MINIMALISM

It has been suggested that the age of AI and technology requires our getting serious about creating a new model of organization, one that is non-linear, non-reductionistic, and non-hierarchical, i.e. non-Newtonian. It would be useful to examine the implications of such a model.

One thing to consider is the paradigm that “more is better” in organizational interventions. Generally, this is taken for granted. Large consulting organizations dealing with total quality and re-engineering interventions often mount an almost military assault on a company they are consulting. First, they send in legions of consultants to study the system, without regard for the very real possibility that, by their selection of what to study and how to study it, they are already changing the system. Then, when their studies are complete, they design interventions that are organization-wide, massive change efforts that are designed to impose new order in a system assumed to be linear.

One example of this model at work is reengineering as formulated and practiced by the late Michael Hammer and others. A 1991 CSC Index survey found that one quarter of nearly 300 North American companies involved in reengineering reported that they were not meeting their goals. Hammer himself, in an article in Insights Quarterly stated his belief that the failure rate of reengineering is much higher — “on the order of 70%.” Explanations for this failure rate are suspect when they preserve the validity of the model and place the blame for the failures on factors such as lack of understanding on the part of client companies of what was really involved or failure of nerve on the part of client companies.

It is possible that something far more important and far more basic is involved.