| I love the point you're making, and perhaps what I'm trying to say isn't coming through in the piece. Another way I've talked about this (to myself) in the past is that there is something akin to the cathedral vs the bazaar approach. One is designed, intentional, centralized, and structured. The other is informal, emergent, and distributed. I think this is what you're getting at with the organic structure of natural cities? I believe the best organizations actually have some attributes of both -- tension between design and emergent structure. Companies usually lack the right structure to really have emergent properties without bad results (see the excellent Coda Hale article referenced in another comment for some of the math behind this). I believe it takes some design to set things up so that emergent qualities can be successful. You shouldn't squash things that arise between silos, like new communication pathways and even some collaboration. Those are very necessary and important. But I do think you need to keep an eye on collaboration, because it's often a sign that there are structural problems that will break down without further design. The best designs, I think, allow for emergent qualities naturally. I guess I also agree with Hayek's hypothesis, except that I'm not sure it applies here. For example, if your problem is that the go to market organization doesn't understand what is happening within the product development organization, that is a very solvable problem -- you can solve that many different ways -- the two that come to mind are role definition and communication channels. A lot of what I'm advocating for is design that is compatible with how human beings work together, and sensitive to their limits. I'm super curious if I'm missing your point or if you'd suggest adding anything to the piece to clarify this point. Thank you for your thoughtful comment! |