{"id":1114,"date":"2020-08-12T09:14:04","date_gmt":"2020-08-12T09:14:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/?p=1114"},"modified":"2020-08-12T09:14:10","modified_gmt":"2020-08-12T09:14:10","slug":"why-your-company-works-as-it-does","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/2020\/08\/12\/why-your-company-works-as-it-does\/","title":{"rendered":"Why your company works as it does"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Image by Ryan McGuire from Pixabay<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

During my vacation, one of the questions I spent time thinking about is why companies function as they do. And why companies that are digitally born operate and \u201cfeel\u201d different from traditional ones. Why companies that were different from the beginning tend to fall back into traditional patterns and become like traditional ones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I realized that, of course, the patterns in organizations are the \nconsequence of human nature. This drives many recognizable behavioral \npatterns. First, the formation of hierarchies. As I wrote<\/a>\n a few years ago, the need to organize ourselves in hierarchies goes, \naccording to some, back hundreds of millions of years in our evolution, \nlong before there even were mammals. Much of the behavior in society and\n companies is driven by our innate need to compete and jockey for \nposition in the vast number of different hierarchies that are available \nto us in modern society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Second, and a direct consequence of the first pattern, is the need to\n exert power over others. A higher position in a hierarchy gives power \nand, unless checked carefully, the need to use that power for personal \ngain rather than the general good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The third pattern is that humans rely very strongly on their own \nbeliefs and have a tendency to operate based on opinions, rather than \nfacts. To most of us, it feels like you\u2019re losing face if something that\n you believe in turns out not to be accurate. And we\u2019ll strive to \nrealign reality with our beliefs to the largest extent possible and \neasily become defensive if we\u2019re challenged with data that counter our \nbeliefs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These human behaviors cause traditional organizations to operate in \nthe way they do, including the hierarchies, the bosses that demand to be\n obeyed even if decisions don\u2019t make any sense and the general tendency \nto ignore inconvenient data that\u2019s just staring you in the face. This is\n exacerbated by the fact that most organizations became successful \nbecause of their being different in some way from the rest of society. \nThis \u201cus versus them\u201d mentality only reinforces our basic human \nbehaviors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The emergence of digital technologies, however, brings along a \nfundamental shift in how companies operate. At the heart of this \nfundamental shift lies the awareness of recognizing human behavior and \nnot ignoring it (which many have done at their peril), but at the same \ntime streamlining it to ensure that these behaviors generate the desired\n outcomes, rather than falling back into traditional structures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The most successful \u201cborn digital\u201d companies I\u2019ve seen realize this \nby minimizing the presence of hierarchies, politics, opinion-based \ndecisions and so on, focusing instead on outcomes, organizing in \ncross-disciplinary teams and taking data-driven decisions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These companies are so successful because they harness instinctive \nhuman behaviors differently. For example, hierarchies aren\u2019t ignored but\n are to the maximum extent possible based on meritocratic principles. In\n addition, they\u2019re structured to be temporary, rather than cast in \nstone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Second, the desire to exert power over others is mitigated by \nemploying empowerment and related mechanisms that limit the power of one\n individual over another. Rather than relying on a boss positioned in a \nhierarchy, every individual is free and expected to take responsibility \nfor his or her own decisions and actions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Third, these companies use data to continuously challenge beliefs \nheld by individuals and groups and encourage alternative interpretations\n of data to avoid the organization getting trapped in groupthink and \ndefensive around key ideas. For instance, most SaaS companies use A\/B \ntesting extensively \u2013 an incredibly effective tool to break down \u201cshadow\n beliefs\u201d in the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the last years, however, I\u2019ve come to realize that the \ndifference between traditional and these modern, digital companies is \nfundamental and starts with the basic assumptions and culture underlying\n the organization. In response, over time, the scope of my work has gone\n from specific areas in software R&D, such as software architecture,\n product lines and continuous integration and deployment, to systems \nengineering and end-to-end R&D. From there, I included the \noperations part, including DevOps, DataOps and MLOps, and the front-end \npart of product management. More recently, I did work on business \nmodels, ways of organizing, business ecosystems and other topics not \nstrictly in the scope of technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, I feel that what\u2019s lacking is a holistic and complete company and organizational perspective that includes not just the product and services scope, but all functions in the company, including general management, sales, HR and finance. Although my posts over the last years have provided puzzle pieces of this picture, it\u2019s my intention to, over the coming months, provide a more integrated perspective with the intent of helping you, dear reader, to adopt the modern best practices and avoid the pitfalls that many traditional organizations get stuck in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To get more insights earlier, sign up for my newsletter at <\/em>jan@janbosch.com<\/em><\/a> or follow me on<\/em> janbosch.com\/blog<\/em><\/a>, LinkedIn (<\/em>linkedin.com\/in\/janbosch<\/em><\/a>) or Twitter (<\/em>@JanBosch<\/em><\/a>).<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

During my vacation, one of the questions I spent time thinking about is why companies function as they do. And why companies that are digitally born operate and \u201cfeel\u201d different from traditional ones. Why companies that were different from the beginning tend to fall back into traditional patterns and become like traditional ones. I realized … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8,10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1114"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1114"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1114\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1116,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1114\/revisions\/1116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}