I've been reading your work for over twenty years, and there has been a lot of good stuff coming from you. This post strikes me as one of the best and most useful posts of many good and useful posts from you. For me, it prompted the questions "What kind of organization do I want to work in? What is going to be most satisfying and effective?"
Interesting. I've got a question about this one. Is there an "interlocking wheel" structure? I'm thinking about a professional services firm where each partner has their own staff team. Each partner's group of course is hierarchical, but heavily dependent on the contributions of each member, most of whom are credentialed professionals themselves. So, I'd say the teams fit the definition of wheels. The firm is governed by the group of partners, who co-own the practice and make decisions by consensus -- another wheel. I could imagine applying this approach in some arts contexts as well. Thoughts on this?
Thanks for the question, and the great example. Galtung wrote that these two forms were often nested within each other – most frequently in a pyramid (large corporation, for example) that included departments, divisions, units, working teams, or even informal social clusters that operated as wheels. He concluded that "…societies, or social formations more generally, as we know them, are mixes of [pyramids] and [wheels]. The question is how strongly either one is articulated."
Professional service firms tend to be complex hybrids, and are particularly tricky to structure and manage because of that. As you suggest, the solution is often a small group of highly connected individuals (wheel) setting purpose and policy, supported by a primarily hierarchical structure that promotes the necessary scale and efficiency. Governing boards of nonprofits can have a similar tension, which is why the interface of board to executive leadership is so difficult to maintain.
I've been reading your work for over twenty years, and there has been a lot of good stuff coming from you. This post strikes me as one of the best and most useful posts of many good and useful posts from you. For me, it prompted the questions "What kind of organization do I want to work in? What is going to be most satisfying and effective?"
Thanks Neill. So glad this one resonated. I find that I refer to this framework frequently.
Interesting. I've got a question about this one. Is there an "interlocking wheel" structure? I'm thinking about a professional services firm where each partner has their own staff team. Each partner's group of course is hierarchical, but heavily dependent on the contributions of each member, most of whom are credentialed professionals themselves. So, I'd say the teams fit the definition of wheels. The firm is governed by the group of partners, who co-own the practice and make decisions by consensus -- another wheel. I could imagine applying this approach in some arts contexts as well. Thoughts on this?
Thanks for the question, and the great example. Galtung wrote that these two forms were often nested within each other – most frequently in a pyramid (large corporation, for example) that included departments, divisions, units, working teams, or even informal social clusters that operated as wheels. He concluded that "…societies, or social formations more generally, as we know them, are mixes of [pyramids] and [wheels]. The question is how strongly either one is articulated."
Professional service firms tend to be complex hybrids, and are particularly tricky to structure and manage because of that. As you suggest, the solution is often a small group of highly connected individuals (wheel) setting purpose and policy, supported by a primarily hierarchical structure that promotes the necessary scale and efficiency. Governing boards of nonprofits can have a similar tension, which is why the interface of board to executive leadership is so difficult to maintain.