Talking about the teaming, Narayana Murthy of Infosys keeps saying, 1+1 is always greater than 2. Having seen the corporate culture for 4 years now, I somehow, do not agree with him and tend to hold a contradicting opinion. I am not bluntly saying that he is wrong, but the probability of him being right is only close to 20%. But for the rest 80% of the opportunities I feel 1+1 is always much lower than 1.5. And as the number of people keeps increasing the marginal increment in the value added is going down, may not be considerably but yes, it does. Things which can influence this function are largely - Leadership, Culture, Kind Of Job, Maturity Level of People and the Governance System.
When the organization is small, when the visibility for each person is very high, when the roles are clearly defined, when the responsibilities were shared with a human touch, when the leadership has a clear Vision and the same is shared among all other people, when employees work for the Organisation but not for any Individual, when one is not just one…Narayana Murthy is right in his Statement. But in reality, I get to see none of the mentioned characteristics is prevalent. What all I see are - vague bond between people, road blocks for the Information/Vision/Objective at each layer of the hierarchy-leaving leaving the completely distorted information when it reaches the ground, Individual objectives taking the driver seat instead of the organization goals, escaping from all the duties and work only when it is extremely needed, involving personal relationships at work place, measuring people’s performance on the wrong Indices or just on the personal relationship and what not…creating all odds for that individual who comes with an intention of serving the Organisation with true spirits and prove himself.
Why an Organisation, when small performs well and the same gets tumbled down as the size crosses the critical mass. And how can one actually say that this is the critical mass for the Organisation. If we dwell in to it, In general when an Organisation is formed, the founder(s) has the clear Vision and makes sure that it is shared with the people who work for it. What part of the information is to be shared and what is to be hidden are clear in his/her understanding. He/She doesn’t need to lay down a rule book/process to function the given job. Most of the times the job is given and accepted with clear understanding of the impact of the job on the other stakeholders of the Organisation. This is the reason responsibility & accountability are instilled without saying. This is the reason you can derive higher average work (Value) from an Organisation of 5 people than that of from the organisation of 500 people.
If 1+1 has to be more than 2 –It asks for, each one complementing the other person in the work, extending the support beyond the set job description, zeal to stretch that extra mile and encourage him or her to achieve that. This is possible only and only when there is perfect coherent set of objectives for the individuals and teams. If these intangible and cultural aspects are absent, the marginal VALUE that each person brings to the table is clearly less than 1. Meaning to say, if he asked to function independently he would add more value (in absolute terms). If my observation is correct - if there are 100 people working on a job, the value derived out of this entire group would be somewhere between 30 to 40. But why do we need teams??? Answer is simple; one can’t be more than ONE. But 10 can be more than 5….got me?
2 comments:
I agree with what you said, individual objectives are taking over when it comes to work rather than team or organization goals. in reality what ever we speak Team work, cooperation etc.....are not happening in reality. People are promoted based on the personal relations what he/she had with their managers. In case of smaller organization management or founders can keep a track of everybody and everything but where as in bigger organizations this is not possible, that is where top management would be mostly miss led by middle management.
Sunil.
You are spot on on the last statement. And I think that's precisely what Murthy drives at.
Anomalies do exist in organizations, especially large ones, so inefficiency is meant to creep in. But, to derive the kind of value that huge organizations create in terms of employment, opportunities, diversity etc. it is necessary to have sheer size as well.
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