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Synopsis
This book shows you how, by applying newly discovered scientific principles from the field of complexity theory, you can create hyper-productive business organizations that exhibit the same unplanned order seen in natural systems and free societies. These Spontaneous Enterprises, like the credit card giant Visa, will exceed the productivity and growth of managed enterprises by as great a margin as free economies outperform planned economies. And for precisely the same reasons.
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About the Author
Thomas Pyzdek is listed as an Outstanding Writer and Author by the International Who's Who in Quality. He has provided consulting to many Fortune 100 firms in a variety of industries. He founded two successful companies: Quality America, Inc. (statistical software) and Quality Publishing, Inc. (books and multimedia training materials). He is the author of numerous books and articles on quality management and engineering subjects. He writes a regular blog. Pyzdek has taught at the University of Arizona and the University of Phoenix, as well as for the American Society for Quality (ASQ). He has masters degrees from the University of Arizona in Systems and Industrial Engineering (1982) as well as Management (1995). Pyzdek is a of ASQ and he is ASQ certified as both a Quality Engineer and a Reliability Engineer. In 1995 he was awarded the prestigious ASQ Edwards Medal for outstanding contributions to the practice of quality management, and the Eugene L. Grant Medal for outstanding leadership in quality education.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Like other books, this book explains why modern organizations drain the enthusiasm and energy from their members. Unlike other books, it also tells you what to do about it. It is unlike any "management" book you have ever read. You will not find case studies describing how Firm A became "excellent" or how Firm B "reengineered it's core processes." Instead you'll learn How modern firms are like the planned economies of the now defunct USSR. Why strategic planning so often fails, and must fail. Why organizations have so much difficulty adapting to change. How the very structure of modern organizations leads to perverse behavior from the factory floor to the executive suite. Why efficiency destroys creativity, and why the most productive organizations are not the most efficient. How new scientific discoveries, combined with ancient insights on human nature, offer a way to design super organizations, "Spontaneous Enterprises," that avoid the above problems. The form of modern organizations is what I call "hard-wired." The organization chart is the blueprint and the policy and procedure manuals are the operating instructions for this machine. The idea is, like a circuit board, certain outputs (products, services, profits) will be produced when certain inputs (money, people, ideas) are provided. Such organizations are highly efficient; resources are carefully managed to avoid waste. However, they are also very inflexible and difficult to change. These organizations tend to rely heavily on formal mechanisms, such as chartered teams, to create change. Senior management forces the various functions to provide resources to the teams (people, facilities, etc.), in effect tapping into the main resource circuits to draw off energy for change. Maintaining the momentum for change in these organizations requires perpetual vigilance by top management because the "true" resource owners--the managers of the functions whose resources are being appropriated--are constantly trying to stop the energy drain from their areas. Such organizations are constantly fighting "resistance to change." In the 1980s firms like IBM and General Motors offered good examples of such organizations. A second type of organization is the "soft-wired" organization. In a soft-wired organization there are floating resources that are not fully under the control of a particular function. Like the RAM of a computer, these resources can be easily reconfigured to perform a variety of different activities. A computer can be an accounting machine one minute, an engineering machine the next, and a game machine the next. 3M's tradition of allowing certain technical people to claim 15% of their time to pursue projects of their own choosing is an example of soft-wiring. The Brazilian company Semco has freelance engineers who report to no one and receive a share of the proceeds from any ideas and innovations they dream up. There are many examples of soft-wiring, and they produce amazing results. The third type of organization is the topic of this book, the emergent organization, which I call the Spontaneous Enterprise. Scientists call these organizations "complex adaptive systems." Complex adaptive systems are all around us, from the rainforest, to the brain, to the free market. Systems vastly more complex than any business firm, and also very orderly. Until recently we could only marvel that these amazing systems could exist and function so beautifully without a leader or a plan. Scientists have begun to discover the rules that govern such systems. This new knowledge allows a deeper understanding of how these systems function. With our new understanding we can see how more effective human organizations might be designed. Organizations that depend on self-organization for order, rather than on a costly and ineffective system of rules and hierarchy. The Spontaneous Enterprise is designed like a free society. Unlike managed systems, the Spontaneous Enterprise cannot be controlled. However, it can be cultivated. In the words of the Nobel Laureate economist F.A. Hayek: "Sometimes, though we may not be able to bring about the particular results we would like, knowledge of the principle of the thing will enable us to make circumstances more favorable to the kinds of events we desire. An explanation of the principle will thus often enable us to create such favorable circumstances even if it does not allow us to control the outcome. Such activities in which we are guided by a knowledge merely of the principle of the thing should perhaps better be described by the term cultivation than by the familiar term 'control.'" Here you will learn the basic principles for cultivating Spontaneous Enterprise. Although we have over two centuries of experience with this approach in politics, the application of these ideas to business is still very new. Thus, there are as yet few business examples. One very prominent example is Visa International, described by Visa Founder and CEO Emeritus Dee W. Hock as "chaordic." According to the Chaordic Alliance, a chaordic organization is any self-governing, adaptive, nonlinear, complex system which exhibits characteristics of both chaos and order. The Visa chaord, founded in 1970 in the midst of chaos in the infant credit card industry, has grown at a rate of twenty to fifty percent for a quarter of a century. The design of Visa is unlike that of any traditional organization. The 23,000 financial institutions that create its products are simultaneously its owners, its members, its customers, its subjects and its superiors. Today, Visa is a trillion dollar business processing more electronic financial transactions every week than the US Federal Reserve wire system does in a year, and doing it at a cost of less than a penny each. It is unlikely that your Spontaneous Enterprise will look much like Visa. Chances are it will be unique, unlike any other Spontaneous Enterprise. However, since it will be an organization of human beings, it must, like Visa, be based on certain principles. Simple, clear principles such as distributed governance, limited authority, absence of a command hierarchy, etc. Principles that are reflected in a set of simple rules that guide the behavior and protect the rights of the members of the enterprise. This book will provide those principles, as well as guidelines for developing your own specific rules based on them.
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The End of Management
Seller: BookHolders, Towson, MD, U.S.A.
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Condition: Good. [ No Hassle 30 Day Returns ][ Ships Daily ] [ Underlining/Highlighting: NONE ] [ Writing: NONE ] [ Edition: first ] Publisher: Atlantis Pub Pub Date: 5/15/1999 Binding: Hardcover Pages: 168 first edition. Seller Inventory # 6685323
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