8 Ways Organizations With Shared Power Are Ultra Effective
“We may not be interested in chaos, but chaos is interested in us.” — Robert Cooper
Decentralization has long been a social and political movement long before it became a technological one.
In companies and organization “Singlesite” centralization is a more authoritative, command-and-control framework. In a centralized organization such as this, a few top managers hold most of the power.
When change was slow, and the future was pretty much like the present, hierarchical organizations were perfect structures for business and government. The world is no longer predictable, nor are solutions obvious. Old structures are no longer sufficient for new complex challenges. — Valdis
On the flip side, decentralized organizations spread responsibility for specific decisions across the network and to the smaller leaders
Tesco, the supermarket chain is an example of a decentralized organization.
From this article,
It’s often questioned that four layers of management within a store can generate annoying bureaucracy with a bad effect on coordination and collaboration among managers. So it’s suggested that reducing layers of management must be done as soon as possible to create more flexibility and faster flow of information.
Hinting at the fact that one less level of management than usual is in place.
“The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations”
This was written by Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom and is a book recommendation by Cedric Bahl (see his other recommendations).
In this book, the starfish represents decentralized organizations and the spider describes more hierarchical, command-and-control organizations.
The Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum stated after reading: “[it has] not only stimulated my thinking, but as a result of the reading, I proposed ten action points for my own organization.”
8 Principles of Decentralization In Organizations
- When attacked, a decentralized organization tends to become even more open and decentralized (page 21)
- It’s easy to mistake starfish (decentralized) for spiders (centralized) (page 36)
- An open system doesn’t have central intelligence; the intelligence is spread throughout the system (page 39)
- Open systems can easily mutate (page 40)
- The decentralized organization sneaks up on you (page 41)
- As industries become decentralized, overall profits decrease (page 45)
- Put people into an open system and they’ll automatically want to contribute (p.74)
- When attacked, centralized organizations tend to become even more centralized (p.139)
All mostly powerful virtues and advantage; but I do see point number 6 as a potential talking point. In situations when the organization has an abundance of financial backing, however, the system may still have a good use case.
Get my eBook and the notes I got from the silicon valley sent to you:
I’m freely giving out over 50 documents of notes from Silicon Valley CEOs, to MBA’s on how to start a startup PLUS my eBook “Football Coding & Startups”.
Author: Natu Myers
(Website: Natumyers.com) (eBook: NatuBook.com)
Natu Myers is an entrepreneur, software engineer, and investor experienced in delivering multilayered value and energy to thousands through the mediums of software, business, and sport.He built Innovator.Supply, an HR recruiting software for VR, AR, and chatbot enthusiasts. This was followed his other service, Hypetroop Market. He has a fitness page on Instagram and does fitness consulting. He was selected as one of Canada’s top productivity hackers.
