A very successful "free intraprise" system that creates very free small groups is underway in the Forest Service. The focus is not on external products and serv

A very successful "free intraprise" system that creates very free small groups is underway in the Forest Service. The focus is not on external products and services, but on doing the work that is needed by the line officers. Biological surveys, Oracle database management, trail building, planning, etc. "Enterprise teams compete for these jobs. Line officers with budgets can hire outside contractors, one of several competing enterprise teams in that business, full time employees, etc. The enterprise teams have most of the freedoms of a start-up. They have internal "bank accounts" that they can carry earnings over from year to year. This provides security which allows risk taking. They chose their own products and services and set their own prices. They choose who to hire and have limited ability to fire (from the team, not the Forest Service) team members who do not work out. This is an area of weakness, but not enough to crater the system. The result is very good. The intrapreneurs (people who behave like entrepreneurs inside a larger organization) are 1.8 times as productive as the average government employee and far happier. They tend to keep working after becoming eligible for retirement. Most say they would never go back to the old bureaucratic way. There don't seem to be any fist fights. One team got too big and is breaking up into smaller enterprises. The system was designed based on the book "The End of Bureaucracy and he Rise of the Intelligent Organization" by Gifford and Elizabeth Pinchot. Note: I am Gifford) It has also been applied successfully in a large semiconductor firm. The largest organizations (nations or the entire planet) bring about order using self organizing systems. They do so because, for all the reasons in the article, the chain of command has limited ability to use the intelligence of all the members of a large system. While decision making is concentrated, intelligence is widely distributed, approximately one brain per human. Very large commercial organizations are possible, but they must use self organizing systems, which involve freedom of the parts, as a major element of organizational design. After all, nations gave up on hierarchy as the method of organizing their economies with the fall of the Soviet Union. Even though it is large, the United States allows entrepreneurs considerable freedom. Large companies can too. Re: Size of enterprises see: The Dunbar Number at Life with Alacrity: http://www.lifewithalacrity.com/2004/03/the_dunbar_numb.html http://www.lifewithalacrity.com/2004/03/the_dunbar_numb.html