Organizations are collections of people
Ton Zylstra poses an interesting question in his Ton's Interdependent Thoughts: How We Might View Organisations:
What happens when an organisation is first founded? Is it individuals joining (their networks) together, or is it a box to be filled with employees?
He adds to this some drawings of the implications. From one viewpoint, the whole world is a web of connections, and companies or other organizations are simply subsets of those networks. But the direction that Ton seems to be going helps me thinks about the direction an organization takes as it grows. Do you look for people to fill a "position," or do you look for people who have critical skills and connections into a part of the external network that didn't exist before.
To paraphrase Ton's opener: "Organizations are made of people, without whom there would be no money made." How does an organization look at the people and their relationships to understand value?
3 Comment(s)
As I read your comment, I thought about the nature of all the networking that I am doing now that I am out on my own and building a consulting business. The basic tenent of networking is that we work to support one another, rather than the traditional view of "power networking" where people are just out to collect business cards with no consideration of the other person. I met Melissa Giovagnoli, who pushes this into a completely new realm of NetWorlding: http://www.networlding.com/.
This view - that an organization is the meshing of relationships - is much more powerful than the traditional view, and independent entrepreneurs recognize it instinctively. What can we do together that we couldn't do separately? What can we learn from one another? How can we support and grow with one another? This is not "how can I exploit your network for my own gain."
What's in it for us?
Kris Olson at Wiki That suggests that "What's Missing Is a 'Home' for Groups" in response to Clive Thompson's life hacking article. I suspect wiki's aren't quite enough, and I don't know where we will end up. Read More
Hi Jack,
Yes, that is the direction I'd like to take this.
For instance in most my positions thus far I wrote my own job description. Interviews concentrated on skills, and my connections and what skills we might be able to acquire through those connections. It was about the new horizons that would create. Not about filling a slot in the organizational chart.
The latter is however how most positions are offered. When looking for a job in the fall I replied to some of those offers but felt restricted and uncomfortable, I had to reduce myself to fit the bill, concentrate on their explicit needs instead of on all the aspects we might enhance eachother.
Also I see a lot of anecdotal evidence that the way these job adverts/descriptions are often created feel 'fake' to the creator as well. Puffed up with woolly terms, overestimating the level of skills and education needed, mostly because that is the perceived way of how to write such a thing. Instead of letting your own organization's people's voice be heard, and realistically assess what you are looking for: a person to be invited into your network with a given set of skills or the ability to pick them up.
Are we seeing a difference emerging between how knowledge workers are approached and blue collar workers? In the latter, more industrial surrounding my guess is organisations couldn't care less who their conveyor belt-drones know in their network. Might be corporations see that need more clearly for white collar jobs. Although I would say that everybody's network is important. It shapes their view of the world.
It also contains others that might be interesting to the organization as well, and taking the network of all employees into account might be 'sold' to the corporates as a money saver as well. Why put out ads and go through the whole process of lettersifting, if you can ask your people if they know any suitable candidates, and reward them for it? That is what happened when the labor market was more favourable to the employees than the corporations. Why stop doing that now it's the other way around? I'm utterly unconvinced that the 'advert-way' is more objective or more likely to provide better results than going through your people's networks.