Growing Fast, Simply

The Power of Self-Organisation can be leveraged to build a business model which can scale fast with a simple organisation structure.

Imagine a large organisation spread across 37 countries, with more than 100,000 people participating actively in it, more than 5000 branches, and each of these Branches requiring very little supervision and control from the centre, highly motivated people participate, and participate voluntarily, hardly any communication between the centre and the branches yet producing immense value and growing rapidly. This to my mind is Virtual to the extreme, there is no sophisticated infrastructure for communication as well. Branches replicate and look very similar to each other yet, very little supervision or control is required from the centre. Does this sound like a dream organisation?  I just took the example of BNI the worlds largest Business Referral Organisation. However this could well have been Rotary, Lions, Toastmasters, Alcoholics Anonymous , in business Amway, Tuperware follow similar models. (In a negative note Al Quida follows a similar model). Richard T. Pascale in the book ‘Surfing The Edge of Chaos' calls this type of organisation Self-Organisation.

To my mind, this self-organising, self perpetuating model is an excellent way for organizing resources and delivering value. Minimal overheads, minimal inventory, minimal infrastructure, minimal supervision & control and happy & energetic participants.  Is it possible at all to replicate this in Business? Well yes some of the business examples are a testimony to the fact that it can be applied but under what conditions is it possible?

The first condition is:- A powerful yet simple purpose that members deeply value. For Alcoholics Anonymous the motivation is clear enough. For BNI members it is more business through trusted sources. For Toastmasters it is Improving their Public Speaking skills. For Tuperware it is giving Housewives freedom and a source of income.

The Second is :- Simple Codified Tasks, easy to understand and execute.  For instance in Toastmasters there are Ten Projects that a member has to do as per a manual, if he successfully completes this he becomes a Competent Toast Master. Now there are guidelines for evaluating the projects that members who are more senior follow and give feedback that helps beginners to improve and become competent. No one comes from Toastmasters headquarters to test and certify, everything is so well documented that members can do it themselves. Similarly Alcoholics Anonymous has to go through 12 steps to qualify as "not an Alcoholic" and people who have already gone through this process help others with the process.

Third is Fueling the Network:- The network can only be strong if the nodes are of good quality and the connections between the nodes are strong. In the organisation context People are the Nodes and the communication between people are the connections. All these organisations have developed strong habits for keeping the communication going and keeping it positive including reinforcing positive feedback. Most of them meet weekly, like Rotary Clubs, BNI, Toastmasters. This frequency helps in keeping the conversations live and when people meet they are no more strangers. They also have a lot of socials, games, and activities that bring the members closer and help make the connections stronger.

Fourth is Rigidity with Fluidity:- These organizations are very rigid when it comes to certain structures and "Rituals". All chapters, or branches follow the same system and change is not encouraged. However these systems are tried and tested and so are frozen so they can be replicated easily. This helps to document and scale. However beyond the core structures and habits, everything else is upto the members there is no need for permission from the Head Quarters. For instance in a large corporate a simple aspect like going on a Picnic needs to be approved by 4-6 different people, from different departments like Finance ( Is the budget available), HR ( As per policy), and Purchase (is the hotel in the approved vendor list) etc.

However in a Self-organisation such decisions are taken very fast without any red tape involved. So in essence these organisations have very clearly figured out what is really the value adding and core aspects and have frozen them and created systems around them. The rest there is no interference at all.

Of course the examples taken above are where Self-Organisation is at the best. There is a proven simple concept that can be scaled. Most organisations have not figured out this simple value adding structure, and so a lot more haziness is there in how they add value, this leads to tasks which keep changing, and job descriptions which cannot be frozen as they can be in the above examples. So supervision, control and hierarchy often become necessary to manage resources. Self-Organizing then in these organisations could be applied at the team or departmental level, or for bringing about a drastic change and be used as a one time initiative. How to do this of course is matter for another article.

The power of Self-organisation is best put in Richard T. Pascale's words,.. "by inspiring front-line workers to operate as independent agents, pursuing their own solutions with little central control, formidable business enterprises and social movements can emerge."

The author is the Chief Catalyst of businessgyan. His area of interest include business strategy and innovation. For feedback and more information, e-mail: www.businessgyan.com/balaji.

Issue BG79 Oct07