🇪🇺 3-minute read
In The Democratic Organization (1994), Ackoff explores why in society, we tend to be allergic to autocratic patterns, while in organizations, we adhere to them willingly, if not naturally. The way we understand our organizations determines both their shape and substance. Let’s explore and reflect on his 3 perspectives.
First, Ackoffs systemic view of organizations
Ackoff sees organizations as systems: parts that together are a whole, which by itself is a part of a greater whole, and so on. For example, an organization is part of society while it’s also a whole consisting of departments, teams, and people. This is referred to as holons in philosophy (and some niche business literature). According to Ackoff, wholes (orgs) influence parts (teams) in 2 ways: increasing or decreasing the variety of possible behavior.
Perspective #1 The mechanistic organization
The main characteristic is no freedom in choosing ends or means. In other words: there is a singular purpose (that of the whole), and there is one way to do things (bureaucracy – think McDonald’s that has instructions on how to flip a burger). The consequence is that behavior within the parts is minimal. The parts exist only to contribute to the whole.
The vibe that emerges is a reactive one. People tend to be disciplined, risk-averse, and become skilled in doing as told. Orgs are understood as machines and people as their cogs. You can imagine that innovation does not exist within such a system. And decision-making, even if decentralized, is optimized towards what’s acceptable (by higher management), not what’s best.
Greater complexity requires a greater variety of behavior to survive. But when the leaders dictate everything, it becomes increasingly difficult to manage both the form and substance of the whole and all its parts. Often this leads to slow decision-making, lack of alignment and collaboration, declining competitiveness, and a rise in overhead costs as more managers are needed to deal with complexity.
Perspective #2 The Organismic organization
The main characteristic mentioned by Ackoff is that teams have no say in either their ends or means. Management-by-objective is a famous example where goals are imposed on the parts, but they’re essentially free to achieve them how they want. The other scenario is where experts (HR department, medical experts, etc.) dictate how to do things, while parts are mainly free to pursue their own goals. Lastly, there is little concern of the whole towards its parts: often limited to the health, safety, and welfare of the people within the parts.
The vibe that emerges here is a responsive culture. Ackoffs explains: switching on the light because it’s dark is a response, and the light going on is a reaction. So parts have a choice to act or not. Still, the responsive attitude leads to dependence and consequently learned helplessness.
I feel this is where most organizations are stranded in their journey to embracing more autonomous teams. It’s like saying, ‘you can do as you please as long as you achieve these goals, which we’ll measure with these metrics.’ But, unfortunately, only suboptimal outcomes and disengaged teams will come from this stance.
Perspective #3 The Social Systemic Organization
Finally, the main characteristic of the social system org is the participation of the parts and the whole in both ends and means. The whole and its parts take equal care of each other.
This leads to a vibe of active adaption (read: innovation). Teams take much more proactive action to deals, or better, to anticipate change and seize market opportunities autonomously.
My reflection is that autonomous teams are not free to do as they please. Some call it freedom within a framework or, better, aligned autonomy. But Ackoff describes it best: free due to synergy. Because it is more than just aligning, it enables each other to do more than when they were not part of one system.