Bureaucracies evolved as a means to assemble and deploy the resources necessary to do a job.
As organizations grew, so did the bureaucracies that supported them grow in sympathy. Somewhere along the way, size gets in the way of efficiency.
An organisation of 20 people requires an organising template, a bureaucracy of a sort. However, the people all know each other, so the ‘rules’ do not inhibit communication, everyone knows what they need to know and do via the personal networks.
Go to an organisation of 100 people, particularly when they are not co-located, and the social system starts breaking down, being substituted by communication within the walls of every persons place in the functional hierarchy. We tend to see up and down the silo, rather than between people who need a piece of information.
Once you get to a large organisation, the bureaucratic silos have become impenetrable barriers.
Technology has given us the answer, as used well, it empowers the personal networks in a highly leveraged manner. However, to be cross functionally successful, the culture within the organisation has to change, as the personal networks cannot break down the silos by themselves. To do that, leadership is required, making it explicit that functional responsibility is no longer the only relevant factor, in fact it is the lesser of two responsibilities.
The first is to the success of the organisation, measured by the delivery of outcomes, followed by the functional responsibility.
It is every persons individual responsibility to ensure that those who need the information others have are in a positon to get it and use it without the bureaucratic silos getting in the way.
Achieve this, and you will have combined the scale that is enabled by functional silos, with the agility of small groups.
An Intelligent bureaucracy!
Wouldn’t that be nice to see?
