3 ms·
You don't design an organization, you grow an organization.
by contingencies 6y ago
You don't design an organization, you grow an organization.
- systemvoltage 6y agoI don't get it. What's the difference? Designing and growing are not antonyms.
- contingencies 6y agoDesign implies an authoritative, non-iterative mega-deployment. Growing implies an iterative, heterogeneous, observation-laden process with potential for feedback and adjustment. Where humans are involved, the latter is superior, if you want coherency and efficiency.
- systemvoltage 6y agoThere is no way one could have picked up what you meant from just saying "Design vs. growth". You realize how general those terms are, right? Something that implies to you may not imply to many others. Still your language is imprecise. Can you give examples? > authoritative, non-iterative mega-deployment Like what? Who designs a team like this? What are some concrete examples?
- contingencies 6y agoApologies if it was unclear to you. It's hard to know who reads all the comments here and impossible to address everyone clearly. Many people on HN are involved in building companies which means they have experience with this sort of thing and probably understood without explanation. Who designs a team like this? Bigco HR departments, the military, the government, emergency response NGOs, etc.
- systemvoltage 6y agoThat helps and I agree with the examples you cite. I think then we're arguing about mostly bureaucracy - they work great for stable work that needs to happen on a long term basis. Not agile. But, they have their purpose. If militaries and governments were formed like startups ("growth" as we define here), they would fail to function well. Hierarchy is important characteristic of militaries and big companies. We develop everything from fighter jets to fiscal policy through "designed" organizations.
- wenc 6y agoDesigning and growing are different things because design implies having a preconceived plan. Whereas growing entails starting out with broad strokes and then organically iterating. The classic example is that of a combustion engine. Historically an engine was not designed, but “grown” ie iterated upon through trial and error. The heat transfer characteristics and thermodynamics were (are?) too complex to model, so engineers started out with a basic concept and iterated until they got the desired results. I believe organizations work the same way. Instead of designing an organization from the ground up (clean sheet), most organizations actually start out organically and roles either expand or contract depending on needs and goals. There’s typically a lot of trial and error because it’s impossible to account for every variable that might affect the outcome. A heavily designed organization is liable to be very rigid, so the pragmatic path is align on shared principles and let each part of the organization organically grow according to its needs and goals.
- systemvoltage 6y agoIs a Bonsai tree a combination of designing and growing? Iterative design? This is all very imprecise terminology. Grown things can be designed. Designed things can be grown. Designed things doesn't always have to be grown. And lastly, Grown things doens't have to be designed. All this sounds like Deepak Chopra's lectures.
- wenc 6y agoI don’t know why Deepak Chopra is relevant here. I agree that design and grown are not mutually exclusive but I merely sought to demonstrate that they are different things.
- systemvoltage 6y agoI just see how organizations grow (as per the definition we are implying here). I've never seen anything "designed" per se. May be something like Microsoft org chart? Curious if you can concretely note an example to exemplify the ambiguity.