I've suggested for a while that Google's greatest innovation may be in it's management practices. Gary Hamel has a great piece in the WSJ on their novel management system designed to gaurd against risk factors for sustained growth:
• Evolutionary risk factor #1: A narrow or orthodox business definition that limits the scope of innovation. Google's response: An expansive sense of purpose.
• Evolutionary risk factor #2: A hierarchical organization that over-weights the views of those who have a stake in perpetuating the status quo. Google's response: An organization that is flat, transparent, and non-hierarchical.
• Evolutionary risk factor #3: A tendency to overinvest in "what is" at the expense of "what could be." Google's response: A company-wide rule that allows developers to devote 20% of their time to any project they choose.
• Evolutionary risk factor #4: Creeping mediocrity. Google's response: Keep the bozos out and reward people who make a difference.
A key practice is the use of heterarchical (as opposed to heirarchical) organization forms which favor innovation -- particularly augmented by social software. Google is unique in that it is a large enterprise in hypergrowth that is new (an brave) enough to adopt new tools and practices. The absence of legacy can be enough of an advantage to create a legacy.
Organization
Part of this is due to organizational forms such as heterarchy -- which are often confused with being fully democratic, meritocratic and sprinkled with granola. Lee Bryant picks up on as thread about the "ability to enjoy the benefits of open markets and free socieities is also a function of our position in the power structures at play, whether we like it or not."
Anyway, the tyranny of structurelessness argues that apparently flat or non-hierarchical organisational (power) structures are not inherently democratic or inclusive; or, as Will puts it:
"In essence: stripping away formal and explicit rules from groups does not result in groups without power relations or hierachies. All it does is replace them with implicit, invisible and tacit forms of power relations - friendship networks, charisma, chat and all the other things which Californian Nietzscheans rather like."
Will also relates this to Richard Sennett's idea that ���Power is present in the superficial scenes of teamwork, but authority is absent���.
The Tyranny of Structurelessness was written in 1970, and since then there have been some cultural changes, but mostly technology advances that facilitate interaction. But nonetheless, it is important to regonize that even in the flattest organization, an order emerges that is not as ideal as some theories would hold, but one that is more adaptive.
Practices
Google has created an enviroment that taps into financial and social incentives for production. I'm only into the first chapter of the Wealth of Networks for a richer understanding of commons-based peer production. Meanwhile, John Sviokla points a paper called Effort for Payment: A tale of two markets:
In this short piece they brilliantly show people operate with at least two core motivations – social and economic – and hence live in two different “markets” for all our actions. Social markets – when we are asked to do favors, or work for charity, or provide for love ones, are markets in which effort is independent of payment. If you give me a little gift or a large gift, my effort does not change. However, once you introduce a financial incentive in a social market, my effort (in their study) actually decreases, because I am now working for money – and my effort is linked to how much I get paid. If one continues to increase payment, one can get effort back to where it was when I was working for nothing! Put another way, a small payment is not only a bad incentive, it pollutes what otherwise was effort that did not have a price by turning a social market into a financial one.
So in developing practices to tap into social incentives, use incentives that truly are social.
Tools
Part of this is due to tools, as Jason Kolb provides emphasis:
What's really cool is that I think this opens up the possibility of Web 2.0 technology not only improving knowledge management and sharing processes, but it also has the ability to motivate people beyond their current levels of participation.
Andrew McAfee, who kicked off this whole Enterprise 2.0 thing, considers these tools ratchet technologies and there's no going back. He picks up on this comment from Socialtext user Sean Park: I honestly can’t conceive of going back to working without the wiki. And for all intents and purposes, wide adoption only began 6-7 months ago!
But the Socialtext wikis that I use (full disclosure: Socialtext lets me use their software for free. I have no financial stake in the company) and my del.icio.us bookmarks and tags have become as indispensable to me as email, Google, and my Blackberry. They ace both of the classic criteria for user acceptance of IT:
- Ease of Use: To start editing a page on Socialtext, I double-click on the page. This is so convenient that I’ve set up a one person wiki (which must be a taboo of some kind) with my to-do lists on it. I can access it from anywhere, and add to it in seconds. With the del.icio.us browser toolbar I can bookmark a new page with one click, and go to my collected bookmarks with another.
- Usefulness: I’ve set up wikis for all of the collaborative projects I’m working on, and email alerts and/or RSS tell me when any of my colleagues have advanced the work. Del.icio.us frees me up from having to remember URLs or keep my bookmarks consistent across the computers I use, and its tagging feature lets me organize sites and pages the way I want to. The social features of del.icio.us are, for me, icing on the cake. I use them to learn about new sites and voices devoted to topics I’m interested in.
This post ended up being a collection of really damn interesting stuff. But I guess should give it a conclusion. Here we have tools that, with the right practices, provide a deeper level of participation which themselves enable different organizational forms. Not all companies will apply these tools to flatten the organization, but there will be a trend towards transparent productivity that may never go away.
