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by shermantanktop 731 days ago
Reminds me of the Drucker quote about “culture eats strategy for breakfast.”

The problem is that large organizations naturally drift toward inertia and ossification. If a forward-looking leader wants the culture to change, they are faced with a conundrum:

- use a strategy like this (e.g. some top-down “innovation center” approved at the C level) which reinforces the rigidity and process-oriented thinking that needs to change, or

- create an insurgent skunkworks group that hopes to prove a different approach via undeniable results. This usually ends with back-alley knives getting unsheathed.
2 comments
Angostura 731 days ago
I think there is possibly a third way.

I’m currently working with the NHS in a Quality Improvement role in a hospital. The team exists to give grass-roots folks the tools they need to make change happen when they spot something in the system which is less than ideal. We offer training, help with setting aims, running projects, finding stakeholders, analysing data etc. These aren’t huge system transformation projects, in fact some of them can be quite small - but as a way of working it feels quite effective.

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withinboredom 731 days ago
> in fact some of them can be quite small

The biggest changes always start with someone taking one small step towards their goal.

Some of the biggest software (used by billions of people) I've ever worked on started as a simple script made by a teenager.

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Pet_Ant 731 days ago
Innovation means potential for failure and waste. The larger the company the more it's investors want it for steady predictable returns. Even shrinking returns as long as they are steady and foreseeable. A large company becomes about control. Look at summer blockbusters. They know the demographics that will see it and have a pretty good (not absolute) idea of how much they can make.

This is all by design.

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shermantanktop 731 days ago
This can be by design, sure. But I think it is also an inexorable tendency for people in large groups. Once your company is 10x Dunbar’s number, it is very hard for “we” to mean the entire company.
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