Post #3528731

2026-04-22 06:08 UTC

Organisational Dysfunction of the Day Communication problems Context: A common trope in larger organisations is that the root cause of so many problems and dysfunctions is bad communication. That people are not talking to each other and conveying information properly and promptly. Things are taking too long because of all the people that have to be involved and such. People are therefore often seen as the cause of this problem, and a common way of attempting to deal with these problems involves giving people additional communication skills. Something that fuels a huge training industry. Another is to simply limit the communication needed, for example, by setting a cap on team size (often citing Metcalfe's law) or by putting up human adapters/bottlenecks as the team leads mentioned in another post. OST explains: OST states that these types of communication problems are endemic in DP1 structures and that it has nothing to do with people's ability to communicate. It is not even the primary human property, so why try to fix that first? Many situations can be observed where communication channels exist but are not used at all. What is a determining factor is the organisational structure, having one that is motivated to use the skills and where the number of channels is as few as possible. In DP1, each person is connected with the policy makers through intermediaries, in a non-reciprocal manner, while in DP2, this is reduced to real reciprocal connections between teams that do productive work. Not only is the number of connections fewer, but so is the quality of communication, as all relations are negotiations between peers, far from the asymmetrical relations between the superior and subordinate found in DP1. Think async vs. sync communication; the former is chatty, the latter is not. Also, Metcalfe's does not fit, as people communicate well and efficiently with peers who share the same goals and purpose as themselves. #OpenSystemsTheory #SocioTechnical #OrgDesign #agile

Replies (1)

@trondhjort@hachyderm.io 2026-04-23 06:39

Organisational Dysfunction of the Day HiPPOs and dungeon masters Context: In bureaucratic organisations, the formal ranking of people is usually well known and clear, where people higher up in the hierarchy have certain mandates over people they manage and/or that reports to them. Anything else would be chaos in that world. Still, there is also a lot of informal power, ranging from age difference and gender to more subtle things like years of experience and size of salary, regardless of formal power. This is problematic when decisions are to be made, as these informal power structures end up trumping data and expertise. OST Explains: Facilitators especially try to counter these tendencies in workshops, for example, by using different types of techniques. A common one is sometimes called Silent Writing, where people are asked to work on the problem alone first, at the start of the workshop, so that all voices are heard. Sometimes this is taken a step further, as in 11-2-4-all, where the next step is joining a colleague to draw up a joint design, before joining up with another pair to create one they all agree on, and so on, before all get together and decide. This works well to get input from everyone, but does not silence the one with rank, as they will dominate regardless. And potentially lead to failure. In the techniques developed in OST, the focus is instead to create a community from the start of the session, instead of fortifying the differences, as these techniques do focus on the individuals. The Search Conference does this by focusing first on the shared goals and wishes for the future, showing that they all agree on more than they disagree on. And, if they do agree on something, put that to the side immediately and focus on what joins them instead of what separates them. The assumption is that we share the we all share the values that lead to the desirable future. #OpenSystemsTheory #SocioTechnical #OrgDesign #agile

Open ##3528730