Naturally; Organisations by Joan VellvĂŠ Rafecas 2017
When we look at an organisation we often divide between the collective behaviour and the individual actions. While annihilating these two identities we are forgetting the reality of an organisation, there is no possibility of one without the other. Within an organisation individual and collective behaviour can be seen as one to ease the understanding of the organisation’s ins and outs. While the qualities of a part of an organisation are always represented on the whole, the qualities the whole has are not representative for all individual parts. We cannot analyse an organisation by its parts and pretend to understand the whole, so here it comes the hard task when analysing an organisation as a whole because chaos and complexity arise. Individuals and organisations are two faces of the same coin; they both represent each other as much as are represented by one another. Therefore, what we find is that under the same organisational paradigm, diverse individualities exist, all different, all unique, all organisations and all organisms. Organisation matter; organisations have an identity by themselves and are reduced to the exchange between individuals or smaller organisations within. This exchange is both representative of the individual act and the organisation identity. The false idea that organisations are human born structures is bringing an over control, overregulation. The need of standardisation comes from this misunderstanding and has an effect that overcomes natural behaviour. If we would perceive organisations as nature we would
directly accept their imperfections. Because we perceive them as human born we don’t allow their fluid behaviour, their failures and challenges that don’t succeed. We control and parameterize to rationalise actions and prevent from mistakes. Moreover the perception that through overlapping rules and legislations we can change the group dynamic or that the organisation will become true to a certain “common will”, “common movement” or “common identity” isn’t always right. It is easy to forget that if the individual doesn’t embrace those “add-on” values or rules and only acts accordingly and not per se willingly, on the long run these will fail. By over-controlling, boxing and programming everything we are missing the space for natural exchange, natural behaviour which in any case can be parameterized or reproduced exactly till exhaust. It also produces a standardisation of the organisation structure preventing each organisation to be true to its own standards and values, making very different entities behave similarly and fail likewise. When designing an organisation we should avoid the assumption that the perfection on a bureau layer can be assimilated by the reality that lays underneath. There is no common sense that would tell that humans are perfected machines that disconnect their imperfections while working nor that every organism should “work” (structurally speaking) in the same way. Even if machines would be perfect and therefore they could substitute us, who would imagine that the natural deviation of human uniqueness would not be perfect? Nature offers in the field of organisations an immense number of examples of resilient, different and lasting structures; perfect in their imperfection. We forget every time that the rules we seek to emulate already exist in nature with, most of the times, simpler, more effective and more flexible measures. Moreover what we see is the diversity from which we can learn even if not as perfect metaphors clearly as useful ideals.
We believe ourselves as unique individuals. Yet when we measure our organisational standards we provide ready-made suits for unique organisations. In that way, we should envision organisations as the result of the exchange between unique individuals (value created), which turns into unique organisations. In the opposite we envision unique organisations by applying always the same management methods, rules and bureaucracy, forcing individuals to act regarding the organisation and not the other way around. Mark Buchanan explains in his book “The social Atom” from the organisation of Carbon atoms we can see many outcomes that refer directly to how they are organised. From a crystalline organisation, we find the diamond, the hardest directional material we know. At the same time from Carbon, we find the soft graphite. Diamond and graphite are two siblings from the same unit and it’s the way the atoms are organised which defines the qualities of the organisation, therefore not the atoms per se. How we organise defines the qualities of the outcome of the organisation. As a society, we organise to achieve common goals but our organisational models are artificially induced by financial and legislative powers. They are not derivates of the individual exchanges but to an external force. It makes a strange paradox; we are inevitably organisations and we overwhelm ourselves with artificial rules that are not natural to us. Within the conception of our organisation standards, we pursue the ideal of perfection, which again is related to strict rules and norms, to bureaucracy, to forms and to endless procedures. From simple rules of interaction that evolved from the time where they were used as a framework or guidelines to ease social encounters, to the panoptic control that became a bureaucracy impossible to trespass. Moreover as described in “The Utopian of Rules” of David Graeber this bureau layer on our societal structures becomes structural violence towards the people they are supposed to serve. The role of the rules becomes that of the
enforcement, not the one of enabling. Following this metaphore we find that individuals within organisations are also boxed into shape forcing them to become contorsionists in their own body and behaviour. Yet this is not an Oda to an anarchic organisation structure but it is of a naturalisation of the exchanges and structural design. The enduring reality of natural organisations is based on the imperfection of any natural form or encounter. Natural organisations embody the mistake and are flexible by their simplicity. Organisations are temporal arrangements, to achieve specific goals, whether personal or common, short term or long term. Natural organisations are temporal per definition, temporal because of its inherent evolution and development; temporal because they are contextual. When the system is frozen into a specific shape and the rules and bureau are expanded to keep a certain “power� obtained, all the issues that in small scale where affordable become intrinsic problems impossible to overcome. Moreover it is also a problem the way we approach organisations, instead of building according to individual qualities towards an organisational paradigm, we envision organisational standards and we force people down the drain. By doing so we both prevent individuals to reach their full potential and also prevent organisations to be unique. We are nature and we often forget. The structures we created developed into static hierarchical pyramids of power. Right now with network organisations, multidirectional processes, horizontal schemes and the empowerment of users, there is a chance where we can understand a different way to engage with our organisational standards. If so, we will inevitably face the deconstruction of current models and for those who are afraid of change, we are already doing so. Alternative paradigms that embrace the individual empowerment through collaborative decision-making are
popping within all layers of society. When organisations will reach enough flexibility that won’t relate to a name, space or a time, they will be truly timeless, truly temporal, and natural at last. Aligned with this hope for a different future for our organisational standards we can take a look backwards and remember the old knowledge of nature, resilient, timeless always in evolution. The hope for a better future is stronger than the commodity of old known.