First I would like to mention some of the influence which I have been picking up from other people.
1. Clay Shirky:
Talks about Collaboration vs Institutions: Shirky predicts that in 50 years the current form of hierarchical organizations will go away.
Talks about cognitive surplus: Decreasing work hours and increasing leisure time over the years with new 2-way technology we have immense possibilities with people's time.
2. Nasem Taleb: argues about being big and complex.
3. Fritjof Capra: In hidden connections book, relates that how organizations are lively through their informal networks and Communities of Practice. How living social systems (organizations) cannot be changed but disturbed and they take only the message which is meaningful to them.
4. Christensen Clayton: tells us how a company built by innovation is killed by innovation and also a possible remedy to it.
5. Robert Burgelman: About innovating within a company. He talks about the role of middle management (variation) and the role of top management (selection) and role of strategy in it.
6. Paul Romer: with his concept of Charter cities.
7. Muhammad Yunus: On building Social Business.
8. Some other talks on Change and new trends:
a. Sridhar Vembu on teaching school kids
b. Creating cultural change.
c. Malcolm Gladwells books like "The Tipping Point" and mention of a company which has only 150 employees per office.
Based on the above mentioned links and borrowing from my other practical experience probably I can qualify to think of a proposal. (I have always been interested in volunteering for student chapters and other adhoc setups. Like the one in which I was involved recently has fared quiet well. The setup is mostly non-hierarchical and voluntary basis )
Although I am not yet able to completely systematize the understanding of such setups, which are decentralized and voluntary contrary to the setups of the organizations we have now. However, it seems that there is an emerging new order to it!
You could argue that, why even ask these questions of change and new organizational structures and why not do things the old way!
I have my explanation for it: I read news on daily basis about tech-companies, recently many have failed to respond to the competition and it seems big part of the reason is that they are not able to change. (so understanding change will help a lot!) and the world which we live in now is very different (our current understanding of it seems outdated)
To me it seems that there are certain elements which are needed for this new kind of organization (which I would like to implement at some point of time)
Coming from an old school way of doing organizations, I list some of the points here which I think is one of the possible way.
a. An old school way of hierarchical organization reduced to just as the container/skeleton/facilitator of new ad-hoc, voluntary, decentralized and informal networks.
b. For these ad-hoc, voluntary, decentralized and informal networks (Let's call it AVDI Net) there might be some properties similar to that of a startup/voluntary movement etc
- Presence of functions like problem owner to bring accountability.
- a strong community of volunteers around the problem.
- Presence of community of practices (CoP) and identification of them in the network.
- To get the dialog going in the group several functions residing either in separate individuals or all in one individual would be needed. Like: Devil's advocate- A person to act as critic, Synthesis - A person to distill the conversation to make sense, Moderator - a person to facilitate the conversation etc
- Very efficient communication tools for the network.
- Ability of network to regenerate itself.
d. Network (AVDI Net) owners as Entrepreneurs (replacing middle management) to make the evolution of organization possible and making organization leaner. (linked to point a.1.)
Maybe I will add more to the list but I also invite the readers to comment/suggest and criticize the post :)
