| It's mostly NOT fixable. The problem comes from the sociological fact that groups differ from individuals in serious cognitive, sociological, moral and motivational ways. And as a general rule, groups of people DO NOT SCALE WITH SIZE. This is the fundamental reality that has been shown to limit the size of companies: the ability to reliably transmit critical operating information from one side to the other as needed fails with increasing size. And computers do NOT improve things because it's actually a specific type of information required: knowledge applied with skill in a timely fashion. That is what fails with size. Related to this is the inevitably "Chinese Whispers" losses that arise as the organization grows vertically and as decision making is centralized: the knowledge about the markets served inevitably goes 180 degrees out of phase where every direction and decision becomes exactly the wrong or worst possible. The system starts to tear itself apart destroying its competitive abilities and opening up large swaths of market for smaller competitors to take and occupy. The real world has more information in it than what any planning or system can describe accurately enough to use for predictions. So without accurate feedback from the outside reality, the corporation will fail. Big tech components can only be "fixed" by breaking themselves apart so they can regain the proper feedback loop accuracy, or by doing what HP USED TO DO: pushing down decision-making to the lowest possible level in a Federated form. This isn't perfect either but it's better than a Top-Down command-and-control system when it comes to performance and competitive fit. Control-freak executives always screw both of these up because they can't handle letting go. |