In Search of Excellence
Lessons from America’s Best-run Companies
Editorial Review
The Belgian Surrealist Rene Magritte painted a series of pipes and entitled the series “Ceci n’est pas une pipe (This is not a pipe). The picture of thing is not the thing. In the same way, an organization chart is not a compandy, nor a new strategy an automatic answer to corporate grief. We all know this; but when trouble lurks, we call for a new strategy and probably reorganize. And when we reorganize, we usually stop at rearranging the boxes on the chart. The odds are high that nothing much will change. We will have chaos, even useful chaos for a while, but eventually the old culture will prevail. Old habit patterns persist.
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Wisdom to Share
At gut level, all of us know that much more goes into the process of keeping a large organization vital and responsive than the policy statements, new strategies, plans, budgets, and organization charts can possibly depict.
If we want change, we fiddle with the strategy. Or we change the structure. Perhaps the time has come to change our ways.
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Such skill building, adding new muscle shucking old habits, getting really good at something new to the culture, is difficult. That sort of thing clearly goes beyond the structure.
The true power of the small group lies in its flexibility. New product teams are formed anywhere at 3M and nobody worries very much about whether or not they fit exactly into division boundaries.
The effective productivity or new product teams in the excellent companies usually from five to ten in size.
The task force reporting level, and the seniority of its members, are proportional to the importance of the problem.
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