[HN Gopher] The Skill of Org Design
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The Skill of Org Design
Author : impostervt
Score : 269 points
Date : 2021-10-06 11:58 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (commoncog.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (commoncog.com)
| blueyes wrote:
| I want to put in a plug for Cedric. He is consistently one of the
| smartest writers about tech online. His writings about
| naturalistic decision making have changed the way I think about a
| lot of things in business.
|
| https://commoncog.com/blog/the-tacit-knowledge-series/
| Ahan515 wrote:
| Wow, MPI gets Nobel prizes in a row!
| xivzgrev wrote:
| This article reminded me of a group I founded in college. I also
| was motivated to ensure it lived on, which it has.
|
| 4 things worked there 1) it was a group to help people get jobs,
| which is an ongoing market need 2) it demonstrated success
| quickly and provided a template for that success, so people were
| motivated to invest in keeping it going 3) we made early cultural
| decisions that selected the right kind of people 4) we set out
| clear 5 year goals, and had every president update the 5 year
| plan and their own 1 year plan.
| ashika wrote:
| people will seemingly hop aboard anything that gives them
| authority over other people. i am reminded of that scientology
| grade chart that leaked a while back[1]. the end result of each
| training was usually the ability to give the training to others.
| so while all orgs obviously want to remain on a positive tipping
| point with the general membership rising to serve hierarchical
| functions over time, scientology teachings seem to exist mainly
| an opportunity to advance relative to other scientology members.
|
| [1] http://scientologymyths.info/definitions/gradechart.gif
| j16sdiz wrote:
| In the press release:
|
| >> "This concept for catalysis is as simple as it is ingenious,
| and the fact is that many people have wondered why we didn't
| think of it earlier," says Johan Aqvist, who is chair of the
| Nobel Committee for Chemistry.
| divan wrote:
| Such a great read.
|
| I'm trying to build a non profit org in a country with almost no
| culture of non profits and with zero experience in org design.
| Most of articles or podcasts on running non profits seems to be
| all the same - define vision/mission/strategy, plan budget,
| motivate people, do effective communication etc.
|
| But this article is the first I found that actually provides some
| framework of thinking about the org design to me. Very
| refreshing. What should I read/watch/listen next (except links
| mentioned in the article)? Maybe even something specific to
| creating/growing non profits?
| rawgabbit wrote:
| As a contrarian, I think the author's advice is actually wrong.
| Organizations do not exist in a vacuum. They are not an end in
| itself. The purpose of an organization is to fulfill a mission.
| The organization should be designed to execute its mission in
| the most cost effective and transparent manner.
|
| With Non-profits, your customers are your donors. Who is
| funding you (sales)? What do they want (features & results)?
| How do you show that you are spending their money wisely
| (metrics & governance)? The organization is nothing more than
| people put in place to solidify and execute those needs.
| bsedlm wrote:
| > The organization should be designed to execute its mission
| in the most cost effective and transparent manner.
|
| I argue that this describes a specific type of organization
| in a specific environment (context). namely a business
| organization in a capitalist market.
|
| There exist other types of organizations. (However I may be
| blurring the line between organization and institution)
| xivzgrev wrote:
| The author emphasizes context a lot. After you've read
| resources here, maybe get intros to entrepreneurs in your area
| who successfully built larger companies, and how they iterated.
| What was the context they operated in, and what's relevant to
| your context?
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| I have two principles:
|
| If possible do not split responsibilty between teams. Give
| responsibilities (e.g. security) as a hole without splitting.
|
| Think about what discussion you want to have in the leadership
| meetings, then decide who needs to sit at the table.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| I'm really impressed with this article and the others linked. The
| bits on professional services and thinking backwards were
| extremely helpful!
| chewyshine wrote:
| Notice how there are no clear criteria for evaluation in this
| space? No math. No models. Just loose concepts strung together
| with words and sprinkled with calls to authority (e.g., Andy
| Grove) to add credibility. No evidence. No science.
|
| As an organizational "scientist" it's amazing to me that
| organizations are ubiquitous and yet we know so little about how
| to construct good ones. Software design is in a better state IMO
| but not by much.
|
| Here's a simple question that should be answerable in any
| approach to org design. What's the optimal *span of control* for
| management at each level in the organizational hierarchy? If you
| can't answer this question, you can't "design" an organization.
| sixdimensional wrote:
| Actually, there is a entire field dedicated to this
| (disclaimer: I studied it at uni, plus CS and info systems) -
| organizational studies [1]. It has subdomains such as
| organizational structure/models, behavior, communication, etc.
| Much of it backed by theories, studies and more, ranging in
| disciplines.
|
| Time and motion studies (for example) were part of the
| scientific management revolution for industrial management [2].
| There have been both qualitative and quantitative studies of
| all kinds of things - organizational forms, people networks
| (things like, Dunbar's number[3]), power distribution (ex. work
| of Pfeffer), etc. I could go on.
|
| I do think we are reliving an era of interest in management by
| data and metrics, much like that of the industrial revolution
| and scientific management. Nothing wrong with using science and
| quantitative measures to optimize, but any human who has been
| subject to purely management by quantitative objective will
| likely tell you it often becomes.. rather, inhumane. This is
| often what led to automation, I feel - to remove the human
| element that was crushed by industrial efficiency.
|
| I suspect this is why the qualitative balance is important (and
| no less scientific - science can be logic not just metrics
| right?).
|
| My two cents...
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organization_studies
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_and_motion_study
|
| [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number
| throwoutway wrote:
| OP said they were an organizational scientist, so I would
| assume they know this. However the article rather
| hypothesizes and references recent books like Working
| Backwards, rather than long-established theories about org-
| design (like Mintzberg, who dates to the 60s). I've studied
| many of these and they are very thorough (though none are
| perfect)
|
| I had a similar thought on another commoncog.com post. The
| author didn't seem to research deeply before postulating
| opinions. Looks like this site allows members to post so I
| don't know if it's the same person
| shadowsun7 wrote:
| https://commoncog.com/blog/the-hierarchy-of-practical-
| eviden...
|
| I would ask the OP a simple question: what organisations
| have they built, and where are they now?
|
| Longer, but establishes the epistemology of the blog:
| https://commoncog.com/blog/practice-as-the-bar-for-truth/
| and https://commoncog.com/blog/four-theories-of-truth/
| throwoutway wrote:
| Sorry but providing three more links to your blog does
| not contribute to the threaded discussion. If you'd like
| to ask OP that question, you can ask OP on OP's comment.
|
| Otherwise, I'm still not sure why you don't include both
| (well established) theories, in addition to your own
| practice in your post.
| Closi wrote:
| > Here's a simple question that should be answerable in any
| approach to org design. What's the optimal _span of control_
| for management at each level in the organizational hierarchy?
| If you can 't answer this question, you can't "design" an
| organization.
|
| Of course you can design an organization without knowing the
| optimal span of control at each level, just as you can design a
| logo without math and scientific models. The answer anyway will
| just be 'it depends, and span of control varies not only
| between different businesses but also different roles and even
| different individuals'.
|
| Lots of design is done via intuition and experience rather than
| concrete engineering anyway, and OD is clearly an area where it
| is more about understanding the goals of an organisation and
| building a people strategy around it rather than perfect
| mathematical optimality.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Or, in other words -- you show me a calculated optimal span
| of control, and I can show you an individual at my company
| that would wreck it (either as too broad or too narrow).
|
| Org design suffers from the same problem as economics and
| psychology: you're designing based on a fundamental discrete
| unit (a person) that's incredibly variable.
|
| Except unlike the other two, you're typically not dealing in
| large enough numbers that you can handwave away differences
| and substitute averages.
|
| Furthmore, any hierarchical org (which is to say, all, either
| formally or informally) exacerbates the problem in that you
| have some (variable!) individuals with even greater ability
| to influence the sum.
|
| Which isn't to say it's hopeless, but is to say (to your
| point) that any approach needs flexibility and intuition.
|
| Or as the author puts it: _" As a result, you cannot predict
| how the humans in your organisation will react to your
| changes -- not with perfect accuracy, at least. So the nature
| of org design demands that you iterate -- that you introduce
| some set of changes, watch how those changes ripple out in
| organisational behaviour, and then either roll-back the
| change, or tweak in response to those observations."_
| akomtu wrote:
| Models need input and there isn't much knowable input in modern
| organisations. A unit of organisation is a person with complex
| internal state. Two units of type M could've competed for
| another unit of type F and one of them has won, while the other
| is secretly sabotaging work of the first - an example of
| chaotic to an outsider behavior because of hidden state. When
| all sorts of interactions are allowed, particles of
| organisation interact in all sorts of bizarre ways. It's hard
| to model a gas where particles have memory, long distance
| interactions with ten types of forces, mutate into other
| particles, teleport back and forth according to God knows what
| reasons and so on. We either resort to making only very general
| predictions or we cool down the particles, restrict their
| freedom to bare minimum and make them predictable. Rogue
| regimes do exactly this: the only interaction they allow is a
| strictly top-down "who fears whom", so everything is local and
| predictable.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| But we do have a science of organisation design; management
| cybernetics are 70 years old, and as this post hints at, the
| field of complex systems theory (also 70) applies to
| organisations. But these fields don't find context-independent
| answers like the one you asked for; an extremely important
| trait of systems engineering (as, again, was mentioned in the
| post under "form-context fit") is that systems have fitness for
| a specific environment or context. Answers are adaptive and
| must be approached in-context, not declared to be canon in some
| "objective" scientific whitepaper.
|
| If it's math you're after, look at Control Theory or Nonlinear
| Dynamics. They work well for engineering purposes, but good
| luck modelling individual human behaviour accurately, let alone
| mathematically.
| burlesona wrote:
| I would argue that organizations are complex adaptive systems
| and thus there is no optimal span that holds for all or even
| most organizations at all or even most levels. As a solution,
| smart organizations should build in feedback loops and allow
| rapid experimentation and iteration to evolve the spans so they
| respond well to the current conditions at each level and each
| point in time.
|
| Note that setting up an organization to be so responsive and
| adaptive is itself a difficult organizational design problem.
| bsedlm wrote:
| > Notice how there are no clear criteria for evaluation in this
| space? No math. No models. Just loose concepts strung together
| with words and sprinkled with calls to authority (e.g., Andy
| Grove) to add credibility. No evidence. No science.
|
| Indeed, this is a very good observation from which many ideas
| occur to me:
|
| Which one do I prefer?
|
| Is one obviously better? (I don't think this is a good
| question: It's like asking which is better, an API reference (a
| math textbook with a long list of theorems and definitions) or
| an API tutorial (a math textbook which holds your hand and
| explains "intuitively"). It depends on what you need).
|
| Isn't it the case that initial explanations (explorations into
| a new topic) are like this at first, and over time (usually
| through work spanning multiple generations) the theories become
| more mathematical?
|
| All in all I wonder about the difference between these two
| contrasting approaches towards understanding. And I wonder
| about it in such abstract (philosophical?) terms that the
| specific "organizational design" is just an instance of what
| I'm curious about; which is the different ways to explain the
| same things and other ways to approach "understanding" in
| general.
| jsjohnst wrote:
| > Software design is in a better state IMO but not by much.
|
| Looking at all the crap software being built today, I am not
| sure I agree even with the caveat of "not by much".
| photochemsyn wrote:
| A lot of data structures from compsci like trees, graphs,
| lists, seem suited to form the basis of mathematical modeling
| of organizational structures, with the goal of optimizing for
| particular cases.
|
| For example, in modeling an industrial system like a chemical
| refinery / synthesis unit for optimal throughput, one could
| also model the human organizational structure needed to safely
| and efficiently operate that system. Say there were 10 major
| steps/processes being overseen; failure of any one could be
| catastrophic. So, perhaps each unit gets its own manager with
| veto power over the whole process if their unit is down (a flat
| structure at this level), and each manager oversees a
| hierarchically-structured team (a tree at this level, perhaps
| experience-based).
|
| Other organizations would need a completely different
| structure, but it should be structured around the fundamental
| goal. Thus, the concept of 'universal organization designer'
| might be so broad as to be not very useful, i.e. specialization
| in design domains is probably important.
|
| I recall this coming up in a discussion of why the optimal
| organizational structure for Tesla is very different from that
| for SpaceX for example, so just moving 'the best managers' from
| one to the other wouldn't work out.
| afarrell wrote:
| Before demanding that, first come up with metrics for the
| optimal attributes of a marriage. What is the optimal number of
| loads of laundry to do each month? The proper number of silly
| dances to invent?
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/McNamara_fallacy
| RayVR wrote:
| This is a ridiculous critique of the argument. Just because
| everything can't be quantified doesn't mean we can't quantify
| some things.
|
| I worked in quant finance for many years so I'm very familiar
| with low signal to noise in complex systems. You can't throw
| your hands up simply because you'll never capture everything
| in your models.
|
| This field is so far from my areas of expertise but I imagine
| there are lots of smart people investigating and putting
| structure around these questions.
| nzmsv wrote:
| Taleb makes an argument in Black Swan that a bad model can
| do more harm than no model at all, and that "we can't throw
| our hands up" is not a valid excuse either: sometimes
| that's exactly the right call.
| afarrell wrote:
| Right. It is also false to say there are no useful numbers
| in this space. For example: Dunbar's number is 150.
|
| But it is misleading to expect an employee to maintain
| relationships with 150 people--they also have a family and
| friends.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number
| pintxo wrote:
| From the linked wikipedia:
|
| > However, enormous 95% confidence intervals (4-520 and
| 2-336, respectively) implied that specifying any one
| number is futile.
| clairity wrote:
| what's more interesting about dunbar's number is that it
| suggests a potential maximum for the size of an effective
| organization (say, 520) rather than pinpointing an
| optimum. the idea of a maximum like this appeals to
| intuition, so it's worth studying more (and more
| quantitatively), but opposes ambition, which is probably
| why we don't have plentiful research in this area
| already.
| rocqua wrote:
| > You can't throw your hands up simply because you'll never
| capture everything in your models.
|
| You can however, decide that the key drivers in your domain
| are essentially impossible to capture quantitatively and
| decide not to model the domain scientifically. This applies
| especially well to cases where 'tacit knowledge' is
| important. Because that knowledge is hard to formulate, let
| alone formalize, it is really hard to quantize.
| jancsika wrote:
| Do regular blood tests on a randomized sample of married
| couples and measure the stress levels.
|
| Once you've found the couple with the lowest overall levels,
| book them on a touring circuit so audiences can ask them how
| many silly dances they invented. Since the couple doesn't
| know whether that's a source of their happiness or not, it
| won't really get us any closer to an answer. But at least the
| couple's resulting stress from the tour and impending marital
| problems will teach the audience about the limits of their
| method of inquiry.
| Grakel wrote:
| It'll be the couple with the highest income to work hours
| ratio.
| pc86 wrote:
| Below a certain [unknown] ratio, absolutely. Above it,
| I'm not so sure.
| brutusborn wrote:
| Thanks for the link.
|
| I think there can be a useful middle ground, where "fuzzy"
| descriptions are used with models to explain strategies that
| are developed organically.
|
| I empathise with the OP on the lack of modelling in this
| space. I think it shows a lack of maturity of the field since
| good, simple models are usually used to produce fundamental
| understanding in a field.
| korla wrote:
| When you can't measure what's important, what you can measure
| becomes important.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| The more drawn out / harmful form is: when you mandate that
| only the measureable is valid, and something is hard (or
| impossible) to measure, everyone comes up with reasons it's
| not important.
| atoav wrote:
| If we talk about organizational structure, the one real
| question is whether you can just look at the structure and
| figure out a organisations success just based on that.
|
| My feeling is that this could be a good way to filter out
| highly dysfunctional organizations. However I don't think you
| can find successful ones that easily, let alone come up with an
| magical organizational structure that automatically leads to
| success.
|
| That might be because there are a lot of tiny details that
| might shape a organization much more than the pure structure of
| departments and roles. Let's say organization A and
| organization B have the same structure and do the same thing in
| the same field, but organization A has a good HR department
| which manages to attract good people and have them work for
| decades at the company, while organization B has a bad HR
| department, hires incompetent, fraudulent and downright nasty
| people, who don't stay on the job for long - wouldn't this make
| such a huge difference that differences stemming from the pure
| structure of the organization would be drowned out?
|
| Of course you could now think about how a organizational
| structure could prevent this from happening, and maybe with the
| right structure and people checking each others decisions the
| likelyhood of such a bad outcome could be mitigated - but never
| fully.
| webmaven wrote:
| _> Here 's a simple question that should be answerable in any
| approach to org design. What's the optimal span of control for
| management at each level in the organizational hierarchy? If
| you can't answer this question, you can't "design" an
| organization._
|
| This seems so wrong to me. It is the equivalent of stating that
| unless you can specify the values of all the hyperparameters up
| front, you can't claim to 'design' a neural network
| architecture.
|
| All you really need to iterate on (this aspect of) the design
| of an organization is a way to tell when the span of control is
| too large and when it is too small.
| q_andrew wrote:
| I think this might be roughly what you're looking for:
| https://codahale.com/work-is-work/
|
| But this author is concerned more with 'productivity' rather
| than longevity or interpersonal relationships.
| dasil003 wrote:
| IMHO this is wishful thinking. There are thousands and
| thousands of questions you could pose in this way, each with a
| range of answers depending on many details specific to the job
| to be done. Even just designing a single experiment that is not
| subject to biases of artificial metrics or incumbent market
| momentum is incredibly difficult.
|
| For instance your span of control question depends on how much
| individual bandwidth is needed between the levels, which in
| turn depends on the nature of the work and how it interacts
| with partner functions and whether it can be routinized or
| whether there is an aspect of creative problem solving.
|
| It's a pleasant fantasy to imagine we could get definitive
| answers using science but it presumes there is a universal
| maximum when in fact there are many local maxima depending on
| goals and the individual strengths and weaknesses you're
| actually dealing with. And even then org structure is a pretty
| blunt instrument which is always a huge tradeoff. All orgs rely
| on extra-organizational effort to address critical problems,
| whether it be through formal working groups or just individual
| hustle and resourcefulness.
| mirchiseth wrote:
| This 2016 longish post on Functional vs Unit Orgs by Steven
| Sinofsky is pretty good on different types of organizations. He
| shares examples from Apple, Google and his days at Microsoft
| being a senior leader. Even mentions another HN thread
| https://medium.learningbyshipping.com/functional-versus-unit...
| warpech wrote:
| That's a very intresting topic for a growing startup. I tried to
| find books about org design for startups but couldn't find any.
| My conclusion was that it's because "it depends" is only
| reasonable advice. But maybe there are some books that you
| recommend?
| joekinley wrote:
| I can strongly recommend The E-Myth Revisited by Michael E.
| Gerber. I read it years ago, and it helped me plenty to
| understand basic organizational setup
| andrewingram wrote:
| Alongside the other suggestions, "Org Design for Design Orgs"
| is a book that got me interested in the topic. Whilst it's
| focused on how to structure and scale design teams, a lot of it
| is transferable to other disciplines.
| michael-ax wrote:
| ask your suppliers and customers?
| wmorein wrote:
| Not a book but an article based on some experience. This reads
| a bit more definitive than I actually feel about the subject
| but I do tend to think that this design is actually best for
| software/services startups.
|
| https://riverin.substack.com/p/the-canonical-startup-org-str...
|
| There are a couple links to other articles and book on the
| subject in there too.
| jannyfer wrote:
| I haven't read the full book, but I found "Situational
| Leadership" a very helpful concept that would have taken me
| years to learn if I went through trial & error.
| jmpz wrote:
| I found Team Topologies to be a good resource on this.
| https://teamtopologies.com/book
| peterbell_nyc wrote:
| +1 for Team Topologies!
| nzmsv wrote:
| I was nodding along and then had to stop and think. Are Amazon
| and Netflix actually good organizational examples to emulate?
| allenu wrote:
| "When running the Vietnam office, we had many other business-
| related problems to deal with; building consensus wasn't
| something that I always had the time to do. So the way I ran
| certain org changes was to: 1. Get a sense for team
| receptivity for that org change, balanced against the necessity
| of the org change. If I sensed that the team would be resistant
| to the change, I would: 2. Figure out how much I had
| left in the 'credibility/trust' bank, and if I wanted to burn
| that capital. 3. If possible, find a smaller, more
| reversible version of the org change to introduce first.
| 4. Use disasters to my full advantage (people are usually more
| receptive to trying new ways of doing things in the wake of
| something painful). 5. Strategically allow certain
| things to blow up so that I could exploit the pain to introduce
| org change, as per 4) above. 6. Or build consensus;
| consensus was always the best, if most time consuming, option."
|
| This is useful, and incredibly candid, information about what
| actions are taken to shape organizations, especially point 5.
| It's great to see it written out like this.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Confirms my experience so far. it does raise the question so
| what alternatives managers (I'll not go as far as calling them
| leaders) or organizations with no capital in the trust are left
| with. Seeing at it from that perspective shades a different
| light on some of the re-orgs I went through, especially those
| everybody wondered why disaster X was avoided despite being
| visible from miles away.
| [deleted]
| benjohnson1707 wrote:
| You might want to look into the works of Elliot Jacques, who came
| up with apparently rigorous concepts about hierarchy and
| management since the 70s. Wrote a bunch of books. Interesting
| stuff, I find.
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