Barry Carter
As we enter a knowledge era, our organizations must be extremely intelligent. They must work like the brain since they are in the business of knowledge production. The public work hierarchy, however, works more like the human body than a brain. The hands, feet, eyes, mouth, ears, legs, etc., all carry out certain tasks that are controlled by the brain. By giving the brain total control there is maximum coordination; there is not an arm wanting to do one thing and the legs contradicting it. The brain does the thinking and the hands do the doing. Break the connection from the brain, as with back injuries, and hands, arms, legs, etc, stop working immediately. Have a company’s management go off site for a week to a retreat and performance usually improves. Work definitely does not come to a halt.
The company, with one person reporting to another, is specifically designed to provide the person or people at the top with maximum control. Public work, the company and hierarchy is not evolved for thinking at the worker level. The people at the top are the brains and those at the bottom the hands. Milliken, the textile manufacturer, like many in the South, at one point actually called its production workers “hands.” Milliken transitioned to calling people employees and later changed this and began calling their employees associates.
When we compare the body to the hierarchy, there is a major difference between the two. In the body, the hands have no separate brain. In the organization, each worker has a brain. Therefore, an organization’s Intelligence Quotient is the sum of the IQ’s of all individuals within the organization, plus the degree of communications between the individuals. We have exactly the wrong organizational structure for an intelligence based knowledge era. The IQ of the front line employees of a company of 200 front line employees (with average IQ’s of 100) is 20,000, not including any synergistic effect. Given that the controlled economy has seven very smart managers, averaging 125 IQ’s and a CEO with a 150 IQ, the collective management IQ is 1025. Including supervisors, and other specialists, the collective IQ of those doing the thinking, managing, directing and controlling is 2935. The IQ ratio between the “hands,” and the “brain,” is out of whack. The less intelligent collective IQ of 2,935 is thinking for, directing and controlling the far more intelligent collective IQ of 20,000.
It is no wonder that in controlled economy after controlled economy, one hears the same message from the employees: “How can management be so stupid?” To state it simply, the controlled economy is incredibly obtuse. If today’s company were a person, it would be declared an imbecile, based upon the capability wasted versus actual performance.
Though self-directed teams and other fad organizational changes within the controlled economy are attempting to engage the intelligence of the entire organization, a controlled hierarchy, void of real ownership, is simply not evolved for intelligence. Communications is limited by control and representation. The control needed to produce order within controlled economies limits information flow and knowledge creation and creates little motivation to engage people. The worker is intrinsically not motivated to and extrinsically prevented from producing the knowledge and information flow needed for truly intelligent organizations.
A bureaucracy based upon the management of people must be seen for what it is: a simple and primitive form of organizing work and people. If we can build space shuttles and land on the moon and clone mammals and create atomic bombs then surely we can develop more intelligent means of organizing the work of people.
Copyright 2000 by Barry Carter at Win Win World
About Barry Carter.
Infinite Wealth is available at the author’s website, and can be purchased in bookstores everywhere including Amazon and Barnes & Nobel.
There is also an abbreviated free online version, which has been reposed at Future Positive: 1) The Rise of a Win Win Civilization 2) A Personal Journey of Discovery 3) Why Corporations Don’t Work 4) The Emancipation of Capitalism 5) Mass Privatization: Organizing in the Information Age 6) Decentralized Wealth Creation 7) The Infinite Wealth Potential of Liberated Humans 8) The Mandate for Win-Win Wealth Creation 9) Breakpoint: Why You Must Act Now 10) SYNOCRACY: True Democracy Through Synergy 11) THE SHIFT: Awaking to a Win-Win World 12) The Synthesis of a Win-Win World and 13)Vision for a Synergic Transition.