Here’s what causes things in business go awry.
Organizations are status machines. Companies are economic value machines.
When you try to make one kind of machine do the work of another kind of machine, you get messy results.
It’s like trying to use a lawnmower to harvest strawberries.
Organizational dynamics cause people to save face, appeal to hierarchy, and increase position. These are not effective ways to make things. But they are near inevitabilities in any incentive-based org structure. Sometimes the incentives are even negative incentives, like keeping your job in order not to lose security and status outside the organization.
In either case, collaborative trust creates too many risky vulnerabilities. Projects and initiatives come apart in the contradictions between status seeking and trust building. Status trumps value creation.
And that’s my Friday “Chris Fox ‘Cut the S***’ Moment™” for 14 June 2024.
