Dave Snowden and friends - Organizational Design - Part 2

The discussion initiates with a focus on leadership and organizational design. Nigel shares his interest in leadership characteristics, emphasizing that leaders should display behaviors they want others to follow. The conversation addresses challenges in organizational change, especially where leadership acts against necessary changes, leading to suboptimal outcomes. The key issue highlighted is the resistance to innovation due to established leadership patterns.

Dave further elaborates on the inherent issues in leadership where a lack of visionary leadership can be a barrier to organizational growth. He shares personal experiences emphasizing how middle management often acts as a roadblock to innovation. The discussion shifts to focus on how leadership myths contribute to systemic flaws, suggesting that rather than changing individual leaders, organizations should refine their processes to facilitate better leadership dynamics.

The conversation centers on leadership roles during crises versus day-to-day operations. It's noted that during crises, traditional practices may be beneficial, as risk-taking increases and innovative solutions are more readily adopted. Further, the discussion touches on the nuances of multi-team systems, highlighting the importance of interactions between systems, machines, and people, and how enabling constraints can promote better organizational flow.

The dialogue shifts to transparency and risk management, suggesting that while transparency is essential for team self-organization, it can inhibit innovation by reducing risk-taking due to increased visibility. Furthermore, there's a critique of how leadership is distanced by middle management layers, which often massage information, thereby obstructing genuine organizational improvement. Personal experiences at companies like Toyota are shared to illustrate these concepts.

The focus turns to the utilization of resources and how effective management of these resources can impact organizational success. The conversation also covers the difference between visibility at a team level versus organizational level, illustrating how aggregated data can lead to inaccurate insights. Further, it is emphasized that external pressures, like quarterly targets, often lead to short-term decisions that can undermine long-term success.

The topic of scaling within organizations is discussed, particularly how managerial practices and transparency influence short-term versus long-term organizational health. It's noted that leaders often face conflicting demands between achieving immediate results and maintaining sustainable practices. This issue is compounded by structures that don't buffer communication, causing executives to make decisions based on incomplete or misrepresented data.

There's an exploration into the optimal size for organizational units, referencing Robin Dunbar's work on group sizes and cognitive neuroscience. The discussion critiques the simplicity of using arbitrary numbers for optimal group size without considering the complexities and interactions that define effective team dynamics. There's a call for better understanding of how informal networks and role interactions contribute to the overall efficiency of an organization.

There's a critical analysis on the influence of traditional manufacturing metaphors on management practices and how this has potentially stunted innovation. The conversation suggests that to create effective organizational processes, there's a need to focus on enabling constraints and scaffolding rather than rigid hierarchical structures. The discussion emphasizes understanding interactions over processes to facilitate more dynamic and adaptable organizational environments.

The narrative continues on the importance of emergent leadership, highlighting that leadership isn't just an assigned role but an emergent quality derived from group interactions and dynamics. There is emphasis on understanding leadership as a property co-created with followership, where traditional views on leadership could be counterproductive if they don't account for the complexities of human behavior and organizational culture.

Jay discusses the implications of visibility in management, explaining how roles like facilitation and leadership can become confounded, leading to unclear directives and organizational confusion. The conversation touches on the systemic requirements that foster narcissism in leadership roles due to the reward structures that emphasize short-term focuses, thereby inhibiting a more authentic emergence of leadership qualities.