What is “sociotechtonics”?
“Sociotechtonics” is a principle I coined many years ago by combining “sociotechnical” with “tectonic“. Organizational stresses can behave a lot like earthquakes, building slowly usually without visible effect until at some point they are triggered into erupting in sudden crises often serious out of proportion to their nominal cause. These crises can be as devastating as any 7.0 shake on the San Andreas or Cascadia Faults, at least for those they surround.
In retrospect, it’s usually clear how these crises result from various socio-technical imbalances that have been bottled up and suppressed by the organization for what seemed like good reasons at the time. Once such a crisis has erupted, it’s usually much more difficult to find an acceptable solution or solutions than it would have been to attend to the building stresses. Managers walk a fine line between “fixing what ain’t broke” and waiting for sociotechtonic Armageddon.
In theory, we ought to be able to do better than the geologists. Our raw material should be easier to observe, and certainly moves at a faster pace. But we don’t understand any better than they do why something suddenly slips sideways or under something else, bringing the whole thing suddenly crashing down. And our retrospective explanations are seldom either much appreciated or useful in the next situation.
This idea has evolved gradually, starting with sociotechnical design — a well-established, if still somewhat obscure, analytical tradition dating back to the 1950s. Basically, it distinguishes between the technical and social subsystems within organizations, and highlights problems frequently caused by sub-optimizing on either subsystem (usually the technology). At the National Science Foundation in the 1980s, our highly interdisciplinary team used sociotechnical models very effectively to study the impact of new emerging technologies, particularly information technologies. We sponsored the first studies of the impact of personal computing on organizational work (over the objections of many senior NSF staff, who considered personal computing as largely irrelevant to organizational performance — this in 1981!)
Somewhere along the line, it occurred to me that many of the effects of sociotechnical imbalance in organizations were, by virtue of organizational dynamics like cognitive dissonance reduction, inertia, and the Iron Law of Oligarchy, often damped down and suppressed until they became intolerable sources of stress — subsequently erupting into crises that were much more severe than might have been experiences if they were faced earlier when things could still be changed. This seemingly perverse organizational behavior was wholly predictable, yet very difficult to address.
At the time, I was editing the 1981 NSF Report to the Congress on New and Emerging Technologies. One of the articles I included related to the at the time still relatively new geology subfield of plate tectonics. It seemed to me that the underlying processes of subduction, slippage, and gradually accumulating stresses resulting in occasionally catastrophic readjustments bore a strong if only analogical relationship to the pattern of sociotechnological changes observed in organizations of all types. I remember first calling this “sociotechtonics” during a conference presentation sometime in the mid-80s. It sort of came to me on the spot, and I thought that it provided an interesting and graphic description.
Since then, I’ve observed this pattern over and over again, both in my own organizations and in others. Patterns of denial reinforced by inefficient and ineffective communications systems and combined with incompatible goals and interests in a political jungle result in accumulating stresses that no one has any particular interest in resolving. Eventually, something cracks — often a relatively minor problem not even necessarily related to the main issue. One thing leads to another, and suddenly there is an enormous crisis spreading into many areas of the organization. Now in crisis mode — possibly the least efficient manner in which organizations can operate — it can take enormous quantities of resources and time to repair the cracks and, if lucky, find and repair the original cause. More usually, despite the relief of the stresses provided by the crisis, they will continue to accumulate further stress until the same thing happens again.
Geologists can’t repair the gaps between tectonic plates that lead to earthquakes. But organizations can, in theory at least, repair themselves. The first step, of course, is understanding the origin of the problems. Sociotechtonic issues aren’t always easy to spot, but if we’re willing to subject all parts of our organization to scrutiny, they aren’t invisible either. And there are well-established sociotechnical design principles and procedures that well-trained consultants can use to diagnose and treat such conditions. But it’s not easy, and there’s no shortage of other consultants who are willing to apply various varieties of Band-Aids to the cracks. By the time the next sociotechtonic crisis becomes evident, they are long gone.
At any rate, sociotechtonics is an interesting and stimulating metaphor for the crises many organizations face today. It deserves further exploration and elaboration by both analysts and practitioners. I’ve changed the name of my blog to Sociotechtonics, offering (I hope) a more professional-looking identity, consistent with the general theme of considering social and technological change.
I’m hoping to open a discussion both here and through my Medium channel, Sociotechtonic Change, on uses and limitations of this metaphor. Your thoughts and contributions are encouraged!
Originally published in LinkedIn Pulse, 3/4/2017
