Schlagwort-Archive: Joint

Future management involvement

One of the hurdles on the way to agility and entrepreneurship, vibrant corporate culture, and a secure psychosocial climate, genuine self-management, and intrinsic commitment are the decision-makers. With the transfer of authorities to act and distributed self-organization, they lose their raison d’être. In doing so, they overlook the fact that these new approaches are above all an expression of their inability to come up with coherent structures that prevent the crash into anarchy. Leadership was effective in the evolution until the number of members reaches the range of the Dunbar number – our ability to handle no more than about 150 people. At the same time, we can resist the modern demands for more employee independence. As a result, some leadership styles are not available in the future – dictatorship, rigid chains of command, Micromanagement.

The two areas that management always has to deal with are the distribution of roles (i.e., centralized vs. decentralized) and the way decisions are made (i.e., bottom-up vs. top-down).

  • Fragmented approach
    The extreme of anarchy already begins when the leaders leave decisions to the distributed workers, and they enforce their wishes from the bottom up without aligning with each other. With this fragmented approach, all decentralized aspects would be considered, but there would be no coordinated, holistic procedures. As a consequence, each location is an independent unit that decides locally, has its uncoordinated approaches and its view of what is happening, and acts in accordance with the situation.
    The company degenerates to an adhocracy with a formal holding without any task.
  • General approach
    Without taking the needs of the sites into account, it is no longer possible to find viable approaches. A bottom-up approach using measures to be coordinated, possibly over several stages, is the way out of an intangible confusion of intentions. The prerequisites are a common stance and early consideration of the individual points of view. For this purpose, existing implementations are readjusted at various levels. Unique features that have already been considered are sacrificed retrospectively in the interest of all – the sections must request decisions from the higher-level area and follow coordinated, bureaucratic procedures to finally obtain a necessary result.
    The enterprise forms a bureaucracy with several levels and becomes a rigid apparatus with elaborate decisions, a lot of duplication of work, and rework.
  • Joint approach
    A framework that is given from the top allows unnecessary efforts to be intercepted in advance. With the help of an overarching strategy, a collective self-image, a binding corridor of action, and a joint code of conduct, the decentralized units can introduce and realize their needs as long as they remain within the framework. Here, too, the locations must dispense with desired special features, can adopt joint achievements, and propose decisions. Together they develop reusable building blocks, coordinated processes, and mutually complementary results.
    The company becomes a democracy with clear orientation and common rules.
  • Concentrated approach
    The extreme of the rigid head office begins when the needs of the locations are ignored, and a top-heavy headquarter to the operative departments dictates what to do – without ever doing anything practical. In this approach, the individual departments (Purchasing, Human Resources, Strategy, Product Management, Sales, etc.) generate specifications for the locations. However, despite all the centralization, there are no cross-departmental requirements. Instead, each department perfects itself at the expense of the others – every person for oneself. Insufficient contact with the basis, green table decisions, and lack of responsibility generate internal disruptions that damage profitability. At the same time, however, company-wide decisions and structures become possible, with reliable processes and a valid result.
    The enterprise degenerates to an autocracy with a power structure far from the real world, which is not viable, since not only a lack of understanding prevails and inappropriate decisions happen, but at the same time, the energies of the locations remain unused.

Bottom line: The reason why old wine is always being filled into new tubes is that managers no longer have the answers to today’s VUCA world. The business is no longer manageable or predictable. There is a lack of stable structures to align with. Every simulation of the business provides nothing more than probabilities, which are destroyed by the next Black Swan. The speed at which the world is changing no longer permits chains of command but requires waves of inspiration that stimulate everyone. It no longer works without the interaction with on-site people – in the R&D the open exchange of ideas, in Production the transparency of the product, in Sales the understanding of the customer or in After Sales the availability of known solutions. On-site are the skills that make excellent performance possible. If the managers could manage these potentials in such a way that they produce viable results for the company, then, in the future, we would again have a meaningful management involvement.

The button – the ideal metaphor for an interface

One of the greatest discoveries of mankind, beside the hand axe and the fire, was the needle. Sewing individual pieces of pelts to fitting clothing not only protected against the cold, but also made the personal status visible. This stable seam permanently held the separated fabric edges together – which was not always desired. For this reason, the seam became more flexible by tying the parts temporarily. Today there are different connections: Hooks connected with an eyelet and push buttons as well as the most common, the hole buttons, flat discs that are inserted through corresponding holes. Not only clothing requires flexible junctions, but also relationships between systems of all kinds – people, artifacts and software.

All connections are based on similar building blocks as the buttoning.

  • Established joint
    If you intend to join two open ends or parts of fabrics or skins, you can glue, weld, sew, staple together, weave, knot, connect, tie, plug, hook, zip, plug, entangle or, for our example, button them up. The button is a reliable approach that can be easily applied. In business, processes and IT interfaces are implemented through set transfer points, coordination rituals and contracts that can be resolved and terminated at any time. This is possible, when there are fixed handover points – places or connectors.
  • Agreed rules
    Interfaces only work when the individual components, the button and the hole, fit together. The oversized button that does not fit the buttonhole cannot create a connection. The buttonhole that is too large will not hold the button reliably. In business, the interfaces are even more sensitive. The coordination is the pre-requisite, in order to let an interface fulfill its purpose in the IT or in the processes. This is possible, when there are common rules at the interface – a particular IT protocol or a common language.
  • Common goal
    All connections have in common that two or more parts combine to form a unit in order to pursue shared goals. The clothing should protect you, the charging station should charge the electromobile, a joint venture wants to capture a market or two parties want to govern together. The units connected in this way share a common destiny with rights and duties that are only valid as long as they are associated. This is possible when everyone fulfils his or her purpose – in an economic community or in a partnership.
  • Foreseeable timeframe
    Despite the naturally inherent transience of relationships, parts can be more firmly or loosely connected with each other. If the parts are to remain together for a longer period of time, durable solutions such as gluing, welding, joining and sewing are recommended. If only temporary cohesion is desired, all types of flexible connections such as hooks, zippers and buttons are the right choice. The interfaces in the business are always connected with expenditure, which have to pay off. Pursued irrevocable mergers are to eliminate such interfaces from the outset by repositioning themselves, breaking up redundant elements and subsequently undoing the union only with a lot of disadvantages. Temporary alliances build on form-free agreements that provide the temporary working basis. This is possible, when the groups in advance become aware of the duration of the relationship – a merger can always be retransferred or a temporary relationship can exist for a very long time.

Bottom line: There are more and more opportunities to connect individual groups with each other. While in the past the interplay was designed for a long time, today we have to deal with more and more short-lived associations. The current trend of platforms is a good example of the relationship dynamics – global networks, knowledge sharing between competitors, temporary memberships. At the same time, they can dissolve at any time and merge again as needed. On the one hand, the necessary mechanisms must function reliably and, on the other hand, can be resolved at any time. A good example of such a connection point is the button that connects safely and can be released again at any time. This makes the button an ideal metaphor for an interface.