What data processing during the Cold War can teach us about management
I can’t help but recommend Yuval Noah Harari’s Homo Deus. One of my favorite parts is where he explains that: “Capitalism won the Cold War because distributed data processing works better than centralised data processing […].”
2 Bakers ordering flour
To best illustrate this point let’s take 2 bakers in the 1960s: Dimitri from Moscow and Michael from Chicago.
1/ To buy flour, Dimitri must send a request to the State Bureau of Trade. The Bureau then decides what amount of flour Dimitri’s bakery will get, at what price, and from which producer. They contact the producer and place the order on behalf of Dimitri’s bakery.
2/ Michael, in Chicago however, can contact any seller directly and order flour in seconds.
This is a classic centralized vs. distributed model. In Moscow all the data is centralized in the State Bureau of Trade and getting things done requires going through governmanet protocols, where as in Chicago people get things done quicker by contacting each other directly (distributed model).
2 Employees getting work done
Apply this to management, where the team manager is the government — you understand where I’m going.
If you keep everything centralized around your managers, you’ll decrease your employees’ sense of responsibility and make them dependent on your managers. You’ll lose in efficiency.
It’s also important to note that in Soviet Russia, the officials running trade operations were reportedly the most brilliant minds in the USSR. This also shows that no matter how good your managers are, empowering their teams to take action and responsibility for their management could be an even better.
In Yuval Noah Harari’s own words:
“When all data is accumulated in one secret bunker, and all important decisions are taken by a group of apparatchiks, you can produce nuclear bombs by the cartload, but you won’t get an Apple or a Wikipedia.”
See this recent article about Snap, and how decisions can’t be made when Evan Spiegel is on holidays.. see the link?
Eric Abensur
Want to build a culture of self-management at scale? We’re working on just that→ http://www.spot.coach
