"Principle #3: Elephants and Front-Line Pragmatism" would easily be confirmed by anyone who's ever worked in an organization that's large enough - it seems like an inevitable fate. You start small, nimble, and ambitious (as an org) long enough to build the bloat that comes with it. Great post - it's nice to put a label to a common phenomenon.
In the context of the follow-up email earlier today - I can totally see sending this post as a tool to (for better or worse) blow up disfunction in a team :)
Make it easier to work with whoever you need to. Absolutely, but the bigger you are, the more difficult. Even understanding what everyone does and how it all fits together can be a challenge.
I’ve been putting all this under a broader, loose umbrella of “Conway’s law” in my mind. But even if we don’t consider the resulting technical system produced (assuming a tech company), this intuitively makes sense across the “org-chart”.
I’ve been wondering for quite some time now how to address those elephants in the room.. how do we create incentives for this before it’s too late and (decreasing) revenue does it for us?
I 've got a feeling that you're familiar with VSM and Stafford Beer. Reading Ashby's Law being mentioned, it might be confirmed 😆
"Principle #3: Elephants and Front-Line Pragmatism" would easily be confirmed by anyone who's ever worked in an organization that's large enough - it seems like an inevitable fate. You start small, nimble, and ambitious (as an org) long enough to build the bloat that comes with it. Great post - it's nice to put a label to a common phenomenon.
In the context of the follow-up email earlier today - I can totally see sending this post as a tool to (for better or worse) blow up disfunction in a team :)
Make it easier to work with whoever you need to. Absolutely, but the bigger you are, the more difficult. Even understanding what everyone does and how it all fits together can be a challenge.
Interesting! Principle 3 sounds like another reason why the official org chart does not reflect how the real work gets done!
https://thelaterallens.substack.com/p/the-agile-trojan-war
That’s a great perspective.
I’ve been putting all this under a broader, loose umbrella of “Conway’s law” in my mind. But even if we don’t consider the resulting technical system produced (assuming a tech company), this intuitively makes sense across the “org-chart”.
I’ve been wondering for quite some time now how to address those elephants in the room.. how do we create incentives for this before it’s too late and (decreasing) revenue does it for us?