The Command-And-Control Mindset Is Killing Companies
corporate-rebels.com
corporate-rebels.com
The "command" part is leaders telling the people who work for them what end state they need them to achieve -- not only at the outset of the mission, but periodically throughout operations as the situation changes.
The "control" part is subordinate units/leaders providing real-time feedback. This might be something like, "we are carrying out the mission as planned" or it might be, "hey you told me to stay on the north side of the river but I need to cross it to accomplish the mission"; importantly, deviation from coordinating instructions in accomplishing the mission is a key feature of the mission orders-based warfighting doctrine currently in place in most major militaries.
In the words of US doctrine (which uses the common abbreviation for command and control): > C2 is not a one-way, top-down process that imposes control on subordinates. C2 is multidirectional, with feedback influencing commanders from below, from above, and laterally.[0]
0: http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/army/f...
The safe path to promotion is sucking up to the level of management right above your manager. Always show up early, look nice and busy, and make sure you're always presenting at meetings.
The true rebels will be seen contracting or running their own businesses. Or defeated and working in the dark corners of the corporate world just waiting for the day they can escape, real or imagined.
of course, the trade-off for being a consultant is that you're very well compensated but can be fired for any reason, or no reason at all, without any of the legal protections afforded an employee. this is a business model for management consulting firms but i've seen plenty of smaller outfits or individuals do this as well.
I agree about the engagement part, but given that I've always worked in places where people were highly engaged, the next challenge is how to direct that engagement towards a common vision and purpose with efficient execution.
Isn't it just better to keep companies small? Maybe have/work on multiple companies, have companies interact better with other ones so they can accomplish more, but keep them smaller.
Ronald Coase[1] explains why an integrated large company can be more productive and efficient than interacting individuals (or interacting small companies). Basically, internal transactions (departments) cost less than external transactions (contracts).
E.g. there is no way for Apple to sell an iPhone for $500 or Amazon AWS to offer EC2 compute for 1 penny per hour if those 100,000+ employees were split up into thousands of smaller 5-person companies.
It seems reasonable that many entrepreneurs have ideas that require more than 5 people to execute.
It occurs to me that if we believe this, the USA as a country could make our entire economy more productive by making contracts less expensive. 5 seconds thought leads me to believe that "less expensive" might have a number of things involved, from simpler legal language that doesn't require a lawyer to understand, to a legal system that isn't set up to benefit lawyers, to less intellectual property restrictions, to a less adversarial legal system. Clearly much of this is impossible to implement.
It's not the cost of drawing up the contract that adds a significant part of the cost. The contract work itself that adds overhead.
Of course not. You accept the tradeoff because it is in your interest to abstract away risks. Part of the costs involved in this risk taking comes from how the contracts are set up.
For example, your employee doesn't have an actual contractual obligation to fulfill such and such goals every month, while an external contracted firm may have.
I didn't say the tradeoff is that other people make profit. The tradeoff is the overhead cost. Sure, that can be another tradeoff -- obliged fulfillment. Either way you're paying the contractee a little more for that.
It's not the contract itself (the legal expense) that is the major cost in a contract. Yes it is some overhead, but is it really a significant part compared to the excess you are paying to have it contracted vs in house?
The point is. It's still going to cost you more, even if the legal cost is zero.
I wasn't trying to say that it is viable to do EVERYTHING with a 5-people company. I was trying to say it is viable to do a lot, and that it is maybe possible to make it more viable to do more.
Imagine there are no companies with the need for dedicated representatives, since they are 5-people companies also.
That depends on what you're trying to achieve: the bigger the goal you're striving for, the more people you'll need for it. Yes, technology is an amazing lever, but it's not infinitely long: 5 people aren't going to make the next smartphone, electric car or rocket.
Generally small companies move faster and can innovate much faster, large companies can bring those innovations to massive scale. This is why you often see the model of large companies acquiring small companies then scaling the business (think Facebook and Instagram).
Can we get coffee sometime? I'd love to exchange thoughts and ideas and just learn your perspective as well. I'm in SF (moving to Oakland soon - looked up your twitter).
"The outcome of Gallup’s study clearly shows the strong correlation between employee engagement and business performance. "
Good, the author says it's a correlation.
But the supporting graphic is titled:
"Employee engagement affects key business outcomes"
Which implies causality.
I can easily image a company that runs through early success, growth and profitability and the sense of prestige that would bring to the employees. Absenteeism, accidents, defects could be low because employees are engaged: They are winning in the market, everyone's getting bonuses, their acquaintances say, 'oh, wow!' when they mention where they are working.
Then, turn that company down, with the same employees, and you'd have the opposite effect. A scandal such as a LendingClub, Uber, Theranos, that changes the fortune suddenly, over night, with the same employee base, and I'd not be surprised if absenteeism, accidents and defects surged.
In that scenario, it's business performance affecting employee engagement.
"If you’re interested to learn more about how to reach The Promised Land, don’t hesitate to contact us for an inspiring talk, rebellious workshop, or practical support during your organization’s transformation."
These are management consultants. Their statistics are about as good as those from psychologists, except they are usually directly paid for getting particular outcomes with their statistics.
In this case, their case is that there is a major problem in every organisation ! And they can help ! For $xxxxx they'll "solve this problem" (with a one-time talk about it, in case you were wondering), and for $xxxxxx they'll give a workshop, which will surely allow any manager to prove to his director how engaged he is, while (hardly worth mentioning, really) also allowing him to go home earlier for a whole week and probably get a free, really fancy, dinner or two.
Keep this in mind when judging the value of what they're saying. Of course, I do think they have a point, but they're part of the problem, not the solution.
There was a survey I read which asked the question "would you prevent your employer from gaining a million dollar in profit if you personally got $500 out of it ?". Apparently 86% would, and a further 10% was undecided.
I once asked some outright, they explained that they are so busy helping clients they don't have any time to help themselves.
Successful consultants are parasites, they are like that fungus that takes over ants, forcing them to climb into the sun, before exploding them all over the field.
Hah citation?
I wonder what that survey would look like with a strong profit sharing setup?
> In that scenario, it's business performance affecting employee engagement.
All of the examples that you gave aren't really business performance, they all represent some combination of fraud or terrible behavior. Sure, it could be fraud hiding negative business results, but the fundamental issues in all of those are managerial misbehavior.
In my limited experience in North America as a software developer, there has been little "command and control", and far more "chaos", i.e. the businesses didn't seem to have any kind of control over their software development, and would tolerate a surprisingly low amount of predictability. This was almost always because non-technical types were in charge. (edit: Non-technical types often view software management as intractable, and tend to utilize vague approaches like "we'll ship something on this date".)
We're a fundamentally authoritarian society who organizes all our systems like their mini-fiefdoms. I've never understood why a society that prides itself so much on its tradition of democracy would build within itself an economy of autocratic rulers, but I guess these kind of contradictions are as much a part of our culture as anything else.
If I focus and engage and double my productivity, I don't get to spend half as much time at work, instead I get twice as much work. If I double my productivity and double my amount of work, I'm still not going to double my salary or double my PTO or anything like that.
Not to mention that most corporations have no problem whatsoever laying people off when it'll save them enough money. "Sorry you dedicated 80 hours a week and weekends to this project, but the economy's bad so we're canceling it and laying off your division. Oh, and BTW if you try to work on something similar after we lay you off, we'll sue you. Bye."
I think many people have realized at this point that corporations have very little respect for their employees and that spending significant mental energy being super engaged and efficient has mostly negative consequences (at most companies).
I bet a company could improve productivity quite a bit if they let employees take the rest of the week off once they finished the week's work. But that would require management to have an understanding of the work being done and to plan well, so it won't happen.
1) Measure engagement - surveys, more surveys. Targets for managers of the surveyed, dismissal, removal of bonus. Survey manipulated, rendered political tool. Lieing all round. Disaster.
2) Targeting of dissent. "we've finished debating, now we're executing" "boss, there's a brick wall" "you're fired" "oh" "bang" "oh". Anyone who disagrees or complains about some aspect of central function in anyway it immediately branded disengaged and targetted for removal.
Here's a rule. No one can practices management consulting unless they have worked at a fortune 500 for 30 years.
Here's another one. No one can have a chair at a business school unless they've worked in the C suite of a fortune 500 for 30 years.
This would cut this rubbish right out.
Regardless,
Engagement, in my view, is like a double-edged sword--it cuts both ways. On one hand, getting employees to "pull the wagon" can immensely add value to the organization. On the other hand, employees attaching too much of their self-worth to their work (a consequence of being highly engaged) can lead to employees' egos being of greater importance than the results.
Low engagement is probably just a symptom of some other organizational ill.
Here is an excerpt from an interview [0] with the portfolio manager.
John Rotonti: How do you define a high-quality business?
Jerome Dodson: Parnassus Investments defines high-quality companies as those with competitive advantages, quality management, and responsible business practices. I believe a high-quality workplace is one of the indicators of company quality. That's why the Endeavor Fund, which was originally named the Workplace Fund, focuses on investing in good workplaces.
[0] (https://www.fool.com/investing/2016/12/19/interview-with-jer...)
Or if you can't find an opportunity like that, some kind of meta escape?
This can be argued for the first three of these, but Lehman and especially Enron were slaughtered by the relentless pursuit of (financial) innovation and absence of effective control.