Each is a piece of the continent, a part of the main
Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee."
There is nothing more profound than this, which was penned by John Donne in the 16th century. Yet how far as humans we have drifted away.
This is true in every aspect of human life, and all the more in any venture that the human being is part of. We love to glorify individual achievements, individual leaders, individual role models. Yet any of these individuals would admit like Isaac Newton did back in the 17th century that "if I have seen a little further, it is by standing on the shoulders of the giants.
This generation perhaps is a little more blessed than the previous, with the powerful peer to peer exchange of ideas and opinions, thanks to the Web 2.0 and 3.0 avatars like Facebook and Twitter. How about taking this further into organizational design and design of human interactions?
Too much of precious time and energy is wasted by wonderful human beings working in isolation. The same is true even with the devices and technology thrown around. The same is true with many bandwidth hogging applications whose intelligence is centrally driven. The same is true with many organizations who waste precious human time and energy and even physical bandwidth from across the world since the so called 'intelligent decision maker' sits in one part of the world. So many smart phones being still used as simple voice devices, with the processor power and other capabilities wasted away. So many high power computers still being used as word processors, or at best as Skype machines. So many smart human beings still being used for much less skilled work. The absence of an overall view. The absence of respect for the power in your neighbour. The blind eye towards wastefulness. The absence of respect and recognition of the person next to you!
In the topic of social foraging, they say, the solitary whale would join the group of whales to maximize its probability of effective hunting. Or it is said that many ants work together so harmoniously as many cells in a human body, that the group of ants become an organism by itself. Now that is a beautiful extension of what is natural. Cells working together in a body, parts of the body working together in creating the collective intelligence, and people working together in achieving many times more as a collective organism of people.
This needs careful design of this collective organism. You can't just assemble a few cells and expect it to work together most effectively. You can't just put together a few human body parts and expect it to be an intelligent human being. Now if these things are pretty obvious, why is it that we do not so carefully knit together the organization in a similar fashion, where as creators of this organization we have clarity on what is needed and then assemble the right body parts? After knowing the theory of diffusion in propagation of innovation for many years, why do we not carefully apply this in organizational design.
I am sure many do, yet many more don't, since they are busy figuring out how their own names can be glorified. I wish away the days of glorifying the individual as much as getting amazed at the power of a carefully designed togetherness. I wish away the days of glorifying individuals as great social changers as much as that amazing well knit group from across the globe who together made a difference, a difference that stays. I wish away death thereby, since while John Donne recognizes the loss of a piece of me, I am excited that there is no death of this collective organism since new cells, new parts, new human beings, new creatures take its place in the lasting design. I hope this thinking makes a difference to the world around, where we would go back to the drawing board to design beautiful patterns of the collective organism for making a difference. It is much more than rallying behind one leader, it is much more than a few slogans together. In fact it is none of these. It is in creating a different world of patterns where the individual is no more.
No comments:
Post a Comment