Hack:
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle - The Bureaucratic Tear-Down & Assembling the Infrastructure Anew

By Aaron Anderson - Director of Strategic Organizational Initiatives at San Francisco State University, College of Business

June 22, 2011 at 10:38am

Punctuated Equilibrium

Double Loop Learning

Reduce

Reuse

Recycle

Tear Down

Moonshots

Reinvent the means of control

Enable communities of passion

Disaggregate the organization

Summary

The trouble with instigating, supporting and empowering communities of passion (CoP) is that the bureaucracies we created to establish organizations and make them successful, particularly after the agency has busted beyond a certain number of employees - say, arbitrarily 30 FTE, is that the architecture necessary to enable the growth of a company often suffocate it as it matures.

Problem

The problem this hack/solution addresses is one enabling the dismantling of old, decaying, or rigid bureaucratic infrastructure that stifle creative communities of passion to allow for new forms that enable CoP rather than asphyxiate them. Ask your self this one question: If we are really all about inventing new ways of managing, but still organize our operations in the same way (Board, C-Suite, mid-level, rank-and-file, etc), how can we expect the action of managing look any different?

Solution

What we need is not just frame breaking solutions, but we need to realized the architecture used to build a solid foundation may need to be disassembled, perhaps reduced, some portions reused, and others recycled into a new form. Effectively, in order continuously enable communities of passion, we need to the equivalent of an architectural tear down and rebuild, being careful to retain the DNA of the operation (or not), to craft an agile operation that is comfortable with periodic bouts of chaos in order to reinvent itself for a new era.

Practical Impact

If you create an organization that regularly, and traditionally reconsiders the whole of it's back end infrastructure and basic architecture, you may enable it to become more comfortable and accustom to change such that the culture accepts, embraces, and even encourages change and the whole of the organization becomes used to the chaos such that they would be discomforted by the false security that stable periods instil. By regularly assessing the overall composition of the operation from the foundation up, and making it okay to reduce, reuse, or recycle portions of it, we may see organizations that have more malleable design structures such that permanence becomes foreign, and fluidity, ambiguity and dextrous responses to impinging market forces become friends rather than enemies of the operation.

This is essentially an expansion of Romanelli and Tushman's punctuated equilibrium theory and capitalizes on the notion that it's only in chaotic times that the most consequential change occurs.

First Steps

Step one - Recognize you have a problem & that it rests in the very architecture that allowed you to become successful in the first place
Step two - Examine your status quo
Step Three - throw your existing organizational design to the wolves of change
Step Four - Embrace the chaos as your most creative time
Step Five - Work through it together
Step Six - Never cement the new status quo
Step Seven - Evaluate (ensuring the activation of double loop feedback cycles a la Chris Argyris), Rinse & Repeat

Credits

Hat tip to Romenelli and Tushman and their Punctuated Equilibrium Theory, and Chris Argyris the originator of double loop learning.

Also credit and hat tip to all my colleagues that have been collaborating in the Hackathon pilot group. Without the interacivity and discussion about communities of passion, this hack may never have been conjoured up.

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July 14, 2011 at 2:34pm

Terri Griffith

I like this idea, "Ask yourself these questions: if you were to topple over your current operation, tear down the foundation, and rebuild anew, would you build it up in exactly the same fashion? What would you reduce? What would you reuse? What would you recycle?" and actually suggest you open there. then shift the hack to focus on how you make decisions around your questions. Great opportunity to drill down.

June 27, 2011 at 3:06pm

Aaron Anderson

Thanks for the comments Deborah.

Given that I work in an organization that is over 100 years old (SF State was founded in 1899), and in an industry that dates back to the dawn of the Colonies here in the USA (Harvard founded in 1636) and close to 4 or 5 centuries across the pond (Heidelberg, Cambridge, Oxford, etc...), we are both witness to orgs that must adapt and change, or die.

The problem now is exactly what you have put your finger on - particularly in higher education operations - because the US system of higher education has been highly successful, particularly as measured post the GI Bill and the mid-20th century, we have gotten ourselves into a bit of a rut - both in terms of infrastructure and bureaucratic structures. What's it going to take to get higher ed orgs to reduce, reuse, and recycle? Could be a tipping point is at hand.

I would be curious to know the industries your two orgs are in to get a sense of the kind of adaptation they have weathered.

June 26, 2011 at 9:48am

Deborah Mills-Scofield

I am blessed to have 2 clients that do this regularly - both are private, both family businesses, 1 is 161yrs old, 1 is 60yrs old - 1 is led by a management team in their 40's-50's and 1 in their 20's-30's which demonstrates to me it's not age but mindset...the older company is the more fascinating to me because one wouldn't think they would rethink org structure since they've been incredibly successful - but that's their competitive advantage - they don't take success for granted and keep adapting and adopting to change - because as we know, the greatest barrier to success is....success. This is a great post - very hard to do - but very necessary