Organizational Metabolism

Why do all the vessels seem kinked sometimes? How is it that flashes of flow give way to clotting? Groups of people are subject to similar metabolic principles that individual organisms face, particularly in organizations that have more clear bodily boundaries and interconnected componentry (companies, governments). Information, decisions, and “nutrition” must flow efficiently through an organizational system for the body of people to be healthy and make progress toward its objectives. Like bodies, organizations have evolved through randomness, survival, and the extension of the complexity distribution to develop organs, muscles, and a vascular system. When an organization struggles or fails, it may not have been fit for the environment (a giraffe in a land suddenly stripped of leafy trees) or its organizational metabolic systems may have degenerated and ultimately ceased to function. What can organizations do to optimize their metabolic processes? Much comes down to the organs; flow rates between organs (and the external environment), organ sizes, and the connections between. Note that this metaphor has its limitations – full-on humans represent the connectors and work together to form “organs”, and each of these people has a brain – a feature that (to state the obvious) eludes most of a body’s real organs. So how does one design a system of organs, if one is in the unenviable (buy typically lucrative) position of directing the formation or modification of an organization? Maximize system throughput and environmental fitness (while designing for adaptation when the environment changes) while keeping waste & entropy to a minimum. It sounds daunting, and it is. There’s a reason why it takes so long to get a medical degree – bodies are complicated. Why is it so easy to get “educated” in business, then? A topic for another time. Anyway, brains (the metaphorical component) make things more complicated, so be careful how many you add to a given organizational system (this is why marketplaces and associations can be attractive organizational designs – they enable more brains to co-exist without dissolving the group). In a regular old product company, the brain often is the product design group. Marketing, product development, finance, accounting, and sales take some of their cues from this brain, while also operating their autonomic functions (the brain can decide what to eat, but can’t decide what exactly the kidney does in an actual human body). Sometimes another function starts to turn into a brain and conflict arises, particularly if that function starts to develop its own goals that advance its own goals at the expense of the rest of the body (such as when marketing pours money into a brand that doesn’t actually support the objectives or increase metabolic throughput). Designing and maintaining the appropriate organs (and changing them as needed) is a big job that is often neglected (not to mention crafting & keeping clear an efficient vascular system). Human resources teams, even when they are more than the personnel risk/legal/recruiting groups, are typically not equipped or motivated to optimize the system and while it’s usually on the CEO’s job description, there’s often not much time for it. So keep a few physicians, surgeons, and if you can find them, bio-engineers on hand to keep your organization’s body healthy and full of vitality.