At 09:55 AM 9/7/98 -0700, Doug Merchant wrote:
>"Patches" remind me of a firm composed of semi-autonomous, P&L accountable
>business units where each Bu competes for Corporate Resources within a
>multi-divisional firm . Successful BU's (Patches) expand; unsuccessful
>BU's shrink. At any point in time, "organizational learning" about market
>success is stored in the pattern of the Bu's boundaries.
Business units are a fairly good example, since they are not purely
competitive (in most companies, anyway) but can learn from one another.
>The evolving Bu boundaries will be projected onto the external environment
>and shape how the corporate organism "perceives" changes in the external
>market opportunities. While the corporate organism may easily perceive
>those market opportunities which conform to existing Bu charters it may be
>perceptually impaired in regards to those opportunities which arise in the
>"white spaces" among the Bu's.
What this says is that diversity in point of view and goals among business
units is critical to the organization's ability to learn.
>If we imagine populations of different management types within a business
>unit, a similar mechanism could guide organizational learning within the
>Bu. The number of managers of a type that is perceived to be successful
>will increase at the expense of the populations of other manager types.
>The increased homogeneity of managers may increase the Bu's short run
>efficiency at the expense of the Bu's long run effectiveness (i.e.,
>ability to adapt to environmental change).
You're describing this in terms of natural selection, which I don't think
tells the whole story. Natural selection is pure competition. The business
reality is that in a well-run organization, business units can see the big
picture and learn from one another, even as they strive to excel according
to their own goals, rather than the entire organization's. Each success or
failure in one unit essentially changes the rules for the others.
Nick
--Nick Arnett <listbot@mccmedia.com>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>