. When it needs updating, everyone waits. Slack messages go out asking who owns it. The answers are variations of "we use it, but we didn't build it" and "I think that was the old platform team." Someone eventually fixes the immediate problem. Nobody fixes the underlying one. The service is not on anyone's roadmap or in anyone's OKRs. It is not neglected because nobody cares. It is neglected because the structure has no place to put it.
OST explains: DP1 organises work by splitting it into owned pieces, services to teams, components to people, functions to departments. The logic works for things that fit neatly into boxes. It breaks down entirely for things that are shared, the platform everyone uses, the legacy system too expensive to replace, the cross-cutting concern that belongs to the whole organisation rather than any part of it. These things fall into the gaps between the boxes and stay there. Nobody is incentivised to invest in something that appears on nobody's performance review. In a DP2 structure, where a team owns its whole task end-to-end, the boundary location principle requires that the team controls everything it depends on to do its work. Shared dependencies are a structural signal that the boundaries are wrong, that the work has been sliced in a way that leaves essential things ownerless. The abandoned service is not a prioritisation failure. It is a design failure. The organisation drew the lines in the wrong places and then wondered why nothing fills the gaps.
#OpenSystemsTheory #SocioTechnical #OrgDesign #agile
***
The series has become a book, available now on Leanpub.
https://www.organisationaldysfunctions.com -
Organisational Dysfunction of the Day
Nobody wants to own this
Context: There is a service that seven teams depend on. It was built three years ago by a team that no longer exists. The code lives in a repository that has eleven different people listed as contributors. When it breaks, everyone notices. When it needs updating, everyone waits. Slack messages go out asking who owns it. The answers are variations of "we use it, but we didn't build it" and "I think that was the old platform team." Someone eventually fixes the immediate problem. Nobody fixes the underlying one. The service is not on anyone's roadmap or in anyone's OKRs. It is not neglected because nobody cares. It is neglected because the structure has no place to put it.
OST explains: DP1 organises work by splitting it into owned pieces, services to teams, components to people, functions to departments. The logic works for things that fit neatly into boxes. It breaks down entirely for things that are shared, the platform everyone uses, the legacy system too expensive to replace, the cross-cutting concern that belongs to the whole organisation rather than any part of it. These things fall into the gaps between the boxes and stay there. Nobody is incentivised to invest in something that appears on nobody's performance review. In a DP2 structure, where a team owns its whole task end-to-end, the boundary location principle requires that the team controls everything it depends on to do its work. Shared dependencies are a structural signal that the boundaries are wrong, that the work has been sliced in a way that leaves essential things ownerless. The abandoned service is not a prioritisation failure. It is a design failure. The organisation drew the lines in the wrong places and then wondered why nothing fills the gaps.
#OpenSystemsTheory #SocioTechnical #OrgDesign #agile
***
The series has become a book, available now on Leanpub.
https://www.organisationaldysfunctions.com -
Organisational Dysfunction of the Day
The talent myth
Context: "Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done." This principle from the Agile Manifesto is one of the most quoted and most acted upon in the industry. Hiring processes are designed around finding motivated people. Managers are coached to give them space and trust. Perks, autonomy, and purpose are offered as the environment and support needed. And yet engagement surveys keep returning the same dispiriting numbers. The motivated individuals either leave, quietly stop being motivated, or were never quite as motivated as the interview suggested. The organisation concludes it needs to find better people, or do a better job of retaining the ones it has.
OST explains: The manifesto gets the outcome right but the mechanism backwards. Motivation in OST is an emergent property of the structure people work in, not a precondition you select for in hiring. It emerges when six structural conditions are met: elbow room to make your own decisions, continual learning through room to set your own goals and get accurate, timely feedback, enough variety in the work, mutual support and respect from colleagues, meaningfulness through work that is socially valued and lets you see the whole product or service, and a sense of a desirable future rather than a dead end. These are properties of the work, not personal traits. You cannot find motivated individuals and protect their motivation; you design a structure that produces motivation as a natural output for whoever works within it. OST flips the manifesto's framing. The group is the basic unit, the design principle is the primary determinant, and motivation is what happens when the structure is right. The manifesto points in the right direction but stops one step short of the structural answer.
#OpenSystemsTheory #SocioTechnical #OrgDesign #agile
***
The series has become a book, available now on Leanpub.
http://organisationaldysfunctions.com -
Organisational Dysfunction of the Day
The talent myth
Context: "Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done." This principle from the Agile Manifesto is one of the most quoted and most acted upon in the industry. Hiring processes are designed around finding motivated people. Managers are coached to give them space and trust. Perks, autonomy, and purpose are offered as the environment and support needed. And yet engagement surveys keep returning the same dispiriting numbers. The motivated individuals either leave, quietly stop being motivated, or were never quite as motivated as the interview suggested. The organisation concludes it needs to find better people, or do a better job of retaining the ones it has.
OST explains: The manifesto gets the outcome right but the mechanism backwards. Motivation in OST is an emergent property of the structure people work in, not a precondition you select for in hiring. It emerges when six structural conditions are met: elbow room to make your own decisions, continual learning through room to set your own goals and get accurate, timely feedback, enough variety in the work, mutual support and respect from colleagues, meaningfulness through work that is socially valued and lets you see the whole product or service, and a sense of a desirable future rather than a dead end. These are properties of the work, not personal traits. You cannot find motivated individuals and protect their motivation; you design a structure that produces motivation as a natural output for whoever works within it. OST flips the manifesto's framing. The group is the basic unit, the design principle is the primary determinant, and motivation is what happens when the structure is right. The manifesto points in the right direction but stops one step short of the structural answer.
#OpenSystemsTheory #SocioTechnical #OrgDesign #agile
***
The series has become a book, available now on Leanpub.
http://organisationaldysfunctions.com -
Organisational Dysfunction of the Day
The talent myth
Context: "Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done." This principle from the Agile Manifesto is one of the most quoted and most acted upon in the industry. Hiring processes are designed around finding motivated people. Managers are coached to give them space and trust. Perks, autonomy, and purpose are offered as the environment and support needed. And yet engagement surveys keep returning the same dispiriting numbers. The motivated individuals either leave, quietly stop being motivated, or were never quite as motivated as the interview suggested. The organisation concludes it needs to find better people, or do a better job of retaining the ones it has.
OST explains: The manifesto gets the outcome right but the mechanism backwards. Motivation in OST is an emergent property of the structure people work in, not a precondition you select for in hiring. It emerges when six structural conditions are met: elbow room to make your own decisions, continual learning through room to set your own goals and get accurate, timely feedback, enough variety in the work, mutual support and respect from colleagues, meaningfulness through work that is socially valued and lets you see the whole product or service, and a sense of a desirable future rather than a dead end. These are properties of the work, not personal traits. You cannot find motivated individuals and protect their motivation; you design a structure that produces motivation as a natural output for whoever works within it. OST flips the manifesto's framing. The group is the basic unit, the design principle is the primary determinant, and motivation is what happens when the structure is right. The manifesto points in the right direction but stops one step short of the structural answer.
#OpenSystemsTheory #SocioTechnical #OrgDesign #agile
***
The series has become a book, available now on Leanpub.
http://organisationaldysfunctions.com -
Organisational Dysfunction of the Day
The talent myth
Context: "Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done." This principle from the Agile Manifesto is one of the most quoted and most acted upon in the industry. Hiring processes are designed around finding motivated people. Managers are coached to give them space and trust. Perks, autonomy, and purpose are offered as the environment and support needed. And yet engagement surveys keep returning the same dispiriting numbers. The motivated individuals either leave, quietly stop being motivated, or were never quite as motivated as the interview suggested. The organisation concludes it needs to find better people, or do a better job of retaining the ones it has.
OST explains: The manifesto gets the outcome right but the mechanism backwards. Motivation in OST is an emergent property of the structure people work in, not a precondition you select for in hiring. It emerges when six structural conditions are met: elbow room to make your own decisions, continual learning through room to set your own goals and get accurate, timely feedback, enough variety in the work, mutual support and respect from colleagues, meaningfulness through work that is socially valued and lets you see the whole product or service, and a sense of a desirable future rather than a dead end. These are properties of the work, not personal traits. You cannot find motivated individuals and protect their motivation; you design a structure that produces motivation as a natural output for whoever works within it. OST flips the manifesto's framing. The group is the basic unit, the design principle is the primary determinant, and motivation is what happens when the structure is right. The manifesto points in the right direction but stops one step short of the structural answer.
#OpenSystemsTheory #SocioTechnical #OrgDesign #agile
***
The series has become a book, available now on Leanpub.
http://organisationaldysfunctions.com -
Organisational Dysfunction of the Day
The talent myth
Context: "Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done." This principle from the Agile Manifesto is one of the most quoted and most acted upon in the industry. Hiring processes are designed around finding motivated people. Managers are coached to give them space and trust. Perks, autonomy, and purpose are offered as the environment and support needed. And yet engagement surveys keep returning the same dispiriting numbers. The motivated individuals either leave, quietly stop being motivated, or were never quite as motivated as the interview suggested. The organisation concludes it needs to find better people, or do a better job of retaining the ones it has.
OST explains: The manifesto gets the outcome right but the mechanism backwards. Motivation in OST is an emergent property of the structure people work in, not a precondition you select for in hiring. It emerges when six structural conditions are met: elbow room to make your own decisions, continual learning through room to set your own goals and get accurate, timely feedback, enough variety in the work, mutual support and respect from colleagues, meaningfulness through work that is socially valued and lets you see the whole product or service, and a sense of a desirable future rather than a dead end. These are properties of the work, not personal traits. You cannot find motivated individuals and protect their motivation; you design a structure that produces motivation as a natural output for whoever works within it. OST flips the manifesto's framing. The group is the basic unit, the design principle is the primary determinant, and motivation is what happens when the structure is right. The manifesto points in the right direction but stops one step short of the structural answer.
#OpenSystemsTheory #SocioTechnical #OrgDesign #agile
***
The series has become a book, available now on Leanpub.
http://organisationaldysfunctions.com -
Organisational Dysfunction of the Day
The efficiency drive
Context: The organisation is restructuring. Agile transformation, flatter structure, fewer layers. It makes sense on paper. A list of roles is drawn up for redundancy. Visibility and measurable output are the criteria, and they sound reasonable enough. A senior developer goes. So does a project coordinator, and a tech lead who spent half their time helping others out. The people who remain are productive, focused, and clearly valuable. Six months later, things that used to happen automatically have stopped happening. Onboarding takes twice as long, and cross-team coordination stalls. Institutional knowledge that nobody knew existed turns out to have lived in three people who are no longer there. The efficiency drive was a success. The organisation is measurably less capable.
OST explains: In a DP1 structure, value is measured by visible, individual output. The redundancy of parts logic demands replaceable, countable contributions, things like tickets closed or hours billed. The work that holds organisations together, such as knowledge transfer, informal coordination, translation between teams, and the memory of why things are the way they are, is structurally invisible in this measurement regime. Glue workers, as the industry has come to call them, do not fit neatly into DP1 accountability frameworks precisely because their contribution is to the whole, not to a part. When downsizing criteria are applied, they are systematically exposed. The formal structure survives the cut. The working structure, the informal network that made the formal one function, does not. Parkinson observed that bureaucracies protect themselves by multiplying subordinates. The corollary is less discussed: when they cut, they cut the connective tissue first, because connective tissue has no job title.
#OpenSystemsTheory #SocioTechnical #OrgDesign #lean
***
The series has become a book, available now on Leanpub.
https://www.organisationaldysfunctions.com -
Organisational Dysfunction of the Day
The efficiency drive
Context: The organisation is restructuring. Agile transformation, flatter structure, fewer layers. It makes sense on paper. A list of roles is drawn up for redundancy. Visibility and measurable output are the criteria, and they sound reasonable enough. A senior developer goes. So does a project coordinator, and a tech lead who spent half their time helping others out. The people who remain are productive, focused, and clearly valuable. Six months later, things that used to happen automatically have stopped happening. Onboarding takes twice as long, and cross-team coordination stalls. Institutional knowledge that nobody knew existed turns out to have lived in three people who are no longer there. The efficiency drive was a success. The organisation is measurably less capable.
OST explains: In a DP1 structure, value is measured by visible, individual output. The redundancy of parts logic demands replaceable, countable contributions, things like tickets closed or hours billed. The work that holds organisations together, such as knowledge transfer, informal coordination, translation between teams, and the memory of why things are the way they are, is structurally invisible in this measurement regime. Glue workers, as the industry has come to call them, do not fit neatly into DP1 accountability frameworks precisely because their contribution is to the whole, not to a part. When downsizing criteria are applied, they are systematically exposed. The formal structure survives the cut. The working structure, the informal network that made the formal one function, does not. Parkinson observed that bureaucracies protect themselves by multiplying subordinates. The corollary is less discussed: when they cut, they cut the connective tissue first, because connective tissue has no job title.
#OpenSystemsTheory #SocioTechnical #OrgDesign #lean
***
The series has become a book, available now on Leanpub.
https://www.organisationaldysfunctions.com -
Organisational Dysfunction of the Day
The efficiency drive
Context: The organisation is restructuring. Agile transformation, flatter structure, fewer layers. It makes sense on paper. A list of roles is drawn up for redundancy. Visibility and measurable output are the criteria, and they sound reasonable enough. A senior developer goes. So does a project coordinator, and a tech lead who spent half their time helping others out. The people who remain are productive, focused, and clearly valuable. Six months later, things that used to happen automatically have stopped happening. Onboarding takes twice as long, and cross-team coordination stalls. Institutional knowledge that nobody knew existed turns out to have lived in three people who are no longer there. The efficiency drive was a success. The organisation is measurably less capable.
OST explains: In a DP1 structure, value is measured by visible, individual output. The redundancy of parts logic demands replaceable, countable contributions, things like tickets closed or hours billed. The work that holds organisations together, such as knowledge transfer, informal coordination, translation between teams, and the memory of why things are the way they are, is structurally invisible in this measurement regime. Glue workers, as the industry has come to call them, do not fit neatly into DP1 accountability frameworks precisely because their contribution is to the whole, not to a part. When downsizing criteria are applied, they are systematically exposed. The formal structure survives the cut. The working structure, the informal network that made the formal one function, does not. Parkinson observed that bureaucracies protect themselves by multiplying subordinates. The corollary is less discussed: when they cut, they cut the connective tissue first, because connective tissue has no job title.
#OpenSystemsTheory #SocioTechnical #OrgDesign #lean
***
The series has become a book, available now on Leanpub.
https://www.organisationaldysfunctions.com -
Organisational Dysfunction of the Day
The efficiency drive
Context: The organisation is restructuring. Agile transformation, flatter structure, fewer layers. It makes sense on paper. A list of roles is drawn up for redundancy. Visibility and measurable output are the criteria, and they sound reasonable enough. A senior developer goes. So does a project coordinator, and a tech lead who spent half their time helping others out. The people who remain are productive, focused, and clearly valuable. Six months later, things that used to happen automatically have stopped happening. Onboarding takes twice as long, and cross-team coordination stalls. Institutional knowledge that nobody knew existed turns out to have lived in three people who are no longer there. The efficiency drive was a success. The organisation is measurably less capable.
OST explains: In a DP1 structure, value is measured by visible, individual output. The redundancy of parts logic demands replaceable, countable contributions, things like tickets closed or hours billed. The work that holds organisations together, such as knowledge transfer, informal coordination, translation between teams, and the memory of why things are the way they are, is structurally invisible in this measurement regime. Glue workers, as the industry has come to call them, do not fit neatly into DP1 accountability frameworks precisely because their contribution is to the whole, not to a part. When downsizing criteria are applied, they are systematically exposed. The formal structure survives the cut. The working structure, the informal network that made the formal one function, does not. Parkinson observed that bureaucracies protect themselves by multiplying subordinates. The corollary is less discussed: when they cut, they cut the connective tissue first, because connective tissue has no job title.
#OpenSystemsTheory #SocioTechnical #OrgDesign #lean
***
The series has become a book, available now on Leanpub.
https://www.organisationaldysfunctions.com -
Organisational Dysfunction of the Day
The efficiency drive
Context: The organisation is restructuring. Agile transformation, flatter structure, fewer layers. It makes sense on paper. A list of roles is drawn up for redundancy. Visibility and measurable output are the criteria, and they sound reasonable enough. A senior developer goes. So does a project coordinator, and a tech lead who spent half their time helping others out. The people who remain are productive, focused, and clearly valuable. Six months later, things that used to happen automatically have stopped happening. Onboarding takes twice as long, and cross-team coordination stalls. Institutional knowledge that nobody knew existed turns out to have lived in three people who are no longer there. The efficiency drive was a success. The organisation is measurably less capable.
OST explains: In a DP1 structure, value is measured by visible, individual output. The redundancy of parts logic demands replaceable, countable contributions, things like tickets closed or hours billed. The work that holds organisations together, such as knowledge transfer, informal coordination, translation between teams, and the memory of why things are the way they are, is structurally invisible in this measurement regime. Glue workers, as the industry has come to call them, do not fit neatly into DP1 accountability frameworks precisely because their contribution is to the whole, not to a part. When downsizing criteria are applied, they are systematically exposed. The formal structure survives the cut. The working structure, the informal network that made the formal one function, does not. Parkinson observed that bureaucracies protect themselves by multiplying subordinates. The corollary is less discussed: when they cut, they cut the connective tissue first, because connective tissue has no job title.
#OpenSystemsTheory #SocioTechnical #OrgDesign #lean
***
The series has become a book, available now on Leanpub.
https://www.organisationaldysfunctions.com -
Organisational Dysfunction of the Day
Innovation theatre
Context: The organisation wants to be more innovative. A hackathon is announced. People form teams over a weekend, build prototypes, pitch to a panel of judges, and the best ideas win prizes. Energy is high, creativity flows, and some interesting ideas emerge. Then Monday arrives. The hackathon winners submit their ideas through the normal process. The ideas enter the backlog, or the innovation funnel, or the strategic planning cycle. Most are never heard of again. The people who had them go back to their regular work and try not to think too hard about where their ideas went. Next year, fewer people sign up for the hackathon.
OST explains: For a weekend, a hackathon creates the conditions of a DP2 structure. People self-organise around problems they choose and set their own goals, working without hierarchy. The energy is real because the structure is real. That is the point, and also the trap. The organisation has inadvertently demonstrated what self-managing work feels like, then sent everyone back to a structure that removes every condition that made it possible. In DP1, design authority is retained above while the appearance of participation harvests value from people who have no power to act on what they contribute. The hackathon temporarily suspends those constraints; the working week reinstates them. What looks like a follow-through problem is a structural problem: the organisation has two incompatible design principles running in parallel, one for special events and one for everything else. Nobody involved stopped caring. The structure that generated the ideas has no foothold in the structure that would have to implement them. Next year, fewer people sign up. They have learned something true about how this organisation works. The hackathon told them.
#OpenSystemsTheory #SocioTechnical #OrgDesign #hackathon
***
The series has become a book, available now on Leanpub.
https://www.organisationaldysfunctions.com/ -
Organisational Dysfunction of the Day
Innovation theatre
Context: The organisation wants to be more innovative. A hackathon is announced. People form teams over a weekend, build prototypes, pitch to a panel of judges, and the best ideas win prizes. Energy is high, creativity flows, and some interesting ideas emerge. Then Monday arrives. The hackathon winners submit their ideas through the normal process. The ideas enter the backlog, or the innovation funnel, or the strategic planning cycle. Most are never heard of again. The people who had them go back to their regular work and try not to think too hard about where their ideas went. Next year, fewer people sign up for the hackathon.
OST explains: For a weekend, a hackathon creates the conditions of a DP2 structure. People self-organise around problems they choose and set their own goals, working without hierarchy. The energy is real because the structure is real. That is the point, and also the trap. The organisation has inadvertently demonstrated what self-managing work feels like, then sent everyone back to a structure that removes every condition that made it possible. In DP1, design authority is retained above while the appearance of participation harvests value from people who have no power to act on what they contribute. The hackathon temporarily suspends those constraints; the working week reinstates them. What looks like a follow-through problem is a structural problem: the organisation has two incompatible design principles running in parallel, one for special events and one for everything else. Nobody involved stopped caring. The structure that generated the ideas has no foothold in the structure that would have to implement them. Next year, fewer people sign up. They have learned something true about how this organisation works. The hackathon told them.
#OpenSystemsTheory #SocioTechnical #OrgDesign #hackathon
***
The series has become a book, available now on Leanpub.
https://www.organisationaldysfunctions.com/ -
Organisational Dysfunction of the Day
Innovation theatre
Context: The organisation wants to be more innovative. A hackathon is announced. People form teams over a weekend, build prototypes, pitch to a panel of judges, and the best ideas win prizes. Energy is high, creativity flows, and some interesting ideas emerge. Then Monday arrives. The hackathon winners submit their ideas through the normal process. The ideas enter the backlog, or the innovation funnel, or the strategic planning cycle. Most are never heard of again. The people who had them go back to their regular work and try not to think too hard about where their ideas went. Next year, fewer people sign up for the hackathon.
OST explains: For a weekend, a hackathon creates the conditions of a DP2 structure. People self-organise around problems they choose and set their own goals, working without hierarchy. The energy is real because the structure is real. That is the point, and also the trap. The organisation has inadvertently demonstrated what self-managing work feels like, then sent everyone back to a structure that removes every condition that made it possible. In DP1, design authority is retained above while the appearance of participation harvests value from people who have no power to act on what they contribute. The hackathon temporarily suspends those constraints; the working week reinstates them. What looks like a follow-through problem is a structural problem: the organisation has two incompatible design principles running in parallel, one for special events and one for everything else. Nobody involved stopped caring. The structure that generated the ideas has no foothold in the structure that would have to implement them. Next year, fewer people sign up. They have learned something true about how this organisation works. The hackathon told them.
#OpenSystemsTheory #SocioTechnical #OrgDesign #hackathon
***
The series has become a book, available now on Leanpub.
https://www.organisationaldysfunctions.com/ -
Organisational Dysfunction of the Day
Innovation theatre
Context: The organisation wants to be more innovative. A hackathon is announced. People form teams over a weekend, build prototypes, pitch to a panel of judges, and the best ideas win prizes. Energy is high, creativity flows, and some interesting ideas emerge. Then Monday arrives. The hackathon winners submit their ideas through the normal process. The ideas enter the backlog, or the innovation funnel, or the strategic planning cycle. Most are never heard of again. The people who had them go back to their regular work and try not to think too hard about where their ideas went. Next year, fewer people sign up for the hackathon.
OST explains: For a weekend, a hackathon creates the conditions of a DP2 structure. People self-organise around problems they choose and set their own goals, working without hierarchy. The energy is real because the structure is real. That is the point, and also the trap. The organisation has inadvertently demonstrated what self-managing work feels like, then sent everyone back to a structure that removes every condition that made it possible. In DP1, design authority is retained above while the appearance of participation harvests value from people who have no power to act on what they contribute. The hackathon temporarily suspends those constraints; the working week reinstates them. What looks like a follow-through problem is a structural problem: the organisation has two incompatible design principles running in parallel, one for special events and one for everything else. Nobody involved stopped caring. The structure that generated the ideas has no foothold in the structure that would have to implement them. Next year, fewer people sign up. They have learned something true about how this organisation works. The hackathon told them.
#OpenSystemsTheory #SocioTechnical #OrgDesign #hackathon
***
The series has become a book, available now on Leanpub.
https://www.organisationaldysfunctions.com/ -
Organisational Dysfunction of the Day
Innovation theatre
Context: The organisation wants to be more innovative. A hackathon is announced. People form teams over a weekend, build prototypes, pitch to a panel of judges, and the best ideas win prizes. Energy is high, creativity flows, and some interesting ideas emerge. Then Monday arrives. The hackathon winners submit their ideas through the normal process. The ideas enter the backlog, or the innovation funnel, or the strategic planning cycle. Most are never heard of again. The people who had them go back to their regular work and try not to think too hard about where their ideas went. Next year, fewer people sign up for the hackathon.
OST explains: For a weekend, a hackathon creates the conditions of a DP2 structure. People self-organise around problems they choose and set their own goals, working without hierarchy. The energy is real because the structure is real. That is the point, and also the trap. The organisation has inadvertently demonstrated what self-managing work feels like, then sent everyone back to a structure that removes every condition that made it possible. In DP1, design authority is retained above while the appearance of participation harvests value from people who have no power to act on what they contribute. The hackathon temporarily suspends those constraints; the working week reinstates them. What looks like a follow-through problem is a structural problem: the organisation has two incompatible design principles running in parallel, one for special events and one for everything else. Nobody involved stopped caring. The structure that generated the ideas has no foothold in the structure that would have to implement them. Next year, fewer people sign up. They have learned something true about how this organisation works. The hackathon told them.
#OpenSystemsTheory #SocioTechnical #OrgDesign #hackathon
***
The series has become a book, available now on Leanpub.
https://www.organisationaldysfunctions.com/ -
Freeman's own prescription for what a healthy structure needs (delegated authority, responsibility to the group, distributed power, rotation, information available to everyone) reads like someone arriving at DP2's territory from a completely different direction. She was not making the case against non-hierarchical structure. She was arguing for the same structural insight this book keeps returning to: deliberately designed, accountable non-hierarchy, from a tradition with no apparent contact with Emery's work.
The people who cite her against DP2 have not misread Freeman. They have skipped the half of her essay that would have told them DP2 is her answer, not her target.
***
This argument is explored further in my book, Organisational Dysfunctions: Open Systems Theory Explains, out now.
https://organisationaldysfunctions.com#OpenSystemsTheory #SocioTechnical #OrgDesign #structures
(2/2)
-
Freeman's own prescription for what a healthy structure needs (delegated authority, responsibility to the group, distributed power, rotation, information available to everyone) reads like someone arriving at DP2's territory from a completely different direction. She was not making the case against non-hierarchical structure. She was arguing for the same structural insight this book keeps returning to: deliberately designed, accountable non-hierarchy, from a tradition with no apparent contact with Emery's work.
The people who cite her against DP2 have not misread Freeman. They have skipped the half of her essay that would have told them DP2 is her answer, not her target.
***
This argument is explored further in my book, Organisational Dysfunctions: Open Systems Theory Explains, out now.
https://organisationaldysfunctions.com#OpenSystemsTheory #SocioTechnical #OrgDesign #structures
(2/2)
-
Freeman's own prescription for what a healthy structure needs (delegated authority, responsibility to the group, distributed power, rotation, information available to everyone) reads like someone arriving at DP2's territory from a completely different direction. She was not making the case against non-hierarchical structure. She was arguing for the same structural insight this book keeps returning to: deliberately designed, accountable non-hierarchy, from a tradition with no apparent contact with Emery's work.
The people who cite her against DP2 have not misread Freeman. They have skipped the half of her essay that would have told them DP2 is her answer, not her target.
***
This argument is explored further in my book, Organisational Dysfunctions: Open Systems Theory Explains, out now.
https://organisationaldysfunctions.com#OpenSystemsTheory #SocioTechnical #OrgDesign #structures
(2/2)
-
Freeman's own prescription for what a healthy structure needs (delegated authority, responsibility to the group, distributed power, rotation, information available to everyone) reads like someone arriving at DP2's territory from a completely different direction. She was not making the case against non-hierarchical structure. She was arguing for the same structural insight this book keeps returning to: deliberately designed, accountable non-hierarchy, from a tradition with no apparent contact with Emery's work.
The people who cite her against DP2 have not misread Freeman. They have skipped the half of her essay that would have told them DP2 is her answer, not her target.
***
This argument is explored further in my book, Organisational Dysfunctions: Open Systems Theory Explains, out now.
https://organisationaldysfunctions.com#OpenSystemsTheory #SocioTechnical #OrgDesign #structures
(2/2)
-
Freeman's own prescription for what a healthy structure needs (delegated authority, responsibility to the group, distributed power, rotation, information available to everyone) reads like someone arriving at DP2's territory from a completely different direction. She was not making the case against non-hierarchical structure. She was arguing for the same structural insight this book keeps returning to: deliberately designed, accountable non-hierarchy, from a tradition with no apparent contact with Emery's work.
The people who cite her against DP2 have not misread Freeman. They have skipped the half of her essay that would have told them DP2 is her answer, not her target.
***
This argument is explored further in my book, Organisational Dysfunctions: Open Systems Theory Explains, out now.
https://organisationaldysfunctions.com#OpenSystemsTheory #SocioTechnical #OrgDesign #structures
(2/2)
-
Organisational Dysfunction of the Day
The change they stopped believing in
Context: The organisation has been through four transformations in seven years. Agile. DevOps. Product thinking. Now a platform strategy. Each time, a consultant arrived, a framework was introduced, roles were renamed, and the deck said this time it was different. Each time, the same people learned new tools, attended new ceremonies, adapted to new reporting lines, and rebuilt working relationships that the reorg had broken. Real disruption. Real cost. And each time, the same people did the same work in the same structure, now with new vocabulary. The current initiative has better executive sponsorship than the previous three. The teams are quiet. Not hostile. Just quiet. They fill in the surveys, attend the workshops, and wait for it to pass.
OST explains: The people in the room are carrying two things. The first is the accumulated cost of repeated disruption: workflows relearned, tools replaced, relationships severed by reorganisations, expertise rendered obsolete by the next methodology. These costs are real, and they compound. Even a well-designed change can produce a net loss when it arrives as the fourth disruption in seven years, the cost of relearning outweighing whatever the change itself was meant to fix. The second is the mounting evidence that the disruption does not produce the promised improvement. Vocabulary, consultants, and frameworks have all changed across four initiatives; the design principle has not. What looks like resistance or exhaustion is pattern recognition operating at a high level of accuracy. In DP1, there is no mechanism by which the people doing the work can decide whether to incur the cost of a change that affects them, let alone shape what that change actually is. They receive it fully designed and handed down, and absorb it. The organisation reads the quiet as cynicism, a personal failing to be managed with better communication. People are not tired of change. They are tired of change that was never theirs to make.
#OpenSystemsTheory #SocioTechnical #OrgDesign #changeManagement
***
The series has become a book, available now on Leanpub.
https://www.organisationaldysfunctions.com -
Organisational Dysfunction of the Day
The change they stopped believing in
Context: The organisation has been through four transformations in seven years. Agile. DevOps. Product thinking. Now a platform strategy. Each time, a consultant arrived, a framework was introduced, roles were renamed, and the deck said this time it was different. Each time, the same people learned new tools, attended new ceremonies, adapted to new reporting lines, and rebuilt working relationships that the reorg had broken. Real disruption. Real cost. And each time, the same people did the same work in the same structure, now with new vocabulary. The current initiative has better executive sponsorship than the previous three. The teams are quiet. Not hostile. Just quiet. They fill in the surveys, attend the workshops, and wait for it to pass.
OST explains: The people in the room are carrying two things. The first is the accumulated cost of repeated disruption: workflows relearned, tools replaced, relationships severed by reorganisations, expertise rendered obsolete by the next methodology. These costs are real, and they compound. Even a well-designed change can produce a net loss when it arrives as the fourth disruption in seven years, the cost of relearning outweighing whatever the change itself was meant to fix. The second is the mounting evidence that the disruption does not produce the promised improvement. Vocabulary, consultants, and frameworks have all changed across four initiatives; the design principle has not. What looks like resistance or exhaustion is pattern recognition operating at a high level of accuracy. In DP1, there is no mechanism by which the people doing the work can decide whether to incur the cost of a change that affects them, let alone shape what that change actually is. They receive it fully designed and handed down, and absorb it. The organisation reads the quiet as cynicism, a personal failing to be managed with better communication. People are not tired of change. They are tired of change that was never theirs to make.
#OpenSystemsTheory #SocioTechnical #OrgDesign #changeManagement
***
The series has become a book, available now on Leanpub.
https://www.organisationaldysfunctions.com -
Organisational Dysfunction of the Day
The change they stopped believing in
Context: The organisation has been through four transformations in seven years. Agile. DevOps. Product thinking. Now a platform strategy. Each time, a consultant arrived, a framework was introduced, roles were renamed, and the deck said this time it was different. Each time, the same people learned new tools, attended new ceremonies, adapted to new reporting lines, and rebuilt working relationships that the reorg had broken. Real disruption. Real cost. And each time, the same people did the same work in the same structure, now with new vocabulary. The current initiative has better executive sponsorship than the previous three. The teams are quiet. Not hostile. Just quiet. They fill in the surveys, attend the workshops, and wait for it to pass.
OST explains: The people in the room are carrying two things. The first is the accumulated cost of repeated disruption: workflows relearned, tools replaced, relationships severed by reorganisations, expertise rendered obsolete by the next methodology. These costs are real, and they compound. Even a well-designed change can produce a net loss when it arrives as the fourth disruption in seven years, the cost of relearning outweighing whatever the change itself was meant to fix. The second is the mounting evidence that the disruption does not produce the promised improvement. Vocabulary, consultants, and frameworks have all changed across four initiatives; the design principle has not. What looks like resistance or exhaustion is pattern recognition operating at a high level of accuracy. In DP1, there is no mechanism by which the people doing the work can decide whether to incur the cost of a change that affects them, let alone shape what that change actually is. They receive it fully designed and handed down, and absorb it. The organisation reads the quiet as cynicism, a personal failing to be managed with better communication. People are not tired of change. They are tired of change that was never theirs to make.
#OpenSystemsTheory #SocioTechnical #OrgDesign #changeManagement
***
The series has become a book, available now on Leanpub.
https://www.organisationaldysfunctions.com -
Organisational Dysfunction of the Day
The change they stopped believing in
Context: The organisation has been through four transformations in seven years. Agile. DevOps. Product thinking. Now a platform strategy. Each time, a consultant arrived, a framework was introduced, roles were renamed, and the deck said this time it was different. Each time, the same people learned new tools, attended new ceremonies, adapted to new reporting lines, and rebuilt working relationships that the reorg had broken. Real disruption. Real cost. And each time, the same people did the same work in the same structure, now with new vocabulary. The current initiative has better executive sponsorship than the previous three. The teams are quiet. Not hostile. Just quiet. They fill in the surveys, attend the workshops, and wait for it to pass.
OST explains: The people in the room are carrying two things. The first is the accumulated cost of repeated disruption: workflows relearned, tools replaced, relationships severed by reorganisations, expertise rendered obsolete by the next methodology. These costs are real, and they compound. Even a well-designed change can produce a net loss when it arrives as the fourth disruption in seven years, the cost of relearning outweighing whatever the change itself was meant to fix. The second is the mounting evidence that the disruption does not produce the promised improvement. Vocabulary, consultants, and frameworks have all changed across four initiatives; the design principle has not. What looks like resistance or exhaustion is pattern recognition operating at a high level of accuracy. In DP1, there is no mechanism by which the people doing the work can decide whether to incur the cost of a change that affects them, let alone shape what that change actually is. They receive it fully designed and handed down, and absorb it. The organisation reads the quiet as cynicism, a personal failing to be managed with better communication. People are not tired of change. They are tired of change that was never theirs to make.
#OpenSystemsTheory #SocioTechnical #OrgDesign #changeManagement
***
The series has become a book, available now on Leanpub.
https://www.organisationaldysfunctions.com -
Organisational Dysfunction of the Day
The change they stopped believing in
Context: The organisation has been through four transformations in seven years. Agile. DevOps. Product thinking. Now a platform strategy. Each time, a consultant arrived, a framework was introduced, roles were renamed, and the deck said this time it was different. Each time, the same people learned new tools, attended new ceremonies, adapted to new reporting lines, and rebuilt working relationships that the reorg had broken. Real disruption. Real cost. And each time, the same people did the same work in the same structure, now with new vocabulary. The current initiative has better executive sponsorship than the previous three. The teams are quiet. Not hostile. Just quiet. They fill in the surveys, attend the workshops, and wait for it to pass.
OST explains: The people in the room are carrying two things. The first is the accumulated cost of repeated disruption: workflows relearned, tools replaced, relationships severed by reorganisations, expertise rendered obsolete by the next methodology. These costs are real, and they compound. Even a well-designed change can produce a net loss when it arrives as the fourth disruption in seven years, the cost of relearning outweighing whatever the change itself was meant to fix. The second is the mounting evidence that the disruption does not produce the promised improvement. Vocabulary, consultants, and frameworks have all changed across four initiatives; the design principle has not. What looks like resistance or exhaustion is pattern recognition operating at a high level of accuracy. In DP1, there is no mechanism by which the people doing the work can decide whether to incur the cost of a change that affects them, let alone shape what that change actually is. They receive it fully designed and handed down, and absorb it. The organisation reads the quiet as cynicism, a personal failing to be managed with better communication. People are not tired of change. They are tired of change that was never theirs to make.
#OpenSystemsTheory #SocioTechnical #OrgDesign #changeManagement
***
The series has become a book, available now on Leanpub.
https://www.organisationaldysfunctions.com -
From the Leanpub Blog: The Leanpub Podcast 🎙 Feat. Yevgen Nebesov, Author of The Architecture of Power: See what shapes outcomes. Find where you can act.
#books #leanpublishing #selfpublishing #systemsthinking #powerstructures #organizationalchange #sociotechnical #architectureofpower #changemanagement #softwarearchitecture #leanpub #techlead
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From the Leanpub Blog: The Leanpub Podcast 🎙 Feat. Yevgen Nebesov, Author of The Architecture of Power: See what shapes outcomes. Find where you can act.
#books #leanpublishing #selfpublishing #systemsthinking #powerstructures #organizationalchange #sociotechnical #architectureofpower #changemanagement #softwarearchitecture #leanpub #techlead
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From the Leanpub Blog: The Leanpub Podcast 🎙 Feat. Yevgen Nebesov, Author of The Architecture of Power: See what shapes outcomes. Find where you can act.
#books #leanpublishing #selfpublishing #systemsthinking #powerstructures #organizationalchange #sociotechnical #architectureofpower #changemanagement #softwarearchitecture #leanpub #techlead
-
From the Leanpub Blog: The Leanpub Podcast 🎙 Feat. Yevgen Nebesov, Author of The Architecture of Power: See what shapes outcomes. Find where you can act.
#books #leanpublishing #selfpublishing #systemsthinking #powerstructures #organizationalchange #sociotechnical #architectureofpower #changemanagement #softwarearchitecture #leanpub #techlead
-
NEW! The Leanpub Podcast 🎙 Feat. Yevgen Nebesov, Author of The Architecture of Power: See what shapes outcomes. Find where you can act.
#books #leanpublishing #selfpublishing #systemsthinking #powerstructures #organizationalchange #sociotechnical #architectureofpower #changemanagement #softwarearchitecture #leanpub #techlead
-
NEW! The Leanpub Podcast 🎙 Feat. Yevgen Nebesov, Author of The Architecture of Power: See what shapes outcomes. Find where you can act.
#books #leanpublishing #selfpublishing #systemsthinking #powerstructures #organizationalchange #sociotechnical #architectureofpower #changemanagement #softwarearchitecture #leanpub #techlead
-
NEW! The Leanpub Podcast 🎙 Feat. Yevgen Nebesov, Author of The Architecture of Power: See what shapes outcomes. Find where you can act.
#books #leanpublishing #selfpublishing #systemsthinking #powerstructures #organizationalchange #sociotechnical #architectureofpower #changemanagement #softwarearchitecture #leanpub #techlead
-
NEW! The Leanpub Podcast 🎙 Feat. Yevgen Nebesov, Author of The Architecture of Power: See what shapes outcomes. Find where you can act.
#books #leanpublishing #selfpublishing #systemsthinking #powerstructures #organizationalchange #sociotechnical #architectureofpower #changemanagement #softwarearchitecture #leanpub #techlead
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Listen to this podcast if you want to know why security and security champion programmes may thrive in a good company culture. And also to learn a bit about good company culture. And a lot more.
For me it was yet another reminder how everything in software development is a people problem as well as a technical one.
#security #SoftwareEngineering #sociotechnical #companyculture
via @lisihocke
-
Listen to this podcast if you want to know why security and security champion programmes may thrive in a good company culture. And also to learn a bit about good company culture. And a lot more.
For me it was yet another reminder how everything in software development is a people problem as well as a technical one.
#security #SoftwareEngineering #sociotechnical #companyculture
via @lisihocke
-
Listen to this podcast if you want to know why security and security champion programmes may thrive in a good company culture. And also to learn a bit about good company culture. And a lot more.
For me it was yet another reminder how everything in software development is a people problem as well as a technical one.
#security #SoftwareEngineering #sociotechnical #companyculture
via @lisihocke
-
Listen to this podcast if you want to know why security and security champion programmes may thrive in a good company culture. And also to learn a bit about good company culture. And a lot more.
For me it was yet another reminder how everything in software development is a people problem as well as a technical one.
#security #SoftwareEngineering #sociotechnical #companyculture
via @lisihocke
-
Listen to this podcast if you want to know why security and security champion programmes may thrive in a good company culture. And also to learn a bit about good company culture. And a lot more.
For me it was yet another reminder how everything in software development is a people problem as well as a technical one.
#security #SoftwareEngineering #sociotechnical #companyculture
via @lisihocke
-
Organisational Dysfunction of the Day
Endless alignment meetings
Context: The calendar is full of alignment meetings. Syncs between teams, cross-functional check-ins, steering group updates, all-hands, and the occasional offsite to get everyone on the same page. Each one feels necessary in isolation. There really are dependencies to manage and decisions that affect multiple parties. But the total volume is considerable, and after every meeting, more meetings are needed. The organisation is spending a significant portion of its working time just trying to stay coordinated.
OST explains: High coordination cost is a reliable indicator of poorly drawn boundaries: when teams depend on each other to complete their own work, they need constant communication to manage those dependencies. In a DP2 structure, a group owns its whole task, including responsibility for its own coordination and control, which is exactly what removes the need for this kind of external alignment work. Research on the software industry found that lack of coordination makes a more powerful contribution to low motivation than lack of control. Most discussion of engagement assumes autonomy is the primary driver; working together toward shared goals appears to matter more. The meetings are not just a productivity drain: they are what fills the space left by coordination that was never designed into the structure, and that absence is what erodes motivation. The goal is not fewer meetings; it is a structure where coordination is built into the work itself.
#OpenSystemsTheory #SocioTechnical #OrgDesign #agile
***
The series has become a book, available now on Leanpub.
http://organisationaldysfunctions.com -
Organisational Dysfunction of the Day
Endless alignment meetings
Context: The calendar is full of alignment meetings. Syncs between teams, cross-functional check-ins, steering group updates, all-hands, and the occasional offsite to get everyone on the same page. Each one feels necessary in isolation. There really are dependencies to manage and decisions that affect multiple parties. But the total volume is considerable, and after every meeting, more meetings are needed. The organisation is spending a significant portion of its working time just trying to stay coordinated.
OST explains: High coordination cost is a reliable indicator of poorly drawn boundaries: when teams depend on each other to complete their own work, they need constant communication to manage those dependencies. In a DP2 structure, a group owns its whole task, including responsibility for its own coordination and control, which is exactly what removes the need for this kind of external alignment work. Research on the software industry found that lack of coordination makes a more powerful contribution to low motivation than lack of control. Most discussion of engagement assumes autonomy is the primary driver; working together toward shared goals appears to matter more. The meetings are not just a productivity drain: they are what fills the space left by coordination that was never designed into the structure, and that absence is what erodes motivation. The goal is not fewer meetings; it is a structure where coordination is built into the work itself.
#OpenSystemsTheory #SocioTechnical #OrgDesign #agile
***
The series has become a book, available now on Leanpub.
http://organisationaldysfunctions.com -
Organisational Dysfunction of the Day
Endless alignment meetings
Context: The calendar is full of alignment meetings. Syncs between teams, cross-functional check-ins, steering group updates, all-hands, and the occasional offsite to get everyone on the same page. Each one feels necessary in isolation. There really are dependencies to manage and decisions that affect multiple parties. But the total volume is considerable, and after every meeting, more meetings are needed. The organisation is spending a significant portion of its working time just trying to stay coordinated.
OST explains: High coordination cost is a reliable indicator of poorly drawn boundaries: when teams depend on each other to complete their own work, they need constant communication to manage those dependencies. In a DP2 structure, a group owns its whole task, including responsibility for its own coordination and control, which is exactly what removes the need for this kind of external alignment work. Research on the software industry found that lack of coordination makes a more powerful contribution to low motivation than lack of control. Most discussion of engagement assumes autonomy is the primary driver; working together toward shared goals appears to matter more. The meetings are not just a productivity drain: they are what fills the space left by coordination that was never designed into the structure, and that absence is what erodes motivation. The goal is not fewer meetings; it is a structure where coordination is built into the work itself.
#OpenSystemsTheory #SocioTechnical #OrgDesign #agile
***
The series has become a book, available now on Leanpub.
http://organisationaldysfunctions.com -
Organisational Dysfunction of the Day
Endless alignment meetings
Context: The calendar is full of alignment meetings. Syncs between teams, cross-functional check-ins, steering group updates, all-hands, and the occasional offsite to get everyone on the same page. Each one feels necessary in isolation. There really are dependencies to manage and decisions that affect multiple parties. But the total volume is considerable, and after every meeting, more meetings are needed. The organisation is spending a significant portion of its working time just trying to stay coordinated.
OST explains: High coordination cost is a reliable indicator of poorly drawn boundaries: when teams depend on each other to complete their own work, they need constant communication to manage those dependencies. In a DP2 structure, a group owns its whole task, including responsibility for its own coordination and control, which is exactly what removes the need for this kind of external alignment work. Research on the software industry found that lack of coordination makes a more powerful contribution to low motivation than lack of control. Most discussion of engagement assumes autonomy is the primary driver; working together toward shared goals appears to matter more. The meetings are not just a productivity drain: they are what fills the space left by coordination that was never designed into the structure, and that absence is what erodes motivation. The goal is not fewer meetings; it is a structure where coordination is built into the work itself.
#OpenSystemsTheory #SocioTechnical #OrgDesign #agile
***
The series has become a book, available now on Leanpub.
http://organisationaldysfunctions.com -
Organisational Dysfunction of the Day
Endless alignment meetings
Context: The calendar is full of alignment meetings. Syncs between teams, cross-functional check-ins, steering group updates, all-hands, and the occasional offsite to get everyone on the same page. Each one feels necessary in isolation. There really are dependencies to manage and decisions that affect multiple parties. But the total volume is considerable, and after every meeting, more meetings are needed. The organisation is spending a significant portion of its working time just trying to stay coordinated.
OST explains: High coordination cost is a reliable indicator of poorly drawn boundaries: when teams depend on each other to complete their own work, they need constant communication to manage those dependencies. In a DP2 structure, a group owns its whole task, including responsibility for its own coordination and control, which is exactly what removes the need for this kind of external alignment work. Research on the software industry found that lack of coordination makes a more powerful contribution to low motivation than lack of control. Most discussion of engagement assumes autonomy is the primary driver; working together toward shared goals appears to matter more. The meetings are not just a productivity drain: they are what fills the space left by coordination that was never designed into the structure, and that absence is what erodes motivation. The goal is not fewer meetings; it is a structure where coordination is built into the work itself.
#OpenSystemsTheory #SocioTechnical #OrgDesign #agile
***
The series has become a book, available now on Leanpub.
http://organisationaldysfunctions.com -
Organisational Dysfunction of the Day
We need a resource
A client asks for two Java resources for three months, starting Monday. The staffing lead checks who is between engagements. A senior architect who has spent the last five years building depth in distributed systems resilience, the part of the job he actually cares about, gets slotted in because his profile says Java and he happens to be free. The work is basic maintenance, nowhere near what he has spent five years getting good at. Nobody asked what he is actually good at. Nobody asked what he wanted to be doing. He will do the work competently, because he is competent. He will also spend three months being, on paper, the same thing as anyone else who can write Java.
OST explains: Matching competence to work requires coordination, something that sees the whole picture and connects what each person can do to what an assignment needs. Where that coordination is missing, staffing collapses to whatever can be matched without it, and "Java resource" becomes a single visible attribute standing in for the person. Fred Emery distinguished redundancy of parts, more interchangeable people than a task requires, from redundancy of functions, more skill built into each person than any single task uses. Sorting people by a technology label and staffing by availability is redundancy of parts applied to expertise. The cost is more than efficiency: variety and continual learning, two of OST's six psychological criteria for motivating work, both depend on being staffed on what a person is actually engaged in, not on the coarsest label that matches. In a DP2 structure, no separate function needs to hold that coordinating knowledge; a group that owns its whole task already has it. The client asked for two resources and got exactly that. What they did not get, and had no way to ask for, was the specific expertise one of those resources spent years building and never got to use.
#OpenSystemsTheory #SocioTechnical #OrgDesign #sourcing
***
The series has become a book, available now on Leanpub.
http://organisationaldysfunctions.com/ -
Organisational Dysfunction of the Day
We need a resource
A client asks for two Java resources for three months, starting Monday. The staffing lead checks who is between engagements. A senior architect who has spent the last five years building depth in distributed systems resilience, the part of the job he actually cares about, gets slotted in because his profile says Java and he happens to be free. The work is basic maintenance, nowhere near what he has spent five years getting good at. Nobody asked what he is actually good at. Nobody asked what he wanted to be doing. He will do the work competently, because he is competent. He will also spend three months being, on paper, the same thing as anyone else who can write Java.
OST explains: Matching competence to work requires coordination, something that sees the whole picture and connects what each person can do to what an assignment needs. Where that coordination is missing, staffing collapses to whatever can be matched without it, and "Java resource" becomes a single visible attribute standing in for the person. Fred Emery distinguished redundancy of parts, more interchangeable people than a task requires, from redundancy of functions, more skill built into each person than any single task uses. Sorting people by a technology label and staffing by availability is redundancy of parts applied to expertise. The cost is more than efficiency: variety and continual learning, two of OST's six psychological criteria for motivating work, both depend on being staffed on what a person is actually engaged in, not on the coarsest label that matches. In a DP2 structure, no separate function needs to hold that coordinating knowledge; a group that owns its whole task already has it. The client asked for two resources and got exactly that. What they did not get, and had no way to ask for, was the specific expertise one of those resources spent years building and never got to use.
#OpenSystemsTheory #SocioTechnical #OrgDesign #sourcing
***
The series has become a book, available now on Leanpub.
http://organisationaldysfunctions.com/