Читать книгу Reframing Organizations - Lee G. Bolman - Страница 16

We have certainly made a noble, sustained effort to improve organizations, despite our limited ability to understand them. Legions of managers report to work each day hoping to create a better future. Authors and consultants spin out a torrent of promising new ideas and erstwhile solutions. Policymakers develop a bale of laws and regulations to guide or shove organizations on the right path.

The most widespread improvement strategy is upgrading management talent. Modern mythology promises that organizations will work splendidly if well managed. Managers are supposed to see the big picture and look out for their organization's overall well‐being. They have not always been equal to the task, even when armed with the full array of modern tools and techniques. They go forth with this rational arsenal to try to tame our wild and primitive workplaces. Yet, in the end, irrational forces too often carry the day.

When managers find problems too hard to solve, they hire consultants. The number and variety of advice givers keep growing exponentially. Most of these modern shamans have a specialty: strategy, technology, quality, finance, marketing, mergers, human resource management, executive search, outplacement, coaching, organization development, planning, and many more. For every managerial challenge, there is a consultant willing to offer assistance—at a price.

For all their sage advice and remarkable fees, confident consultants continue to make little dent in persistent problems plaguing organizations. To compensate, they may blame the clients for failing to implement their profound insights. McKinsey & Co., “the high priest of high‐level consulting” (Byrne, 2002, p. 66), worked so closely with Enron that its managing partner (Rajat Gupta, who eventually went to jail for insider trading) sent his chief lawyer to Houston after Enron's collapse to see if his firm might be in legal trouble. The lawyer reported that McKinsey was safe, and a relieved Gupta insisted bravely, “We stand by all the work we did. Beyond that, we can only empathize with the trouble they are going through. It's a sad thing to see” (p. 68).

When managers and consultants fail, government responds with legislation, policies, and regulations. Constituents badger elected officials to “do something” about a variety of ills: pollution, dangerous products, hazardous working conditions, discrimination, and low‐performing schools, to name a few. Governing bodies respond by making “policy.” But policymakers don't always understand the problem well enough to get the solution right. A sizable body of research records a continuing saga of perverse ways in which the execution undermines even good solutions (Bardach, 1977; Elmore, 1978; Freudenberg and Gramling, 1994; Gottfried and Conchas, 2016; Grindle, 2017; Peters, 1999; Pressman and Wildavsky, 1973). Policymakers, for example, have been trying for decades to reform U.S. public schools. Billions of taxpayer dollars have been spent. The result? About as successful as America's switch to the metric system. In the 1950s, Congress passed legislation mandating the adoption of metric standards and measures. More than six decades later, if you know what a hectare is or can visualize the size of a 300‐gram package of crackers, you're ahead of most Americans. Legislators did not factor into their solution what it would take to get their decision carried out against longstanding custom and tradition.

In short, the difficulties surrounding improvement strategies are well documented. Exemplary intentions produce more costs than benefits. Problems outlast solutions. Still, there are reasons for optimism. Organizations have changed about as much in recent decades as in the preceding century. To survive, they had to. Revolutionary changes in technology, the rise of the global economy, and shortened product life cycles have spawned a flurry of efforts to design faster, more flexible organizational forms. New models flourish in companies, such as Valve (the nonhierarchical video game powerhouse that shuns job titles and organization charts), Wegman's (the mission‐driven supermarket chain that consistently ranks among America's best places to work), Google (the global search giant), Airbnb (a new concept of lodging), and Novo‐Nordisk (a Danish pharmaceutical company that includes environmental and social metrics in its bottom line). The dispersed collection of enthusiasts and volunteers who provide content for Wikipedia and the far‐flung network of software engineers who have developed the Linux operating system provide dramatic examples of possibilities in the digital world. But despite such successes, failures are still too common. The nagging question: How can leaders and managers improve the odds for themselves as well for their organizations?