We read a lot these days about The Great Attrition or The Great Resignation, an economic trend which, we are told, has led to a serious labour shortage and is making it difficult for businesses to find and hire employees. I think McKinsey may have used the term
I agree that this is the most common approach, viewing people as cogs in a centrally-driven machine. That’s a function of hubris and history.
The hubris part is obvious and probably timeless: those at the top find it pleasant to view themselves as uniquely capable of this or that sort of thinking.
The history part, however, I think is a bit more interesting and currently evolving. Corporate Strategy formulation has its roots in martial organizational theory, which means it is built upon an ancient foundation of centralization. Perhaps that made sense in the era of Penrose and Taylor, when both the volume of strategically relevant information and the velocity of change in that information were a trivial fraction of what we face today in the strategy process. But, whether it ever worked well is beside the point of the current discussion: centralization of strategic information processing today incurs two fatal disadvantages that cripple the organization trying this approach: (1) information latency and loss compound exponentially with each layer through which they must move from the perimeter sensor zone to the “control core” , and (2) the sheer volume and velocity of information that must be considered simply outstrip the processing capacity of any central policy committee or leader. The cultural shift toward perception of strategy as a distributed or federated process has an understandable overlap with the Millennial generation’s lifelong experience that there is simply too much information to address it centrally. Consequently, I doubt your article (which seems a bit avant-garde now) will be viewed as terribly controversial after a few more passings of the baton.
“ Alienation from the product of labor: Workers do not feel a sense of ownership or accomplishment from the products they produce. Instead, they see their products as commodities that are owned by someone else.”. Not necessarily. professionals like engineers, actuaries, risk mgrs, asset mgr, supply chain expert, so many
others make projects that are different from the ones produced by the org & take sense of ownership/accomplishment
I agree that this is the most common approach, viewing people as cogs in a centrally-driven machine. That’s a function of hubris and history.
The hubris part is obvious and probably timeless: those at the top find it pleasant to view themselves as uniquely capable of this or that sort of thinking.
The history part, however, I think is a bit more interesting and currently evolving. Corporate Strategy formulation has its roots in martial organizational theory, which means it is built upon an ancient foundation of centralization. Perhaps that made sense in the era of Penrose and Taylor, when both the volume of strategically relevant information and the velocity of change in that information were a trivial fraction of what we face today in the strategy process. But, whether it ever worked well is beside the point of the current discussion: centralization of strategic information processing today incurs two fatal disadvantages that cripple the organization trying this approach: (1) information latency and loss compound exponentially with each layer through which they must move from the perimeter sensor zone to the “control core” , and (2) the sheer volume and velocity of information that must be considered simply outstrip the processing capacity of any central policy committee or leader. The cultural shift toward perception of strategy as a distributed or federated process has an understandable overlap with the Millennial generation’s lifelong experience that there is simply too much information to address it centrally. Consequently, I doubt your article (which seems a bit avant-garde now) will be viewed as terribly controversial after a few more passings of the baton.
“ Alienation from the product of labor: Workers do not feel a sense of ownership or accomplishment from the products they produce. Instead, they see their products as commodities that are owned by someone else.”. Not necessarily. professionals like engineers, actuaries, risk mgrs, asset mgr, supply chain expert, so many
others make projects that are different from the ones produced by the org & take sense of ownership/accomplishment
100pct
1.Strategy without execution is impotent.
2.Whatever your strategy is, it will be executed through people.
3.People are central to good strategy.