Enterprise growth
An organization is a way to control something or conduct a goal that needs to be done by many people, this comes from the fact that the tasks or products generated by the company are so complex, that not a single individual can execute it.
Note: Complexity here can mean a way to deliver a simple product for a big range of people, meaning that a person alone wouldn't be able to complete the task in a small amount of time.
Imagine that the nature of the tasks developed by an organization can get bigger and bigger with the passing of time. As the enterprise creates new products and try to acquire new markets its complexity enlarges. The problem with this is that, as a child that grows and have growth pain, the organization will also have some pains.
As the enterprize is a way of bringing together many people towards one goal, it ends up having its own culture. Edgar Schein presents this concept with a tree layers model:
- Base: Underlying beliefs - in my understanding: what are the rules and where we think we are going inside the enterprise
- Middle: Values - What we hold on when we are making decisions
- Top: Artifacts - What we see in the ambient of the enterprise related to those last values and beliefs
From this view Schein presented later mainly two organization cultures:
- The individual freedom ethic - Ideas come from the individual and motivation come from itself even if there is an organization structure, the problems are discussed and argued between themselves, people feel safe to discuss ideas and compete between them.
- The authority ethic - The ideas and paths comes from individuals that are higher in the enterprise rank or more senior in the enterprise, the communication normally occurs linear between levels and vertically in this type of organization.
Now when we think of an startup it normally presents an organization of the first type Individual freedom ethic as it grows it needs to have a little bit more control of its workers and then it can end up changing its culture towards the authority ethic, the problem is that when the enterprise do this, the individuals more seniors to the organization can feel losing power within the organization itself. Because as it growths, the ideas tend to be generated from the hierarchy and not more from the leafs.
Also, as the communication before this change happened vertically and horizontally at any point of the organization, as it growths this generates conflicts between the authority ethic and the last freedom ethic.
When the enterprise is growing it needs to find the best model for what type of work is done, the idea is to have the best productivity in the enterprise. Interestingly I now think that each department should have slightly different cultures, according with the type of thinking involved.
Until now I've saw two variations of culture that interested me:
- Triple-I Company - Focus in information, ideas and intelligence. People that work in this type of company are focused in its own success and so the enterprise ends up needing to provide the following topics:
- Opportunity for each individual to develop itself
- A sense of community so the individuals feel loyalty to the organization (The problem here is that the individuals primary concerns is themselves and their progression, without this sense of community they will end up changing enterprises to "progress").
- As in the federal organization, the company must be cautions over the control of its employees and in their decision making. This enterprise should support the infrastructure and alow the employees to use the information they have and apply their own intellect in decisions to generate value for the organization.
- As this enterprise is focused in the individual, it is difficult to control de decisions, so the leaders should be really trained into communicating and influencing.
- The Federal Organization - Highly centralized and at the same time highly decentralized. They have a small core individuals that control the departments, but the departments managers are so technical and so trustworthy that they will have the infrastructure and be allowed to "govern" the department according tho their information, and have almost no rules from the centralized core.
- The trained leadership must have a high level of trust between the couple and the managers.