[throwoutway]

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]

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]

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.

[shadowsun7]

Ok, since I have to spell it out for you:

I have not included any such theories because I have not found them useful. The links are to say something simple: my entire epistemology is pragmatic. That is, true knowledge should lead to effective action. If I cannot apply it and get results, then it is useless to me, and irrelevant when writing up notes for other practitioners.

I have noticed that your claim is that 'here is some theory that is well established and rigorous and old'. I have also noticed that your claim is not 'here is some theory that I have found useful, and <insert notes from application>.' I pay attention to arguments of the latter form, because it usually indicates something that I can integrate into my practice. Because you have not included notes from actual application, I am not particularly interested in your argument.

(But if you can provide an applied account, I’m all ears!)

That is not to say that org theorists are useless, or that research is useless. I have found Herbert Simon's work on organisational decision making useful as a lens on practical rationality, for instance. I’ve also spent a lot of time digging into expertise research for applied ideas.

I think the bar I use is simple: when reading a theory, I ask myself if there are actionable handles. If so, I tend to pay attention. If not, or if I’ve applied it and it doesn’t work particularly well, I discount the research.

That said, I have noticed that good organisational builders — with a track record of actually building orgs — say different things from organisational theorists. And I think the reason for why is interesting: I suspect that org builders are interested in actual org outcomes, while org theorists are too far removed from actual application; they are interested in tenure.

(Edited to soften tone.)

[seanhunter]

How do you account for survivorship bias in your chosen group of "good organisational builders"? Organisations which have been successful in their domain could have internal organisational problems but succeed in spite of them because of other exogenous factors (luck, overwhelming product/market fit etc). Are the people who built those organisations good builders? Conversely you could concieve a brilliant org design but the org itself fails. That would not make you a bad org builder.

[shadowsun7]

This is an interesting question! The answer is to hold conclusions loosely and test; always test.

One way to pick who to pay attention to is ‘believability’ — meaning that you listen to those with at least 3 successes, and a coherent explanation when probed.

Pointing out survivorship bias is a common rejoinder to this view. But when you’re trying to put things to practice (not get at some universal truth like a researcher would) you often cannot wait for perfect samples. So you pick certain practices from believable people and test them against reality, and then hold the lessons loosely, making sure to update based on further experiments (which is necessary because life is messy and full of confounded variables).

Over time, it becomes clearer what is useful and works for you, and what isn’t and is perhaps a quirk of the other organisation’s context. But I’m not saying anything new; this is how we learn from life.

Related: Brian Lui’s loose feedback loops https://brianlui.dog/2020/05/10/beware-of-tight-feedback-loo...

And the problems of learning from experience: https://commoncog.com/blog/the-hard-thing-about-learning-fro...

[sixdimensional]

For what it's worth, I actually do understand your sentiment. I am also a pragmatist and practitioner and find that academic theory sometimes has to "bend" for lack of a better word.

That said, I was brought up to find what is useful and good regardless of whether it comes from academia or practice. It's a beautiful thing to be able to find a balance of building an operational world view that borrows from both theory and practice.

It is my personal observation that much theory is based on observation of practice + theoretical projection, followed by more observation - i.e. the scientific method.

I loved Adam Savage's comment that sometimes science boils down to doing stuff and writing it down. I think as long as we find a good balance in learning from the past and building on it, while not letting the past limit our future endeavors for no reason, we can have the best of both worlds.