on Port 80: the harbor at the end of Ricci Street

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organization models
driving forces | restraining forces
applying the models | the human touch

Trends and Currents

The big picture. Where are we? How did we get here? Where are we going? Will you bet the corporate ranch that the Web will mature into as useful a medium as books and theater? Or will mainstream culture ultimately slough off the Information Age much as China sloughed off the science and religion of Matteo Ricci?

Something is happening here
But you don't know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?

-- Bob Dylan, Ballad of a Thin Man, 1965

In the recent presidential campaign, both sides took credit for the strong U.S. economy. The Democrats said it happened on their watch, so their policies must be driving it. The Republicans said it happened in spite of the Democrats and only because the Republicans were able to restrain the Democrats. And besides, it's the Reagan tax cuts from 15 years ago driving it all.

Let's back up. Do events just happen or do they cause one another? Organizations pay an MBA more than an entry-level customer service rep on the assumption that the MBA's decisions do more to cause increases and decreases in shareholder value. So how does an MBA make a decision?

Yes, maximizing shareholder value this quarter is important. Even more important is having a sense of history longer than the quarter, say the millennium (4,000 quarters), that guides strategic decisions.

How do you prioritize strategic options? One of your criteria is the likelihood of the option's causing the desired effect.

A similar question: where do you put the organization's resources? In the place most likely to have the desired effect.

And where might that be? In the place that seems to have caused that effect in the past? Or in the place that will cause that effect in the future?

In short, to manage well in the present, you have to be able to predict the future accurately. Do you rely on tarot cards and astrologers? Or a clear-eyed view of history?

To understand the present and to step confidently into the future, you have to understand the past, especially the forces driving change and restraining it.

Organization models

Do you buy more computers? Do you introduce a new organizing principle such as customer service? Do you train employees in team conflict resolution? 

Although an organization's decision-makers rarely discuss it, each is making these decisions based on a more-or-less conscious, more-or-less thought out mental model of driving and restraining forces. Will this model be examined or taken for granted?

On top of this model is another model: what is an organization?

Chemistry and psychology

The organization is a community that is no more or less than the sum of its people. The right mix of people, training, and just-in-time coaching will produce the best results. To a great extent, much of our life is still "tribal", so this model has never gone out of style.

Physics and engineering

The organization is a machine that can be modeled and tinkered with. Consultants and academics make careers on this assumption. This is the current status quo, so it will be very resilient and resistant to change. However, it's only two hundred years old, and it may be past its prime. Good riddance?

Biology and medicine

The organization is an organism that must be nurtured but will get diseased and will inevitably die. Process. TQM. A value-driven vision, mission, and culture.

Feel free to suggest additions to this chart by submitting the form below.

What other models can you think of? In your experience, does another model need to be described here? Send it along, please.

What drives change?

This page would get very long if I tried to list all the possibilities. For starters:

great leaders
the quest for raw materials
large-scale events such as wars and natural disasters
the will of the people
destiny
ideas
divine intervention or inspiration
the collective unconscious of the community
machines
inventions and tools
competition
problem-solving
curiosity
desire to be different or contrary
survival, fear
bad numbers last quarter, fear

What else drives change? In your experience, does another driver need to be listed here?

This list gets us into -ists and -isms. For example, if you develop the model that tools drive change, then you are developing the model of technological determinism. If you develop the model that ideas like liberty drive change, then you are developing the model of ideological determinism.

Is the Internet this decade's hula hoop? Is it the strongest driving force for change since the printing press? Well, then, where is it between the hula hoop and the printing press?

If you use the technological determinist model, you will see the Internet causing change, perhaps strengthening our economy. It doesn't matter whether people want to use it; after awhile, they have to use it, just to stay employed. Meanwhile, we sure aren't going to ask them to vote on it.

I'm not interested in championing one model or the other. I am very interested in your becoming aware of change models and in your developing the ability to make a case for any of them cogently and persuasively. 

What restrains change?

Again, this page would get very long if I tried to list them all. For starters:

people don't like change, especially when things are going well
organizations don't like change
people in power don't want the rules changed
people don't see the future clearly so they go the wrong way
people see an impossible future
people see the future quite clearly and work against it
change is too expensive, whether in dollars or something else, often not mentioned
people do not listen

What else restrains change? In your experience, does another restraint need to be listed here? Send it along, please.

All of that was true when rowers developed the sail, when writing was introduced, and when Gutenberg started printing Bibles. So let's look at the Internet. How can we tell whether the Internet is as important as the sail, writing, and printing?

When the Sun Stands Still

When I want to thoroughly search the Web and save the results, I use Copernic -- a piece of software you download rather than a Web site you visit. It's named after Copernicus, the Polish mathematician, a great example of thinking outside the box. According to Stephen Jay Gould in The Mismeasure of Man (p. 333):

Copernicus's heliocentric theory is ... a purely mathematical hypothesis, offering a simpler representation for the same astronomical data that Ptolemy had explained by putting the earth at the center of things.

The people of Copernicus's time -- 1473 to 1543 -- didn't believe him because his theory contradicted commonsense as well the common reading of several passages from the Bible.

Joshua, chapter 10, verses 12 and 13:

Then spoke Joshua..., "Sun, stand thou still...." And the sun stood still, and the moon stopped. ... The sun stopped in the middle of the sky and delayed going down about a full day.

Psalm 104, verse 5:

He set the Earth on its foundations; it can never be moved.

Isaiah, chapter 40, verse 22:

He sits enthroned above the circle of the Earth.

A century later, Galileo (1564 to 1642) was summoned to Rome on suspicion of heresy, forced to abjure, and sentenced to life in prison. That sentence was later commuted to house arrest. For what? For advocating that the earth revolved around the sun.

In The Invisible Computer: Why Good Products Can Fail, the Personal Computer Is So Complex and Information Applicances Are the Solution, Don Norman writes in the Preface:

Today's technology is intrusive and overbearing. ... The problem is that ... the technology is the easy part to change. The difficult aspects are social, organizational, and cultural.

In chapter 11, Disruptive Technologies, he writes about the restraining forces in the current hi-tech computer industry against new gadgets and gizmos.

A number of relevant factors dissuade existing companies from taking new technologies seriously:

New technologies are usually initially inferior to the existing ones. ...

Large companies require large business markets. ...

Any logical analysis of the return on investment shows that spending a few million dollars on improving the existing products will bring a greater return than the same funds spent on trying to design and develop new products for an unknown market. ...

Most divisions of a company are operated on a profit-and-loss basis, usually measured quarterly, sometimes yearly. The manager of the division is rewarded by how much of a profit is made. If some resources are diverted to start a new enterprise, even one that might someday be successful, it can only take away from the immediate profitability, thereby reducing the reward, the salary, the bonus, and the promotion possibilities for the current manager.

New products often cut across divisions, but it is difficult to get divisions of a company to coordinate their efforts. ...

A gravity well is exerted by the existing product stream.

nature of corporations

Applying the models

past | present | future

The Human Touch

Look at your own family and at the organizations where you work or play. A trivial example: one recent December, seven other adults and I spent a total of forty-some hours over three weeks, totally on the telephone in one-to-one conversations, making the schedule for my daughter's basketball league. It occurred to me that if everyone used the Web and email, we could have made the schedule in just a couple of hours over a weekend.

Of course, I raised the topic on the phone. Four of the seven use email, three of those four use the Web, and all agreed with me. One sheepishly declared he "should" get online, and two were adamantly against it. As long as they refused to use email, none of us did. It might save time, the two declared, but it would take away the "human touch".

Excuse me? Even their way, I didn't touch anyone. It was all on the phone. Yes, the human touch is important in a basketball game. Basketball on the phone or on the Web wouldn't be the same. But we were making a schedule. Administrivia. (That's what most MBA's get paid for.) We could have done it online and then all met for coffee if we wanted the human touch -- and still saved gobs of time.

Now look at your own changes to acquire the Internet communication skills you have. Look at the attitude shifts you're braving. Look at the skill sets you're mastering. Look at the forces driving you. Look at the forces that want to keep you from going further or at least to slow you down. Change is hard.

You walk into the room
With your pencil in your hand
You see somebody naked
And you say, "Who is that man?"
You try so hard
But you don't understand
Just what you'll say
When you get home

Because something is happening here
But you don't know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?

-- Bob Dylan, Ballad of a Thin Man, 1965