Author: naomiorgdesign

I was in a phone discussion last week with someone who wanted to know how many layers their organisation should have and what the right span of control should be for each manager. (Layers in an organisation refer to the number of levels of staff there are from the most junior to the most senior. A span of management is the number of employees that a single manager is responsible for, usually in terms of allocating work and monitoring performance.)

It's a question I get asked frequently and people want to know the 'right' answer. I'm usually a bit flummoxed by this need for a formula when there are so many variables. Some organisations e.g. the US Government has 21 layers while others organisations e.g. Valve, a software gaming company, have one or two – they cheerfully say that 'nobody "reports to" anybody else'. This is likely to be the difference between being an established 'analogue' organisation and being a newish 'digital' one (See the white paper 'Building a Digital Culture ' from PWC) although that's a bit glib. Digital organisations are more recently established than most analogue ones and thus haven't had the time to accrete the trappings of bureaucratic infrastructures.

However, since almost all organisations are aiming to move from analogue to digital (including government organisations) surely organisation designers and developers should be looking again at the layers and spans accepted wisdom? This established approach is typified in the information I found when I scanned my 'layers and spans' folder. It comes from the Arizona National Guard Human Resources Office, and unfortunately is undated. It firmly states:

Basic requirements:
(1) First level supervisors over a General Schedule (GS) position should supervise 6 to 8 positions.
(2) First level supervisors over trades and crafts, wage grade (WG) work should supervise 8 to 15 positions.
(3) Second level and higher supervisors (WS or GS) should have no less than three (3) subordinate supervisors reporting to them.
(4) Deputy and full assistant positions should be used only in large, complex organizations.
(5) When two (2) or more employees occupy identical additional (IA) or almost identical positions, each employee must work at least 50 percent of his or her time at the grade level of the position. Where many employees in the same organization are classified to the same type and level of work, the percentage of time spent working at the classified grade level should substantially exceed 50 percent.

This prescription was probably ok in an era (or organisation) of command and control, but this has been eroded by all kinds of factors: easier access to information, employment patterns, technology, societal changes, and so on. Looking for a prescription on layers and spans is not going to give a 'right' remedy.
But because we seem wedded to layers and spans (see the article 'Equality may be cool but staff still like the security of hierarchy') I have a section on them in the forthcoming second edition of my book on organisation design. Here's an extract:

'Layers and spans are structured to help managers get work done, so the first part of an organisational decision on the number of management layers and the span of a manager's control requires discussions and agreement on what managers are there to do. In general, managers plan, allocate, co-ordinate and control in order to achieve what the late Peter Drucker described as their three tasks:

1 To contribute to the specific purpose and mission of the enterprise.
2 To make work productive and the worker achieving.
3 To manage the social impacts and social responsibilities of the organisation.

Clearly, determining what configuration of layers and spans is likely to work in a given organisation depends on the situation, organisational purpose and a host of other factors related to the interpretation of what the three tasks entail and the weighting given to each of them.

Multinational conglomerate General Electric (GE) has learned that as situations change so does the need to review layers and spans. Its annual report 2013 (p.8) states that

'To achieve our goals we must simplify GE … Having lived through multiple crisis events in the past decade we attempted to manage volatility through layers and reviewers. Like many companies we were guilty of countering complexity with complexity. … We are transforming GE around the 'culture of simplification' … We are driving a leaner structure … We have learned that fewer layers, simpler rules and more field empowerment improve execution and accountability. … At GE, we think simpler is better. Simplification means quicker execution and closer collaboration with customers. It's a focus on efficiency, speed and market impact. '

To help get a good enough answer to the "how many layers " question, there are four rules of thumb (related to the four management activities of planning, co-ordinating, controlling and allocating). Each layer should:

• be flexible and adaptable enough to enable managers to forward plan in a context of constantly changing operating environments;
• facilitate co-ordination between business units (Michael Goold and Andrew Campbell suggest there are six forms of business unit to unit co-ordinating activity: leveraging know-how; sharing tangible resources; delivering economies of scale; aligning strategies; facilitating the flow of products or services; creating new business);
• have appropriate control and accountability mechanisms (note that any task, activity, or process should have only one person accountable for it and accountability and decision-making should be at the lowest possible level in the organisation; overlap and duplication, fuzzy decision-making and conflict resolution processes are all symptoms of lack of adequate controls);
• enable its managers to allocate effectively the range of resources (human, time, equipment, money, and so on) they need to deliver their business objectives.

If these four attributes are working well, it is likely that the layer is adding value to the organisation, in that it is facilitating speed of operation, innovation, integration, flexibility and control. If it is not evident that the layer is doing this, it may be redundant and the reason for its existence should be questioned.

Determining a sensible span of control is possible (though infrequently done) both for an individual manager and for the type of work carried out in a business unit or organisation. The method involves considering the following:

• The diversity and complexity of the work performed by the organisation
• The experience and quality level of the workforce
• The extent to which co-ordination or interdependence is important between employees and groups
• The amount of change taking place in the work environment
• The extent to which co-ordinating mechanisms exist and are effective, geographic dispersion
• The extent to which job design and tools allow direct performance feedback to the employee
• The administrative burdens on each level of management
• The expectations of employees regarding development and career counselling.

Robert Simons suggests that any job comprises four different spans: control (including people, working capital, facilities, infrastructure and intangibles), accountability, influence and support. Each of the spans can be adjusted to reflect the business strategy and meet current organisational requirements, but to ensure high performance the spans related to the supply of resources (control and support) must be in equilibrium with the spans related to demand for resources (accountability and influence).

There is no right number of people that one person can manage (though a commonly held view is that five is the optimum – but that could well be a myth) as various factors affect a manageable span. The relationship between spans and layers is not straightforward either, although wide spans of management are typical of organisations that have few layers.'

What's your view on layers and spans? Let me know.

PS When I scanned my 'layers and spans' folder I found a guide from Booz, the consulting company, Managing Spans and Layers (Booz is now part of PWC). Bain, another consulting company, has one too Streamlining Layers and Spans.

I've been keeping half an eye on the Tesco news in the last couple of weeks. It's A UK based supermarket chain which has been found to have overstated its profits and is now being investigated, because. "Breaking accounting rules to exaggerate profits is a cardinal sin as far as investors are concerned and Tesco has been punished severely with shares falling more than 10% at one stage …" Four executives have been suspended. It is not clear yet whether they colluded in the profits overstatement, but that crossed my mind as a possibility.

Then, in the way of things, I then started to notice other stuff going in which conformed to my label of 'collusion'. I looked up the definition just to check whether I had the right term in mind.

Collusion is an agreement between two or more parties, sometimes illegal and therefore secretive, to limit open competition by deceiving, misleading, or defrauding others of their legal rights, or to obtain an objective forbidden by law typically by defrauding or gaining an unfair market advantage.

It's a firmly worded legal definition involving unfairness, malpractice and intent and in this context often applied to cartels or price-fixing. However, this didn't quite address the complexity of things I'd observed which were less about specific intent to deceive or mislead or defraud and more about people colluding in 'just obeying orders' or going along with something that they felt uneasy about for any number of reasons that include not wanting to 'career limit', fear of the person with more positional power, not wanting to 'rock the boat', fear of penalty for non-compliance and so on. These 'fear factor' things – individually or combined – have the consequences of eliciting collusion in something that isn't quite right.

When I worked for British Airways I worked on a project on collusion amongst airline crew. Many aircraft accidents happen because there is an unhealthy relationship between the pilots and the other crew members. (See some examples from the 1970 – 1990s here). First officers, for example, frequently wouldn't speak up when they saw something going wrong – effectively colluding in a belief that things were fine.

This 'going along with something' that is questionable or feels wrong/unfair, or corrodes respect and trust I think is form of collusion, which is damaging at many levels. Sadly, in most organisations it takes bravery and also recognition that it is likely to be personally damaging to challenge a situation, system or process that is questionable. Who wants to get the treatment that whistleblowers typically get or to be labelled a 'maverick' or a 'troublemaker?

One of the articles I read this week was 'Just obeying orders: rethinking obedience and atrocity' . In this, the author discusses how the now infamous Milgram experiments purport to 'provide startling evidence of our capacity for blind obedience – evidence that inhumanity springs not necessarily from deep-seated hatred or pathology, but rather from a much more mundane inclination to obey the orders of those in authority, however unreasonable or brutal these may be.'

But this researcher offers another perspective on the Milgram experiments. In his analysis 'what this means is that those who shock do so not because they are unaware of the consequences of their actions, but because they know what they are doing and believe it to be worthy. Rather than being blindly obedient, they are engaged followers'. He goes on to say 'One thing, however, is certain. Whether you agree with Milgram or not, or accept our "engaged followership" theory, there are few issues in psychology that are of greater social significance. These are not just a matter of the academic understanding of authority, obedience and genocide. "Obedience" has long served as an alibi for those involved in atrocities, and it is routinely articulated in the defence: "It wasn't my fault, I was only obeying orders."'

This is a rather startling finding when we consider how much emphasis we place on workforce engagement and 'getting people to buy in' both of which could also be construed as 'be obedient'. And this has led me to wonder if the very mechanisms we (organisation design and development people) use to either maintain the status quo or to introduce new things, is in fact done in order to create 'engaged followers' who are unwilling or unable to question the leaders, the rules, or the 'way we do things (or want to do things) round here' whether it be in the established or the new order.

Take an example of many established performance management systems that operate a stack ranking system. "Stack ranking, also referred to as forced ranking, where managers across a company are required to rank all of their employees on a bell curve, has been a controversial management technique since then GE CEO Jack Welch popularized it in the 1980s. Only a small percentage of employees, typically about 10%, can be designated as top performers. Meanwhile, a set number must be labeled as low performers and are often fired or pushed out, giving the system the popular nickname "rank and yank."

Numbers of those involved in operating stack and rank systems are convinced that it is not helpful in developing performance. Indeed, many organisations have given up on them. When i4cp asked companies in 2009 how many of them used stack ranking systems, 49% said yes. But by 2011, only 14% used them.

But this still leaves numbers of organisations who do use a forced ranking system, where people are fully aware of its numerous shortcomings and yet continue to be 'good corporate citizens' and go along with it. Are these people engaged followers who believe in the system or colluders in supporting a practice that evidence suggests is damaging?

Examples like this abound in organisations: people go along with things that don't square with adult to adult relationships, good customer service, integrity and so on. It's not just the high profile misreporting of results or overstating oil reserves, or ignoring 'massive failures in patient care' as in the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Public Trust. It's also in the stuff that doesn't catch the public eye in the same way.

Examples I've met include glossing over some types of information, choosing some statistics over others and presenting stuff in a certain way because 'that's what x wants', but then I wonder whether this is just the normal give and take of organizational dynamics. Where does something shade into collusion with something that is not 'right', and what is the yardstick of 'rightness'?

These are difficult questions that I think all consultants (internal or external) need to reflect on. And Chris Rodgers has written a useful blog that does just that. Take a look at it and then try out this example for yourself. If you are in an organization that selects and recruits via a competency based assessment – as many organisations do what would you do if you felt they were not useful in selecting good candidates? A recent Economist piece on this practice of notes that, 'Not many people like them [competency based selection processes]. One complaint is that the tests favour candidates with time to practice the type of answers recruiters want-—and that they encourage dishonesty.

Would you go along with the system as an engaged follower (and if so, why) or would you challenge it (and if so, how)? Let me know?

I'm often asked what I recommend as sources of info on organisation design. I've compiled the list below for those interested in exploring some of the theories of organisation design, getting in touch with practitioners, and staying up to date on trends, new business models, technologies, and so on that have an impact on organisations. It represents some of the stuff that I've found or am finding useful. It's not an exhaustive list nor do I endorse any of the products, services, or content represented on the websites listed. NOTE: A variant of this list will appear in the second edition of my book Economist Guide to Organisation Design coming out early next year

Books
Block, P., Flawless Consulting: A Guide to Getting Your Expertise Used, 3rd edn, Jossey-Bass/Pfeiffer, 2011.
An introduction to becoming a consultant, taking the reader through the key principles in a lively, straightforward, practical way.

Brynjolfsson, E. , MacAfee, A.The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies W. W. Norton and Co Inc. 2014
Reports on the effects new digital, robotic and other technologies that enable completely new ways of working and interacting will have on organisations and society.

Drucker, P.F., The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done, HarperCollins, 2002 edition.
A book that is as vivid in its recommendations today as when it was first published in 1967. Some things stay the same, such as not enough time, difficulty in making decisions and making effective contributions.

Hatch, M-J, and Cunliffe, A. Organization Theory: Modern, Symbolic and Postmodern Perspectives Oxford University Press, 2013
Easy to understand discussion and analysis of theories of organisation with practical examples and clear explanations.

Kahneman, D. Thinking Fast and Slow. Penguin Books, 2011.
A fascinating read on the way we consciously and unconsciously think. And the effect of this on the way we make choices, judgments, and decisions.

Morgan, G., Images of Organization, 2nd edn, Sage Publications, 2006.
A more academic book, this is a fascinating survey of looking at organisations through different lenses: as psychic prisons, as political systems and as machines, among others.

Pentland, A. Social Physics: How Good Ideas Spread. Penguin Books, 2014.
An analysis of how ideas spread, using techniques from big data interpretation and organisational mapping technologies.

Peterson, C. A Primer in Positive Psychology. Oxford University Press, 2006.
Describes the growing field of positive psychology in an engaging and practical way

Scott, W.R., Organizations: Rational, Natural, and Open Systems, 5th edn, Prentice Hall, 2003.
An overview of key aspects of organisational theory. This is more a textbook than a "how to" book, giving insights into how and why organisations have evolved in the way they have.

Senge, P.M. et al., The Dance of Change: The Challenges to Sustaining Momentum in Learning Organizations, Doubleday/Currency, 1999.
A readable and sensible look at methods of helping organisations develop by providing the conditions for individuals to develop.

Stacey, R. Strategic Management and Organisational Dynamics: The Challenge of Complexity , 6th Edn., Financial Times/Prentice Hall, 2010
Explores organisations and strategies as designed through discussions and stories rather than rational approaches.

Waber, B. People Analytics: How Social Sensing Technology Will Transform Business and What It Tells Us about the Future of Work FT Press, 2013
How new techniques in analytics and sensing can give insights into the way work is done and how people interact to do the work.

Staying in touch: newsletters, blogs, journals and video
Fast Company
Provides print and digital channel news and information on how companies create and recreate themselves, how they innovate and compete, and how they introduce new business practices.
Website: http://www.fastcompany.com

Techcrunch
TechCrunch leads in information on technologies – new products, start-up companies, breaking tech news, and insider info. It offers many tech related info-services through multi-channels.
Website: http://techcrunch.com/

Harvard Business Review
A monthly and on-line general management journal with articles, related blogs, podcasts, video, webinars and newsletters.
Website: http://hbr.org/magazine

Journal of Organisation Design
A somewhat theoretical/academic peer reviewed publication but with some practically relevant articles on all aspects of organization design
Website: http://www.jorgdesign.net/

McKinsey Quarterly
A quarterly print and digital journal of business management strategy articles, surveys and interviews, covering global business strategy, management and economics with additional newsletters, video, surveys, and commentaries.
Website: http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/home.aspx

MIT Technology Review
Provides information on the way technologies are shaping the world. Offers features, news analysis, business reports, photo essays, reviews, and interactive digital experiences
Website: http://www.technologyreview.com

Quartz
A digital international news guide on all things related to the global economy and global business.
Website: http://qz.com/

Science Daily
Breaking science research news and articles on technology, climate, neuroscience, health, and other topics many of which are related to organisation design and work performance. Channels include daily newsletter, articles and video.
Website: http://www.sciencedaily.com/

Strategy + Business
A periodical for leaders and managers on topics related to strategy, operations, human resources and things relevant to keeping an enterprise going.
Website: http://www.strategy-business.com/current_issue

Wired
A monthly print and digital journal focusing on the effects of computing and technology on business culture, the economy and politics with podcasts, games, opinion and video.
Website: http://www.wired.com

Organisations and communities
Drucker Institute
Provides information, resources, ideas, and connections on methods of improving organisations in line with Peter Drucker's theories.
Website: http://www.druckerinstitute.com/

European Organisation Design Forum
A community of organisation design practitioners in various chapters throughout Europe. Holds an annual conference.
Website: http://eodf.eu/

Institute for the Future
IFTF is an independent, non-profit research organization that researches and supports organizations in reflection and practice on the futures they want.
Website: http://www.iftf.org/home/

Organization Design Forum
An international professional association for those interested in organisation design, dedicated to advancing the theory and practice of the organisation design through expertise, education and resources.
Website: http://www.organizationdesignforum.org

Plexus Institute
A non-profit organisation providing an introduction to complexity science with webinars, regular conversations, and insights on applying complexity theory.
Website: http://www.plexusinstitute.org

Royal Society of Arts
Its purpose is to develop and promote new ways of thinking about human fulfilment and social progress to bring '21st century enlightenment'. Take a look at their Animates.
Website: http://www.thersa.org

Sante Fe Institute
An organisation devoted to creating a new kind of scientific research community, emphasising multidisciplinary collaboration in pursuit of understanding the common themes that arise in natural, artificial and social systems.
Website: http://www.santafe.edu

Tavistock Institute of Human Relations
Offers research, consultancy, evaluation and professional development work to support change and learning, as well as publications in the fields of inter-organisational relations, the emergence of the knowledge society and problems of organisation, particularly in the delivery of public policy.
Website: http://www.tavinstitute.org/index.php

What are your organisation design info recommendations? Let me know.

I'm involved in a project to drive service up and costs down. Part of the 'costs down' bit is reducing the numbers of people in the workforce and simultaneously reducing the costs of the estates portfolio – we're looking for fewer, cheaper buildings. It's a common enough scenario and one faced by many organisations. The UK Post Office is a case in point. Since 1981 the number of post office branches has dropped from around 23,000 to its current 11,500, with, I'm assuming a simultaneous drop in the number of directly employed staff and the number of subpostmasters (97% of all post office outlets are sub post offices, run by private business people: subpostmasters).

The Post Office issues an Annual Report and their website presents their Strategy 2020. In these documents you'll find clear information on their plans which includes reducing their estates by putting more post office branches in shops, developing their digital services, having longer opening hours in many of their extending their product and service range, and so on. Their three values: Care, Challenge, Commit, underpin and inform the way they do things. There is a clear and strong story to tell on where they're trying to get to and how they're going to do it. What's not presented is the behind the scenes work that has gone on to get to this believable 'good news' story.

I haven't been involved in the Post Office redesign and transformation but it's clear that it hasn't been the smooth ride that the glossy documents present. A Sunday Times report says that:

Humility and patience were certainly in demand last year [2013] as the Post Office's management fought an epic tug-of-war with its unions. The Communication Workers Union called no fewer than 12 strikes, saying staff felt "alienated" by a programme of cuts and branch closures and describing the board as out of touch. The National Federation of SubPostmasters, which represents the Post Office's 8,000 independent store managers, criticised a multimillion pound bonus pot set aside for executives as "morally reprehensible". The strife threatened to derail Royal Mail's float. It ended in April only when the two sides agreed a pay rise of up to 7.3% for the company's foot soldiers. Even after the ceasefire, the Unite union attacked the company's "flawed" strategy and said its 93m GBP operating loss this year painted a "sorry picture of mismanagement". "A union has a lens to look through, which sometimes is different from the one we look through here," Paula Vennells, CEO, replies mildly. "We sat down and worked hard — literally, retail is detail. We worked through different jobs, working hours, pay scales and we managed to change the way some post offices work so we could take staff hours out and create a fund to give people a pay rise."

The kind of picture perfect presentation v the messy reality and muddling through is common to all organisation designs and transformations. But for some reason the messy reality of arguments, different perspectives, coalition building, and power plays are not usually revealed in the case studies and reported as an integral part of the path to get to the glossy document – perhaps one reason why the TV drama House of Cards is so wonderfully addictive because it shows totally believably the 'tale of high-level government dysfunction populated by double-dealers who hold their aces under the table'. And why 'The Office' TV series has such enduring appeal as it hilariously exposes the emotions and behaviours anyone who has worked in an office experiences.

The more I see 'transformation' efforts in play, the more it seems to me that organisation design is all about these human interactions and behaviours and hardly at all about the numbers, formal strategies and plans. It's about how people express and act on their perspectives and how they interact as they do this. Chris Rodgers calls this the 'muddling through' approach which he is firm is 'the only thing that they [leaders] can do, given the social complexities of everyday organizational life.'

In one of last week's meetings I saw this muddling through in play. Up to now some people have been 'fretful' – there hasn't been a good enough story to tell about a) what the estates/workforce target is that we have to meet by the given date and b) how we would achieve it if we did know. But in that meeting a numbers guy presented 'the facts', expressed in financial terms, gap to close, numbers of staff employed how many could be affordable, and so forth. There followed a discussion on 'the way forward' which was supported by a planning 'framework', and the glowing results of a pilot study. A write-up of the meeting could indicate (indeed has) that we were conducting a formal, rational analysis of these facts, conducting step-by-step decision-making, with fully aligned agendas and the 'next step' is to seamlessly translate these decisions into programmable action 'on the ground'.

But another cut on this would give a very different interpretation, one of vigorous discussion involving different interests, strong individual beliefs about the 'right' way to proceed, various coalitions lining up on the agenda items, competing values, a variety of negotiating/influencing styles, the value placed on previous experiences, roles the individuals played – and switched from/to, the way points of view were expressed – the linguistic tics, the body language (in this case lots of crossed arms and some leaning back in chairs smoothing hair), the interplay of the different intentions and interactions resulting in something that was unpredictable in advance – even though we had formal 'desired outcomes' (but not 'undesired outcomes').

What I'm wondering is how these dynamics can be 'used' more effectively in our work on 'the story' of the emerging transformation. As I said earlier, Chris Rodgers suggests that 'despite the formal rhetoric, rituals, and routines of organization, based on assumptions of scientific rationality, predictability, and control, managers still spend most of their time doing the only thing that they can do: They muddle through.' He sees the need to this muddling through with 'purpose, courage, and skill'. It's an intriguing proposition. Can these qualities be learned or taught? Although we have emerged from the meeting with the glossy email write up what's hidden is the messy reality of it. Discussing the purpose, courage, and skills that were, or could be, displayed in the meeting and learning more about their complex interplay might make for a 'better' outcome.

Is this just wishful thinking? Does the gloss express the 'real' organisation emergence, or do we have to look behind the gloss to enable different possibilities and organisational forms to emerge? What's your view? Let me know.

What I've found in the organisation design work that I do that there's a great desire from stakeholders to map the current, 'as-is' state and define the end 'to-be' state. It seems to provide some kind of comfort level they know where they are – admittedly, sometimes worth finding out, and they agree where they want to go. Then we work out the gap closing activities. It is beautifully structured, and you can see lots of images with various models for doing this as-is to to-be work here.

For a good while I did this activity with my clients until I realized that spending time on it was not that useful. We seemed to get mired down in 'swim lanes', semantic arguments (aka wordsmithing), and developing chunky plans that now bring the Peter Drucker quote to mind. "Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work." We often seemed to shy away from the hard work bit.

Then I discovered a different tack on the as-is/to-be approach: the maturity model. Indeed, I'm currently working with one now. It describes the outcomes of the organisation reaching 'maturity' once it has reached level four in each of the attributes of leadership, values and behaviours, roles and structures, capability, planning, and governance. (For images of various maturity models look here). We're using it to help our organisation transform from being 'analog' to being 'digital'.

This model was discussed in a recent workshop (which I wasn't at) but subsequently one of the participants emailed me saying:

Whilst the end state [of the model] probably defines what an ideal organisation might look like (whether that be a digital organisation or not). I can't tell if it's the right roadmap for us. For example, does this model take into account the fact that we are attempting to evolve to a digital organisation, whilst having to maintain a huge legacy infrastructure at the same time? And if it does, what are the constraints/dependencies for each of the roadmap characteristics? Is it right that we remove all silos (probably), or is it appropriate to keep some in place? Is 'leadership by everyone' the right model in all circumstances? How do we ensure we take everybody to the 'behaviours' that are appropriate for them in their particular circumstance rather than a 'one size fits all' approach?

I think this is a pretty good challenge – is a 'maturity' model useful or as effective (or ineffective) as as-is/to-be activity. I'm not sure and am tempted to retreat to my 'all models are wrong, some models are useful' position – a topic of a recent blog of mine – but maybe that's a cowardly response.

So taking another look at both models I had two reactions. First they have a place helping people reflect on and discuss the way the organisation could/should move – which is exactly what happened in the workshop I just mentioned. The participants used the model as a basis for discussing the validity of the 'end state' it implied.

That's a double-edged sword. It's great to have the discussion but to take the view that what is described as 'to-be' or 'mature' is the end state is not sensible and maybe that's where both the 'to-be' and the 'maturity' models fall down. They imply that something stated will actually happen and take it as a target to achieve. This is unrealistic. Organisations are in a constant state of flux. There is no way that a much worked on 'to-be' state will be achieved in the way predicted or desired. The only known end state is death of the organisation or organism – a topic I also wrote about. Failing that, the described state should be views as a direction rather than as a target and should come with a statement to that effect.

My second reaction was to see a paradox in the 'maturity' model we're working with. Actually, it describes a direction towards 'immaturity' in organisational terms. We're attempting a direction from analog(ue) to digital that requires us to organize like a start-up . Writing about this Eric McNulty observes that:

Although established companies can't afford to tear themselves down and start all over again, they can use the principles in the book [Startup Leadership] to analyze vulnerabilities, guide reorganization, collaborate, innovate, and become more nimble in the face of fast-changing conditions. How? Here are a few tips:
1. Never assign anyone to a job at which they are unlikely to succeed.
2. The success of a reporting relationship is the responsibility of the supervisor.
3. People who do not trust each other should not work for each other.
4. How responsibility and accountability are delegated shapes both culture and performance.
5. Do not design your organization around certain individuals or personalities.

Writing in a similar vein from a different perspective Nilofer Merchant, author of 11 Rules for Creating Value in the Social Era, notes that :

The companies thriving today are operating by a new set of rules -— Social Era rules. Companies like REI, Kickstarter, Kiva, Twitter, Starbucks -— they get it. They live it. And to them, notions like distributing power to everyone, working in extended community to get things done, or allowing innovation to happen anywhere and everywhere are, well, ridiculously obvious. But too many major companies -— Bank of America, Sports Authority, United Airlines, Best Buy, and Walmart to name just a few -— that need to get it, don't..

What's interesting about her list is that the companies she mentions as thriving today are much younger than the companies she suggests are not thriving. So as I said, perhaps old established, mature organisations need to be working towards gaining the characteristics of immature start-ups?

Another way of looking at this idea is to think that old established organisations are working to 'analog' patterns of structure, leadership, etc. and that younger organisations are working to 'digital' patterns. There's a useful graphic in a white paper Building a Digital Culture that shows the attributes of each. Note that by adding in two steps between the left hand side of 'analog' and the right hand side of 'digital' you could have an almost perfect immaturity model! (But don't feel obliged to do that.)

If long established organisations should be heading towards the attributes of a young/immature organisation what is the best method for heading there? It's not through a blueprint of a 'to-be' state with a structured 'roadmap' for getting there. I like the thought, again from Eric McNulty, that it is through seeking to 'establish and continually refine clarity in three critical areas: purpose, values, and performance', using 'social' techniques like crowdsourcing both to develop and then keep these attributes living, honed, and demonstrated.

The organization I'm working with has a purpose and a set of organisational values – in need of refreshing but the crowd could do this. It does have performance standards – which need moving on from an analog world to a digital world. (Watch the video 'Neuroscience shows why numbers based HR management is obsolete'). And, as importantly has a good set of guiding principles designed to head everything in the same transformative direction.

What better way to answer the questions posed in the email I received (quoted above) than to immediately start using the tools and techniques of the start-up immature 'social' organization: collaborating, giving everyone a voice, testing and learning in a continuous improvement cycle, setting new rules around performance and expectations, trusting each other, and so on. Wouldn't this be a better way to go than to spend time developing vision statements, roadmaps, detailed project plans, with a select few and then urging people to 'buy-in'?

What's your view on the 'to-be', maturity and immaturity approaches? Let me know.

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I've just read a book review of a new book called Happiness by Design. One of the author's rules for designing happiness is to become a neophile – a lover of new activities. So I'm on the right track because this week I began a new activity. (Regrettably after my recent trip to Senegal I abandoned my previous new activity – learning French). My current new activity is Kanban. It's a method of visually organizing workflow activity and tasks and is adapted from one of the many tools of the lean/Toyota just in time system of manufacturing.

For several weeks I've been observing how it works before deciding I should give it a go because I think it may be useful in organisation design work. I see it in daily operation at the 9:15 a.m. 'stand-up' (an agile technique) where the Kanban board is in use. It's a focal point for discussion on project progress (or not) and leads to the next step in the plan. At least that's the theory and it seems to be working well enough.

The method as I understand it is: people sit in project-related meetings with a pad of Post-it notes each. As the meeting progresses they furiously write stuff down but only one item per post note, in big writing, often they looked almost pained (the Kanban look?), sometimes they use different coloured pens – in the same meeting – so coding the notes in some way. There's an element of multi-tasking going on: speaking in the meeting, writing on Post-it notes, choosing the colour of the pen for each note, keeping the right expression. Not so good for happiness as according to the happiness book multitasking makes you less productive.

What's impressive is the rate of eating through Post-it notes. In one meeting one person can get through almost a whole Post-it notes pad single handed. The following day the various project people come to the stand up with previous days collected Post-it notes and read out theirs and then there's a solemn discussion and the note gets added to the board in one of the many columns – backlog, doing, done, date, etc. or not. The notes that don't get put on the board are folded into little squares or oblongs. I think that bit is just a ritual before putting them in the bin/trash. But I do need to find out if it's a required aspect of the Kanban methodology. Sometimes the notes flutter down from the board to the floor. Perhaps they are weightier ideas or tasks?

Now, having learned a certain amount by observation I've decided to have a go myself – but not at work, at least until I get more proficient. I'd like to leap in at the 'expected performance' stage and not at the 'must improve' stage. I need to practice and 'get with the programme' because this might become 'the way we do things' and not 'just another initiative'. I can't afford to sit back and see if it's a passing fad. The bandwagon is enticing.

Also it might contribute to my happiness as it's a new activity, and additionally it could rank me higher on the 'team player' scale. I'll be seen to be embracing change and not resistantly sticking to old-fashioned ways like 'to-do' lists, Getting Things Done, or project plans on Gantt charts in Microsoft project. So there are lots of reasons to give it a go. Even better I might feel and be more organized.

As I'm writing this it's day four of the try-out. Already I've learned a lot. In my investigations I've found several schools of Kanban – there are different methods each with their own approach, language, ten top tips and so on. As with anything I've ever tackled as a newcomer I find that there's an entire world of specialism out there devoted to it. Just look at the number of Kanban Pinterest sites, Youtube videos, books, images, slideshares, blogs, training and software.

From what I can gather, the physical world of whiteboard and Post-it notes is more effective than the virtual world. But I've also plunged in with Trello as a software version – I just have to make sure that my physical and virtual boards stay the same or I'll get confused. Also there is now an element of duplicative working but that's just for learning till I work out which I prefer. The advantage (potentially) of Trello is that I can get it on any device – smartphone, laptop, home/work. Except I can't. There's no Trello app for a BlackBerry so I'm wondering if I become such an aficionado of Kanban that I'll swap my BB for an android phone. My work laptop doesn't allow access to most of the web – so a couple of obstacles there but the theory is OK. Also, Trello has many competitors so how do I know I've picked the right one to try?

Next thing – the standard Post-it notes size seems to be the 7.5 cm squares, or even the 7.5 x 12.5 – but they're too big for my liking. My eco-sensitivity creeps in. It's a waste writing one idea on that size of paper. After the first two days I opted for 5 x 4 cms (small) – also I can fit a lot more on the board. And that was another decision. I looked on Amazon for whiteboards – as they seem to be the board of choice for experts..There are many whiteboards to choose from, and then you need to buy the markers and cleaner fluid. So setting up the board is an investment. I need to work out a measure of whether it is worth it. What are the success indicators? Remember it has to be better than what I currently do to stay organized which is a combination of the TMI method I learned years ago when that was the bandwagon to jump on, and the David Allen Getting Things Done method; a somewhat more recent bandwagon.

The Kanban method I've picked to try out is Personal Kanban.This defeats the object somewhat as the idea of a Kanban board is that it's collaborative: teams look at it either in real or virtual space. But remembering the Joan Armatrading song – Me, Myself, I maybe the projects associated with my different roles will act as a proxy team collaboration. I think that'll work as it involves trade-offs, prioritization and a lot of practice on the two rules of personal Kanban:

1. Visualize your work
2. Limit your work-in-progress

The first step after buying the board, pens, Post-it notes and cleaning fluid, was to rule up the whiteboard into 3 columns – backlog, doing, done. I'm doing fine on the 'visualizing my work' – looking at it today I see the board is listing heavily to the left. Everything is in backlog except, 'write blog' which I've just moved to doing – a very satisfying visual and definitely shows adherence to rule two – limit your work in progress. At the same time that is a bit alarming. It seems that the last three days all I have managed to do is pick up work (I guess I could put that in the 'doing' column?) rather that actually do any work. Well that is something I've learned – to start saying no to picking up stuff and instead start doing it and hopefully it can then get to the 'done' column. I'm not clear why the 'done' column is necessary unless it's a signal to give oneself a pat on the back or some other form of reward. Also I see I'm not quite clear on what goes on a Kanban board and what goes on a 'to do' list and whether purists would have a view on this. (Oh, they do – here's an example).

But now I've completed the blog I can test out the 'done' column and go off for a glass of wine. What method do you use to organize yourself and your work? Let me know.

My first private sector job was with an insurance company. Part of the induction included familiarizing myself with the Equal Opportunities Policy and learning about the products and services the company offered: one of these was life insurance. I learned that smokers were charged a higher premium than non-smokers, the company did not allow smoking in the workplace and there were policies and programmes in place to discourage the habit. I also learned that the company had an executive dining room where senior staff could eat away from their subordinates but subordinates were allowed to invite guests to lunch there with permission and if the guest was special enough to warrant it.

My first (and only) time I got permission to take a guest we enjoyed a pleasant meal at the end of which the waiter came to our table and offered my guest (a man) a cigar. I said nothing in the moment but was struck on two counts: I was not offered a cigar because I was a woman – thus a contravention of our Equal Opportunities Policy, and second the company had a policy of discouraging smoking so another contravention. (I decided that taking on the notion of an executive dining room was a bridge too far.)

Later that day I wrote a note to the Chief Executive describing the event and asking whether in tune with our policies we should stop the cigar passing. A couple of days later I was summoned to my manager's office. He was beside himself with rage a) that I had written to the CEO without his permission b) that calling into question the practice showed I wasn't demonstrating the 'right' behaviours c) my behaviour reflected badly on him demonstrating he could not control his staff.

I was not put on a performance improvement plan (PIP) – in fact in the UK this can only legally happen if you are not carrying out work to a satisfactory standard – but this incident came to mind last week when I was talking with someone who'd just been put on a PIP. He was furious and very upset because it was for an incident entirely outside his control (to do with a third party contract) and he was doing his best to sort it out. His manager asked him 'How will I explain to my managers that my staff can't solve this problem?' One of his colleagues told of a similar event.

These stories, combined with a report received and similar stories heard in the prior few weeks, led me to wonder if PIPs are less about supporting employees and more about a managerial tactic to cover their backs and protect their own interests.

What I found was not encouraging. There was the thing about managers' self-interest additionally PIPs seem to be:

• Associated with cultures of fear
• Used as excuses for not engaging staff in supportive performance conversations
• Taken as a pathway to lay-off someone with a formal audit trail
• Demonstrations of a managerial 'look tough and thus good' activity
• A disincentive to staff to try out new things, be curious, or give quality service (particularly in call centres where call targets are set)
• Feared as a part of a staff ranking systems where pay awards are made on a forced distribution system so each manager has to have a 'bottom 10%' of staff
• Symptomatic of lack of supervisor/subordinate trust
• Devoid of recognition of the contextual factors on performance
• Perceived as unfair

Looking at the list above it would be easy to assume that in general PIPs seem to be part of a disciplinary process, a penalty and a disincentive to improve performance, rather than a helpful and supportive way of engaging and motivating employees in a culture of trust, mutual respect and open-ness. This reflects in the language and approach of the PIP template forms I looked at. For example, the UK's CIPD template for performance improvement plans (following ACAS guidelines on managing performance) is both formal and daunting in its language e.g. 'What is the employee required to do now'.

Even those in favour of them said they should be used cautiously, judiciously and with the accompaniment of meaningful supportive conversations, useful and achievable objectives, and an honest intent to develop the employee. See the Institute of Employment Studies suggestions.

Contrast PIPs with Daniel Pink's view on what drives engagement and performance:

1. Autonomy – our desire to be self-directed, to direct our own lives.
2. Mastery – our urge to get better at stuff; we like to get better at stuff.
3. Purpose – the enjoyment we get from making a contribution and a difference.

You can see him talking about it in a delightful RSA Animate 'Drive'. The transcript of the talk sums up with Pink saying, 'And I think that the big takeaway here is that if we start treating people like people and not assuming that they're simply horses, you know, slower, smaller, better smelling horses, if we get past this kind of ideology of carrots and sticks and look at the science I think we can actually build organisations and work lives that make us better off, but I also think they have the promise to make our world just a little bit better.'

PIP and Drive are two very different routes to performance improvement. In retrospect these show in my cigar incident outlined above. I was in Drive mindset and my manager was in PIP mindset. I acted as if I had the autonomy to make the comment, I thought it would be helpful to the organisation's image to point out an inconsistency between organisational statements and actions, and I wanted to improve the organisation and make a difference. It didn't occur to me that as a consequence of my well-intentioned memo I would reprimanded by a furious manager and threatened with 'further action' if I ever did anything similar.

So do PIPs smack of the command and control organisation and Drive of the new 'social' organisation? And in an organisation that is striving to transform from command and control to social (see the graphic analogue to digital – exhibit 1 – in the report Building a Digital Culture which is a neat if overly simple summary of this) does one have to take a path from PIP to Drive, and if so what is the path and how easy would it be to take?

Looking at the graphic surely the answer must be 'yes' – if an organisation is promulgating the attributes of 'digital' which anyone who has a smartphone, Facebook account, or similar is meeting in their non-work lives – then the work frameworks need to adjust similarly. There are several examples of organisations recognizing this. Read Donna Morris of Adobe talking about performance reviews – just dropped by the company, "We were aggressively moving from being a boxed software company toward having a strong subscription service for our digital media business. The business all around was changing, but the mechanisms to manage and support our employees were stuck in a time warp." And in 2013 both Microsoft and Expedia dropped their forced ranking system of performance reviews. But now, I hear some people say, those organisations were already digital.

OK, even if an organisation is not that interested in adopting the attributes of digital, the external social, demographic and technology context is changing so rapidly that analogue organisational frameworks are unlikely to be fit for purpose for very long as in their non-work lives employees steep themselves in digitally enabled collaboration, comment and input to private and public sector organisations in their roles as customer, community member or citizen. Organisations have to keep pace with the context.

Granted the challenge of moving an analogue organisation's performance (and other) systems into ones more appropriate for employees in a digital society is big. But most people like challenges – they call for autonomy, mastery and purpose.

Do you have any examples of established analogue organisations that are setting off down PIP to Drive path whether or not they are heading for digital? Is your organisation? Let me know.

This week I'm in Dakar, Senegal and have just been to see the African Renaissance Monument . It's very odd, dramatically impressive, cost a fortune, and excited many complaints on its commission. At the time of its unveiling in 2010, the then deputy leader of the Senegal opposition Ndeye Fatou Toure described the monument as an "economic monster and a financial scandal in the context of the current [economic] crisis".

Slate Magazine describes it as The Controversial Senegalese Monument Built by North Korean Propaganda Artists: At 160 feet tall, the bronze African Renaissance Monument is over one-and-a-half times the height of the Statue of Liberty. It depicts a man with a bare, ripped torso holding an infant aloft in one arm and guiding a woman with the other. The infant points ahead to indicate the glorious future, while the woman extends her arm behind to acknowledge the troubled past. Her hair is swept back by the wind, as are her scant, gossamer-like garments.

You travel in a high speed lift to a viewing platform in the man's hat – except we didn't because the tiny capsule-lift shuddered to a halt between floors, the doors opened and all we could see was a concrete wall. It was terrifying. There is a permanent 'pompier' (fireman) in it operating it and there to guide the 3 additional people the lift can take down the ladder if the lift or the electric power fails – apparently both a common thing to happen. We didn't have to clamber down the ladder but when he got it started again we got out at the first possible floor that had stair access. The first two floors (essentially the statue's base) house an exhibition and stories of black leaders.

What the monument reminded me of (apart from the folly of monuments – have you read Ozymandias, a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley?) was a meeting I was in last week. It was one where one group of people seemed to be talking in one language and a second group was talking in another but where we finally got to a third language that we all understood. It was thoroughly enjoyable and I'm hoping I'm beginning to learn the new language of common ground. (It's not one found on DuoLingo where I'm learning French but maybe it should be).

What was fun was that we were all making big efforts to understand the other – there wasn't any heat in it. One side in the room was talking big ideas and 'transformation', and using words like 'digital', 'lean', 'agile' essentially presenting the idea of building the expensive monument pointing to the future. The other side was making a plea to forget the 'ideal state vision' and '2020 end-state', to use normal language and to just help them fix the basics: not quite the clean water, consistent electricity and sanitation needed in Senegal but certainly IT tools that are fit for purpose, don't require the patience of Job and are free of the numerous work-arounds currently needed.

I was rather convinced that they were on the right track. It takes colossal will and charismatic leaders to make case for a future vision when in the current day-to-day the basics are lacking. It's a simple but powerful idea – on the lines of 'don't run before you can walk' and it makes sense. Backing up this thought is the evidence that the track record of successful transformation effort is not great. I've just re-read the classic article by John Kotter – Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail which in my experience is as valid today as when it was first written in 1995 and republished in 2007.

So I'm now wondering about 'transformation'. The organization I'm working with has been down the 'transformation' route more than once in the last decade and there's a certain amount of weariness (and amusement) from the long-service staff who are wondering what will be different in this 'transformation journey' that will result in the visionary promises being kept and whether the basics will be fixed this time around. And I'm asking myself whether an organizational 'transformation project' is on the same lines as building a vastly expensive and ultimately divisive and controversial monument that fails to achieve its symbolic intent.

I think it could be if those involved in the transformation programmes forget that showing they are fixing the basics – simply helping people do a good job: one without re-work, duplication, inconsistent processes, etc – is not included in their work from the beginning. Of the 8 things that Kotter suggests need to be in place for transformation to be successful two of them could be instrumental in showing that 'cracking the obvious' as one of my colleagues called it is a clearly communicated and integral part of the plan: creating short term wins, and consolidating improvements and bringing still more change.

Putting on my yellow hat of optimism (see Edward de Bono's Six Thinking Hats – a very useful tool) I don't think that transformation efforts are necessarily doomed to failure, but I do think they are significantly more likely to fail if the basics are not being fixed as the transformation work proceeds.

What's your view? Do transformation projects need to fix the basics as they go? Let me know.

Last week I went to the Gilbert and George exhibition that's on in London. It's called Scapegoating and is brilliant at taking 'a controversial subject and just putting it out there, making it everyone else's problem'. The show is billed as unflinchingly describing 'the volatile, tense, accelerated and mysterious reality of our increasingly technological, multi-faith and multi-cultural world. It is a world in which paranoia, fundamentalism, surveillance, religion, accusation and victimhood become moral shades of the city's temper … [the pictures] consolidate and advance the art of Gilbert & George as a view of modern humanity that is at once libertarian and free-thinking, opposed to bigotry of all forms.'

What it got me thinking about was organisational values partly because earlier in the week I'd been in a leadership meeting and asked why the four values that were part of the obvious visual paraphernalia of the organisation a few years ago seem to have sunk with only the faintest trace. I have seen them on certificates on people's notice boards but the latest date I've seen is 2010. When I've asked about them people have drummed up from their storage (and given me), thank you notes, mouse mats, notepaper and even a small 'silver' cup and many talk fondly of the value of having the values. The only evidence of their years of visibility is that they still appear on the performance management forms and people are appraised against them.

I didn't quite know what to make of the answer that one of the leaders gave to my enquiry, 'what do you think about the four values'? He said that people could see leaders (and others) behaving in a way that did not role model living the values so in his view it was better not to have them in plain sight as senior people (in the hierarchy) flouted them and this was noticed by their subordinates. A second leader endorsed that view. I've been thinking about this during the week because on the one hand not having written/codified organisational values because members can't stick to them seems sensible, on the other hand it seems that this response might be an outcome of some kind of organisational disability. Of course it could be signaling all kinds of other things but that immediately sprang to my mind.

As I've mulled this over I've recognised that I'm steeped in the notion that organisational values are 'a good thing'. I'm constantly reading (and writing) stuff about them: there's a never-ending stream written about 'values driven organisations' and many organisations lay great store on their values. So what I've been seeing this week is a counter view on values. A view that a friend I was talking with described as a 'values are propaganda' view. That's worth thinking on – which is what the scapegoating exhibition forced for me. Gilbert and George 'have never left us in any doubt about their atheism — they want to ban religion because they think it segregates people and causes them unhappiness'. Yet each religion is based on specific values with a set of 'operating principles', which from what the world is currently witnessing do seem to result in divisiveness, unhappiness, and entrenched positions.

Paradoxically Gilbert and George themselves have a set of principles that they developed in 1969. "The Laws of Sculptors":
1. Always be smartly dressed, well groomed relaxed and friendly polite and in complete control.
2. Make the world to believe in you and to pay heavily for this privilege.
3. Never worry assess, discuss or criticize but remain quiet respectful and calm.
4. The lord chisels still, so don't leave your bench for long.

Additionally they have ten commandments

I. Thou shalt fight conformism
II. Thou shalt be the messenger of freedoms
III. Thou shalt make use of sex
IV. Thou shalt reinvent life
V. Thou shalt create artificial art
VI. Thou shalt have a sense of purpose
VII. Thou shalt not know exactly what thou dost, but thou shalt do it
VIII. Thou shalt give thy love
IX. Thou shalt grab the soul
X. Thou shalt give something back

These seem remarkably close to values and also like the type of thing that could give rise to very scapegoating behaviours they are commenting on in their work – which doesn't leave me much further in my musings on the question of whether a set of values that are imposed on people or required by organisations are 'propaganda' and it would be better not to have them pinned up or spoken about because they may be difficult to adhere to, to behave in line with, or to use as a yardstick with which to measure others against (but, in some highly public cases, not yourself). However, Gilbert & George are not expecting other people to adopt their principles or commandments.

One of the exhibition reviewers noticed the phrase written on the wall of the exhibition "We want our Art to bring out the Bigot from inside the Liberal and conversely to bring out the Liberal from inside the Bigot." Do organisational values serve to bring out the bigot or the liberal or both/neither? Read an interview with Meg Whitman formerly of e-bay and now of HP for her view on organisational values and how she came to value them at e-bay. She makes the point that it takes two sets of values for organizational success -— the hard-nosed business values and the "softer," ethical values and that 'eBay's success proved that values are not abstract ideals but essential tools'. So neither a bigot or libertarian view from her.

But are organisations that promote certain listed values and who expect people to 'live' them, actually manipulating – subtly or not so subtly – their workforce with the intention of controlling their behavior or at least channeling behaviour into an organizationally acceptable way? I'm now wondering if it's feasible to have a value set and simultaneously to 'value diversity' if the diversity of the workforce includes having members who had a different value set from the desired one? (I did once bow out of a working party on diversity that I was supposed to contribute to because I felt that the organisation 'valued diversity' only up to a point and my colleagues on the working party were unwilling to explore what that point was and make it clear to others).

So if not values, what? Years ago I studied the writings of George Orwell. He advocated 'common decency', which involves the willingness to treat other people, their concerns, and their ideas appropriately in line with their humanity. It is having an unselfish attitude that acknowledges the interests of others. See Anthony Stewart's book: George Orwell, Doubleness, and the Value of Decency for more on this.

So maybe having a list of organisational values that we expect people to subscribe to is not the way to go. Maybe it is sufficient to expect all organisational members to treat each other with 'common decency'. But what is the penalty for those who don't? Is that too difficult a question to answer – should we just let 'indencent' behaviour go?

What's your view on organisational values and is expecting common decency enough? Let me know.

NOTE: For some good quotes on common decency look here.

A couple of weeks ago I emailed an 18 year old and heard nothing back. It was about a job which she'd applied for. But last week I did hear back from her. She said 'I haven't been checking my email recently and have only just received this so I understand if it is too late now.' We met and I found out that she doesn't really use email. She uses text messages and Facebook to interact with people.

Coincidentally last week someone set me a short Don Tapscott video where he talks about the way workplaces will have to change if they want to attract and retain this 'net generation' – those born between 1977 and 1997. It's well worth listening to. He paints a picture of multitasking that I can't get close to mimicking. Net people are simultaneously texting incessantly, surfing the Web, finding directions, taking pictures, making videos, collaborating, using Facebook, instant messaging, skyping, playing on-line games, and all with the TV as background muzak. Email isn't even on the radar and they're not actually talking face to face as I read it.

This maybe why that experimental Faraday cafe in Vancouver with walls that don't allow signals to penetrate might be extremely successful – but perhaps not with the net generation? In that cafe 'Conversation is possible (or forced) because there is no cellphone service or Wi-Fi at the cafe. Customers sit in a carefully constructed dead-zone, an eight-by-16-foot cage made of wire mesh. Phone and Internet signals can't pass through the cage walls. The coffee is freshly ground, and patrons pay by donation.'

But given that one cafe in Vancouver is not going to change the social norms of an entire generation, let's make assumption that the net generation lifestyle is going to be the 'new normal' for people entering the workforce. On this, I think Tapscott lays out a good challenge to all organisations. He asks how to design organisations that provide more learning opportunities, frequent feedback, greater work/life balance, stronger workplace relationships, replacement of job descriptions with work goals, tools to do the job and the latitude and guidance to get on and do it in their way. He posed this challenge in 2008 – the challenge has got bigger and more pressing since then as more of the net generation, at least those with the skills employers want, are entering the work-force. (Take a look at this World Bank blog for figures on youth unemployment.)

If it's true that a growing proportion of the workforce is not using email in their personal interactions what happens when they join an organisation where email is the principal channel for information flow? Does the organisation have to be redesigned to eliminate email or do the net generation members have to be taught to just buckle down and use it? Or is there some middle road?

The vice-chancellor of Exeter University takes the view that email is as good as dead. That organisation realising that 'most students no longer checked their emails regularly and were choosing to tweet for help rather than wait for a response in their inbox' introduced a 'round-the-clock team of press officers and graduates savvy with social media,' to monitor questions and give immediate responses because responding by email is 'too slow'. What I couldn't find out is whether the university employees still communicate via email amongst themselves, and the social media approach is just to their customers, or whether the whole University operation is weaning itself off email. If anyone knows I'd be happy to hear from them.

There are pros and cons for redesigning email out of the organisation. The Economist had a piece last week on Decluttering the company making the case for fighting a 'relentless battle against bureaucracy' which they think is induced by three forms of clutter:

1. complexity which includes tiers of management, co-ordinating bodies, and too many corporate objectives
2. meetings
3. emails

On emails the point is made that 'the number of external communications that managers receive has increased from about 1,000 a year in 1970 to around 30,000 today. Every message imposes a "time tax" on the people at either end of it; and these taxes can spiral out of control unless they are managed.' So emails are hugely expensive.

An HBR blog makes a similar cost point but in relation to the drive to constantly monitor the emails 'Shifting our attention from one task to another, as we do when we're monitoring email while trying to read a report or craft a presentation, disrupts our concentration and saps our focus. Each time we return to our initial task, we use up valuable cognitive resources reorienting ourselves. And all those transitional costs add up'.

So what about the collaborative platforms that software like Sharepoint, Huddle, and Asana say is more effective and less costly than emails? Facebook's co-founder, Dustin Moskovitz, now CEO Asana is somewhat persuasive on the death of email. Also he has, in my opinion, the right attitude to organisation design. Asana 'embraces the notion that companies should be organized around the "work graph" not the social graph — around the work that needs to be done, not the people. The nodes in a companies' network should be important tasks, not employees.' Because email is person to person it reinforces a people as nodes approach to getting things done and not a work as nodes approach to getting things done.

I've just participated in a Huddle work project. (See a comparison of Huddle and Asana here). It worked well in that the project arrived to time and with good enough levels of participation. What I found interesting was that some of the participants actually did the work outside the Huddle platform and via email!

This is where the defenders of email are loud and also persuasive. Read the piece Need a Collaboration Tool? Try Email. The author is Jeff Mackanic. (Take a look at his photo. Do you think he was born between 1977 and 1997?). He is of the view that Email 'is still the best collaboration tool. Nothing else is even close'. Another defender (whom Mackanic refers to) is Barry Gill, author of Vision statement: Email not dead evolving. He tells us that

Periodically you may hear digital hipsters claim that e-mail is dead. Don't believe them. People still spend half their workday dealing with it, they trust it, and overall they're satisfied with it, according to our 2012 survey of 2,600 workers in the U.S., UK, and South Africa who use e-mail every day. … And for all the love social media get, e-mail is still workers' most effective collaboration tool. It's far from perfect: … But it remains the mule of the information age-—stubborn and strong.

Hmm, are the 'digital hipsters' the net generation, and the email defenders the 'stubborn and strong' executive managers? Or maybe there are vested interests at play. After all the CEO of Asana is trying to sell a collaboration tool to use instead of email (but he was born on May 22, 1984 so is of the net generation) and Barry Gill author of the quote above works for Mimecast – an organisation that helps other organisations manage email. (Barry Gill's photo is on the Mimecast website if you want to guess his age).

On the survey Mimecast did I'd like to know the age profile and hierarchical position of the 2,600 respondents. Because if they were the older finance or IT guys, for example, those who'd grown up with email they'd realize that, as Marcus Wohlsen says in the Asana piece "in a corporate culture where upgrading Windows can be an epic undertaking, few companies have the wherewithal to let go of something as basic as email, let alone reimagine the basic premise of how they function in order to move ahead without it." they'd probably prefer to stick with email than invest in the many high costs of designing it out.

So we have defenders of email, and defenders of collaborative platforms who say email is dead. We also have the net generation who are in the workforce and entering it who apparently don't use email out of work and wonder why they should use it in the workplace. So should we be designing out email? What's your view? Let me know (by text or Twitter).