Bob Williams

How management escalation promotes organizational entropy

March 26th, 2010 | Leave a comment | Tags: ,

Previously I defined organizational entropy and how modern organizations evolve to this type behavior through a randomness of work order and completion. Another contributing factor to organizational entropy is management escalation. Let me start by saying that this post is not about bashing the practice of management escalation. Escalation is actually a needed and healthy component of high achieving organizations that have properly empowered workers to achieve the mission of the business.  There are however times when management escalation can disrupt the normal flow of work within an organization which can be disruptive to output. Escalation is random in the sense that its not pre-planned. So when members of the …Continue reading >>

Bob Williams

Defining Organizational Entropy

January 18th, 2010 | 3 comments | Tags: ,

I’ve experienced different management styles, cultures, and organizational lay-outs during my professional career in large organizations. Over the years I’ve noticed several attributes of large groups that are present regardless of the organizational design.  One of these attributes is something I’ll call Organizational Entropy. I define this as a measure of disorder or randomness by which work is created within an organization.  In multi-matrixed organizations (found in large companies) this ultimately causes workers to be out of alignment.  This misalignment isn’t necessarily with organizational goals, rather it’s more so a timing alignment with other workers. The main thought is that there is a randomness to how work gets done when resources …Continue reading >>