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You're missing one piece which degrades performance of all corporations over time - bureaucracy with politics. I don't mean the sane one, I mean processes for t
by saiya-jin 8y ago
You're missing one piece which degrades performance of all corporations over time - bureaucracy with politics. I don't mean the sane one, I mean processes for the sake of processes, people entrenched in their comfortable managerial positions, battling any change that doesn't benefit them directly. I mean brutal management pyramids, so often seen in older corporations or banks for example.
It comes naturally over time, every single time. Organization can fight it, but it needs to be a dedicated effort and priority. If let on its own, complexity arises.
I've seen medium-sized young companies trying hard to have flat hierarchy and least amount of processes, committees etc. It worked. It really did. But everybody understood this is the goal, it was clearly communicated. It attracted amazing talent of brilliant people fed up with the (common) opposite.
I can see now in oldish bank how a simple change might involve 20 people having their say, often managers with their own political agenda not always aligned with what's best for the employer. Stuff that gets actually developed in 2-3 MDs takes overall easily 10-20x more because of this.
- oblio 8y agoThat's gross, but the overall organization is still efficient (or it has some sort of monopoly or huge moat). Otherwise it would be completely out of business by now.
- barrow-rider 8y agoIt's efficient at it's stated tasks. Usually this is tied to stock prices. I'm working at a Fortune 500 currently that does a lot of chemical manufacturing. Outside of delivering boatloads of chems, everything in the company is a constant clusterfuck. Stock price stays alright so nothing changes.
- tormeh 8y agoI think this is some kind of law: Every company is good at only those things where external pressure is high, and usually those are sales and whatever they are selling. Everything else has little external pressure to work well, and because the natural state of things is suckage and stagnation, everything else sucks and is stagnant.
- pm90 8y ago> bureaucracy with politics So much this. It gets so bad that at some of these places, there are folks whose real value seems to be in "knowing the right people" in the org to who get certain things done rather than any real technical/managerial skills.
- SpicyLemonZest 8y agoKnowing the right people (and its corollary, knowing how to find the right people) are critical managerial skills. I've seen otherwise great managers struggle to get anything done, because they keep trying to push on people who can't enact the changes they want.
- user5994461 8y agoThere is huge variation between companies. It's not atypical in a bank to be able to push a change in a few minutes, it's faster than most startups.