following in search of Excellence, a veritable industry grew up of people
knocking the 7-s model and then offering their own versions. Personally, I
find that whilst the model - like most others - has its limitations, its
true value is that gets people to change their single focus lenses and
look at the organisation from multiple perspectives.
I think there is a risk of over-intellectualising the issue. Part of the
problem is that some people believe in the models / framewroks in an
almost religiosly fervent manner. I have seen very little evidence of
firms actually using the models to run the business on a day to day basis.
The value of the models seems to be a mechanism to help think about the
business and to evaluate weaknesses and opportunities. Too slaivsh an
adherence to using the models at the operational level can result in an
overly bureaucratic control system developing.
I am in favour of any approach that starts to mover people away from
mechanistic 'history plus 10%' number-based planning and towards
capability-development oriented thinking. I know all this may sound like
heresy but so be it.
Regards
Rohit Talwar
P.S. I am told that the model was born out of desperation - the story
suggests that McKinsey had organised for Richard Pascale and Tracy Athos
to spend a week with Tom Peters talking strategy. so alarmed were they at
the prospect of a week with Peters that they decided they needed a way to
manage him and came up with the idea of tackling a different subject for
each of the seven day - hence the 7S model - who knows it could even be
true!
--Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>