I read years ago about something called the Institutional Stupidity Factor.
The idea was that as an organization grew, it spent more and more time communicating internally, and became increasingly ignorant of what was happening outside it, in the world of its customers, employees, society, etc. One response was to decentralize, flatten the hierarchy, etc. It would be interesting to model this, assuming each person has a finite bandwidth for information, and see how to allocate this finite resource as the organization grows. A diverse organization would only be a virtue if everyone understands that it will only be partially coherent. What is that optimal coherence? If we make everyone know and agree to what everyone else is doing, we use up the bandwidth. If we have no internal communication or structure, why be one organization at all? One intuits a fractal, edge of chaos optimum in there, but where? -Mike Oliker Message: 2 Date: Fri, 4 Jun 2004 14:43:01 -0600 From: Owen Densmore <[hidden email]> Subject: [FRIAM] Aggregation Promotes Simplification? To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]> Message-ID: <[hidden email]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Thinking about how organizations appear to be more error prone (read idiotic) as they grow in size, I suspect there has been some research in this area. Basically the idea is that as more people are added to an organization, the subtle thoughts of the individual are lost, acting a bit like a sieve, leaving behind just the simple core ideas shared by most. Somewhat like a Markov chain that stabilizes after a certain number of iterations. Does anyone have pointers to good analysis in this area? -- Owen Owen Densmore 908 Camino Santander Santa Fe, NM 87505 Cell: 505-570-0168 Home: 505-988-3787 http://backspaces.net ------------------------------ Message: 3 Date: Fri, 4 Jun 2004 14:53:27 -0400 From: "Frank Wimberly" <[hidden email]> Subject: RE: [FRIAM] Aggregation Promotes Simplification? To: "'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'" <[hidden email]> Message-ID: <005001c44a65$393f2b50$640a0a0a@FRANKNOTEBOOK> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Here's a link to a .ppt presentation that, I think, argues for the contrary view or a view related to it. http://gladstone.uoregon.edu/~jbloom/opinion/Macro.ppt Frank --- Frank C. Wimberly 140 Calle Ojo Feliz Santa Fe, NM 87505 -----Original Message----- From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Owen Densmore Sent: Friday, June 04, 2004 4:43 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: [FRIAM] Aggregation Promotes Simplification? Thinking about how organizations appear to be more error prone (read idiotic) as they grow in size, I suspect there has been some research in this area. Basically the idea is that as more people are added to an organization, the subtle thoughts of the individual are lost, acting a bit like a sieve, leaving behind just the simple core ideas shared by most. Somewhat like a Markov chain that stabilizes after a certain number of iterations. Does anyone have pointers to good analysis in this area? -- Owen Owen Densmore 908 Camino Santander Santa Fe, NM 87505 Cell: 505-570-0168 Home: 505-988-3787 http://backspaces.net ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9AM @ Jane's Cafe Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, etc.: http://www.friam.org ------------------------------ Message: 4 Date: Sun, 6 Jun 2004 18:43:53 -0600 From: Owen Densmore <[hidden email]> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Aggregation Promotes Simplification? To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]> Message-ID: <[hidden email]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Interesting slide set. I think it helps me sharpen the distinction. Collections of folks acting as an organization (bureaucracy) act like a larger, dumber individual. Aggregation is a sort of filter. Collections of people acted upon as a computer, however, have emergent computational abilities. They are great predictors of human behavior. Actually, I've heard that in the voting realm, polls are more accurate than the actual vote itself! I.e. the bugs in the voting procedures are bad enough and the statistics of polling are good enough that the polls win. I sent jbloom an email asking for more pointers. -- Owen Owen Densmore 908 Camino Santander Santa Fe, NM 87505 Cell: 505-570-0168 Home: 505-988-3787 http://backspaces.net On Jun 4, 2004, at 12:53 PM, Frank Wimberly wrote: > Here's a link to a .ppt presentation that, I think, argues for the > contrary > view or a view related to it. > > http://gladstone.uoregon.edu/~jbloom/opinion/Macro.ppt > > Frank > > --- > Frank C. Wimberly 140 Calle Ojo Feliz Santa Fe, NM 87505 > > -----Original Message----- > From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On > Behalf > Of Owen Densmore > Sent: Friday, June 04, 2004 4:43 PM > To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group > Subject: [FRIAM] Aggregation Promotes Simplification? > > Thinking about how organizations appear to be more error prone (read > idiotic) as they grow in size, I suspect there has been some research > in this area. > > Basically the idea is that as more people are added to an > organization, the subtle thoughts of the individual are lost, acting a > bit like a sieve, leaving behind just the simple core ideas shared by > most. Somewhat like a Markov chain that stabilizes after a certain > number of iterations. > > Does anyone have pointers to good analysis in this area? > > -- Owen > > Owen Densmore 908 Camino Santander Santa Fe, NM 87505 > Cell: 505-570-0168 Home: 505-988-3787 http://backspaces.net > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9AM @ Jane's Cafe > Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, etc.: http://www.friam.org > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9AM @ Jane's Cafe > Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, etc.: > http://www.friam.org ------------------------------ Message: 5 Date: Mon, 07 Jun 2004 08:46:15 -0600 From: rcparks <[hidden email]> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Aggregation Promotes Simplification? To: "The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group" <[hidden email]> Message-ID: <[hidden email]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Owen Densmore wrote: > Thinking about how organizations appear to be more error prone (read > idiotic) as they grow in size Here's where we disagree - I believe that organizations of any size become more error prone with age. As organizations age, the behaviours that provided enough success to allow the birth of the organization become more and more inappropriate to the changing environment. Eventually, if the organization does not adapt, it will die. A very few organizations are capable of evolutionary adaptation to changes in the environment, gradually changing without major trauma to the organization or the individuals that form it. Some organizations manage to achieve revolutionary adaptation to changes in the environment, following a cycle of gradually increasing inappropriate behaviour, a major reorganization and adoption of new behaviours and then starting the cycle again. This type of organization is more traumatic to itself and its component individuals and may, eventually, die in one of the revolutions. Many organizations never adapt and eventually either cause enough irritation of the environment so as to be terminated or become irrelevant and ignored. Organizations can change from one type to another over time and the line between the types is blurred. An example of the first type of organization is the United States' Federal government as specified in the Constitution. The initial behaviour of that organization would not be appropriate to its current environment and has evolved over the last 215 years. One might argue that the current behaviour is inappropriate, but that would be mistaking the immediate with the overall behaviour. Evolutionarily adapting organizations also follow a cycle of increasingly inappropriate behaviour ending with the evolutionary adaptation. The level of dissonance with the environment is smaller at its peak than the cycle of revolutionary adapting organizations. The US slipped briefly into revolutionary adaptation during the War Between the States and Prohibition. For an example of a revolutionary adapting organization that seems to have achieved evolutionary adaptation, look at the governments of most European countries. These have a longer history than the United States of revolutionary adaptation (empire - feudalism - empire - parliamentary democracy). For the last 50-plus years they have exhibited evolutionary adaptation. My own organization, Sandia National Laboratories, shows some of the fossilization of age but has managed evolutionary adaptation. At least we haven't had massive layoffs of nuclear weapon engineers in favor of information technologists. In part this is attributable to a skunkworks corporate culture with a can-do attitude. Another reason that Sandia has manage to evolve rather than revolt is diversification. This latter actually argues against your size point - larger organizations can be more diverse which allows a greater range of behaviours and more ability to adapt. In recent years, the dissonance with our environment has increased. I attribute this increase to the increasing intrusion of government bureaucracy into an organization that has always worked in a skunkworks mode. Organizational size plays a much smaller role in failure to adapt to the environment than does age. Greater size can help by allowing greater diversity of behaviour. Smaller size makes adaptation less traumatic to the organization in that fewer individuals need to change. Age is the key, however, since it is only over time that organizational behaviour becomes inappropriate to its environment. -- Ray Parks [hidden email] IDART Project Lead Voice:505-844-4024 IORTA Department Fax:505-844-9641 http://www.sandia.gov/idart Pager:800-690-5288 |
Mike Oliker wrote:
... > A diverse organization would only be a virtue if everyone understands that > it will only be partially coherent. What is that optimal coherence? If we > make everyone know and agree to what everyone else is doing, we use up the > bandwidth. If we have no internal communication or structure, why be one > organization at all? One intuits a fractal, edge of chaos optimum in there, > but where? You've just given me an Aha! moment. For all the years working at Sandia, I've been amazed at the ignorance displayed by people in one department of things happening in other departments. Folks go their entire careers without knowing what most other Sandians do. This concept of sharing limited bandwidth to achieve optimum coherence is exactly why these situations exist. -- Ray Parks [hidden email] IDART Project Lead Voice:505-844-4024 IORTA Department Fax:505-844-9641 http://www.sandia.gov/idart Pager:800-690-5288 |
In reply to this post by Mike Oliker
Interested you said that Ray. I was thinking LANL when I read Mike's
message. Belinda Belinda Wong-Swanson, Principal Innov8 LLC, 624 Agua Fria, Santa Fe, NM 87501 www.innov8llc.com email: [hidden email] tel: 505-660-7948 fax: 505-474-4659 -----Original Message----- From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]]On Behalf Of rcparks Sent: Wednesday, June 09, 2004 8:06 AM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] RE: Friam Digest, Vol 12, Issue 3 Mike Oliker wrote: ... > A diverse organization would only be a virtue if everyone understands that > it will only be partially coherent. What is that optimal coherence? If we > make everyone know and agree to what everyone else is doing, we use up the > bandwidth. If we have no internal communication or structure, why be one > organization at all? One intuits a fractal, edge of chaos optimum in there, > but where? You've just given me an Aha! moment. For all the years working at Sandia, I've been amazed at the ignorance displayed by people in one department of things happening in other departments. Folks go their entire careers without knowing what most other Sandians do. This concept of sharing limited bandwidth to achieve optimum coherence is exactly why these situations exist. -- Ray Parks [hidden email] IDART Project Lead Voice:505-844-4024 IORTA Department Fax:505-844-9641 http://www.sandia.gov/idart Pager:800-690-5288 ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9AM @ Jane's Cafe Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, etc.: http://www.friam.org |
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