The Power of Minds at Work: Organizational Intelligence in Action

274 Pages·2003·8.79 MB·english

by  Karl Albrecht

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THE POWER
OF
M I N D S
AT WO R K
This Page Intentionally Left Blank
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THE POWER
OF
M I N D S
AT WO R K
Organizational
Intelligence in Action
K A R L A L B R E C H T
American Management Association
New York • Atlanta • Brussels • Buenos Aires • Chicago • London • Mexico City •
San Francisco • Shanghai • Tokyo • Toronto • Washington,D.C.
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Library ofCongress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Albrecht,Karl
The power ofminds at work :organizational intelligence in action /
Karl Albrecht.
p.cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8144-0737-4
1. Knowledge management.2. Organizational learning.3. Corporate
culture. I.Title.
HD30.2 .A385 2002
658.4'038--dc21
2002005079
© 2003 Karl Albrecht.
All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America.
This publication may not be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted in whole or in part,
in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior written permission of AMACOM,
a division of American Management Association,
1601 Broadway, New York, NY 10019.
Printing number
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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CONTENTS
PREFACE ix
PART I. THE CASE FOR SMARTER ORGANIZATIONS 1
CHAPTER 1. ALBRECHT’S LAW 3
Collective Stupidity: It’s Normal 3
The Entropy Tax: Energy Lost Forever 6
Organizational IQ: When 1 + 1 + 1 Don’t Add Up to 3 7
Does an Organization Have a “Mind”? 10
Collective Intelligence: Brain Power Writ Large 14
CHAPTER 2. LEARNED INCAPACITY: HOW PEOPLE COLLUDE TO FAIL 17
Corporate DNA: The Internal Codes of Success
and Failure 18
Seventeen Basic Syndromes of Dysfunction 21
The Crisis Mode: Start with Denial 26
GroupThink: Deciding Not to Think 29
Profiles in Dysfunction: How the Great
Become Mediocre 34
PART II. ORGANIZATIONAL INTELLIGENCE 39
CHAPTER 3. WHAT IS ORGANIZATIONAL INTELLIGENCE? 41
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vi CONTENTS
Syntropy: Multiplying Brain Power 42
Seven Traits of the Intelligent Organization 43
Profiles in Intelligence: You Know It When You See It 48
The Causes of Organizational Intelligence 59
Should We Train Brains? 61
CHAPTER 4. STRATEGIC VISION: EVERY ENTERPRISE
NEEDS A THEORY 66
The Arc of Success: The “Golden Age” Syndrome 67
Bifocal Vision: What Now and What Next? 72
Seeing Through the Fog: Management Fads,
Fallacies, and Folklore 74
The Manifesto: Vision, Mission, Values, and Strategy 83
Leadership, Vision, and Action: Horses for Courses 87
The Pathology of Power 92
The Neurology of Leadership 99
Key Indicators of Strategic Vision 103
CHAPTER 5. SHARED FATE: THE HOLODYNAMIC ORGANIZATION 105
I, We, They, Us, and Them: The “Rabble Hypothesis” 106
The Hologram as Metaphor 108
Culture as the Collective Unconscious 110
Our History: Who Are We and How Did We Get Here? 113
Lifeboat Politics: Zero-Sum Thinking 116
Organizing Across Cultures: Ethnic and
Social Interfaces 121
Key Indicators of Shared Fate 123
CHAPTER 6. APPETITE FOR CHANGE: PLANNED ABANDONMENT 125
Homeostasis and the Dominant Neurosis:
How Organizations Avoid Their Futures 125
The Dominators Are Rarely the Innovators 129
The Sick-Sigma Syndrome: Perfection or Destruction? 134
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CONTENTS vii
Organizing for Change 136
Key Indicators of Appetite for Change 139
CHAPTER 7. HEART: EARNING THE DISCRETIONARY ENERGY 140
You Can’t Get Good Help These Days:
The Ghost of Frederick Taylor 141
How Do You Turn People On? You Don’t. 143
Motivators and Demotivators:
The Ghost of Frederick Herzberg 146
Meaning and Motivation: The Power of a
Common Cause 150
Quality of Work Life: The Barometer of Heart 153
Key Indicators of Heart 154
CHAPTER 8. ALIGNMENT AND CONGRUENCE: ELIMINATING THE
CONTRADICTIONS 156
The Structural Paradox: Any Way You
Organize Is Wrong 156
System Craziness: Designing for Failure 161
System Intelligence: Designing for Success 165
Chastity Belts: Designing Trust Out of the
Organization 167
Are We Rewarding Failure and Punishing Success? 169
Bolting Cultures Together: How to Sink a Merger 171
Organize for the Mission 174
Key Indicators of Alignment 176
CHAPTER 9. KNOWLEDGE DEPLOYMENT: THE “HIVE-MIND” 177
Knowledge Capital: What Is It? 177
Knowledge Productivity: The Unsolved Problem 181
Brains Online 185
Information: The Next “Quality Revolution” 188
Digital Cultures: Where Are We Headed? 195
Key Indicators of Knowledge Deployment 199
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viii CONTENTS
CHAPTER 10. PERFORMANCE PRESSURE: LEADERSHIP WITH PURPOSE 201
Una Cosa: Don’t Try to Chase Ten Rabbits 202
Selling the Story: The Leader as Logo 204
Feedback: The Breakfast of Champions 208
Cowardly Management: More Common
Than We Admit 209
Key Indicators of Performance Pressure 212
PART III. GETTING SERIOUS ABOUT GETTING SMART 215
CHAPTER 11. FACING THE CHALLENGE 217
The Fizzle Factor: Why Most Big-Deal Change
Programs Fail 218
The J-Curve: Fantasy Confronts Reality 220
Planned Growth and Unplanned Growth 223
Going Outside: How Consultants Can Help—
and Hurt—an Organization 226
CHAPTER 12. PSYCHOTHERAPY FOR THE ENTERPRISE 232
Organization Development: Is There a “Theory”
of Change? 232
Change Management 101:
Five Requisites for Successful Change 236
Ten Principles for Change Agents 240
Some Final Thoughts 243
INDEX 247
ABOUT THE AUTHOR 259
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PREFACE
NASA’S MARS CLIMATE ORBITER SPACECRAFT, a $125 mil-
lion marvel of U.S. technology and engineering, whizzed
toward the red planet at 17,000 miles per hour, exactly as
planned. In the early morning hours of September 30, 1999,
the crew of technical wizards at CalTech’s Jet Propulsion Lab
(JPL), and at other points around the world, waited tensely for
the signals that would tell them it had successfully entered a
stable orbit. They waited. And waited.
Suddenly, the signal from its on-board transmitter faded
and died, and the craft was never heard from again.
Stunned and horrified, the experts worked feverishly
around the clock to figure out what had gone wrong, and tried
to re-establish contact with the craft. After days of careful
testing and analysis, they reluctantly concluded that the ship
had probably approached Mars at an altitude of less than 60
kilometers rather than the 150 kilometers as planned. This
was far too close and the spacecraft likely burned to a cinder
due to friction with the atmosphere.
JPL’s management and the top management of NASA
went into crisis mode. A careful investigation revealed that
the engineers who wrote the navigation software for the mis-
sion had been working in separate groups, and had appar-
ently not approached the mission as a whole. Incredibly, one
group had been programming its calculations using metric
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