- Also, on a ship, the captain decides direction.
- The ship metaphor does not fit very well with empowerment.
- If it is operating subconsciously in your business it may be blocking empowerment.
- Your metaphors determine how you think organizations should behave.
- The ship metaphor was OK in the old days when we could sail towards a destination that was not shifting as we sailed.
- Today, this metaphor is comforting but dangerous - not only is the destination shifting, but you have to make it up as you go!
- When you think about how best to manage your organization, question your underlying metaphors to ensure they fit with your environmental demands.
- What metaphors determine your thinking about organizations?
Organizations as machines
- The machine metaphor appeals to minds that like orderliness - such as engineers.
- It also ties in with business process re-engineering.
- Any business requiring a high level of efficiency is essentially a machine.
- MacDonald's and similar service businesses are examples - they offer the same product
everywhere all the time at minimum cost and maximum quality - this is machine-like.
- Machines can only be repaired or replaced, they cannot evolve or develop.
- We cannot dispense with this metaphor - contrary to the advocates of adaptiveness.
- All businesses need to deliver today's products efficiently as well as adapt to the future.
- So, all businesses will have a relatively machine-like part.
- Those that compete solely on cost, service and quality, not on innovation, need to be machine-like in their efficiency.
- Problems arise when managers insist on employing only one fundamental metaphor.
- Even fast evolving businesses need to be machine-like if they are to be profitable.
Organizations as organisms
- Organisms, like businesses, compete for survival and evolve to gain an edge.
- An organism is responsive to its environment, it can learn and adapt.
- Like organisms, businesses are born, grow and die.
- Organisms are more receptive to environmental feedback than machines.
- Businesses also operate within a delicate ecology with a lot of interdependencies.
- It's not as clear who's in charge of an organism as it is with a ship, however.
- Do businesses have no more control over their fate than animals facing evolutionary pressure?
- Entrepreneurial organizations grow more by evolution than rational planning.
- Perhaps businesses have both machine-like and organism-like characteristics.
- Thinking of your business as an organism may encourage a stronger external focus.
- Organisms look to their environments while being a machine encourages internal tinkering.
Organizations as persons
- This metaphor captures the idea that organizations have brains.
- Senior management consitutes the brain of the organization.
- This idea is O.K. in businesses where all the thinking is done only at the top.
- Like other organisms, persons grow and develop, learn and adapt.
- But they also get old and set in their ways!
- It makes sense to talk of persons forming partnerships and cooperating with other firms.
- We like to think of organizations as having a personality, character or moods.
- We attribute personality traits to organizations - like integrity or openness.
- Organizations can also be neurotic, immature or unfit - just like people.
- A manager is called the "head" and the employees "hands" -- it is no coincidence that employees were once referred to as "hired hands." No wonder organizations are so poor at employee engagement.
Organizations as groups
- This metaphor sheds light on the reality of competing factions and stakeholders.
- But, we run the risk of excessive internal focus again - as with machines.
- Only groups can be teams and this is a major benefit of this metaphor.
- What's less inspiring is just the fact that "group" is not really a metaphor.
- An organization IS a group in a way that it can never be a machine or an organism
- You could substitute the metaphor of an army or beehive - both types of groups;
- How about a group of pirates or explorers? The latter ties in with entrepreneurship.
- Explorers are discoverers who need to improvise, adapt and break new ground.
- What happens to routine execution, administration and efficiency in such a culture, however?
Organizations as families
- Conflicts in organizations are a lot like family conflicts.
- This metaphor can shed light on otherwise confusing dynamics.
- It also ties in with the paternalistic character of some organizations.
- Authority in organizations is a lot like the authority in families.
- We often want to rebel against organizational authority for the same reason.
- We refer to hiring people as ''getting into bed with them''.
- Our relationship to our employer is often thought of as a marriage.
- Like marriage, joining an organization used to be a lifetime commitment.
- Talking to other prospective employers is seen as disloyal - like having an affair!
- Manager - subordinate relationships are very much like parent - child relationships.
- Executives often want their favourite ''son'' to follow in their footsteps.
- We often like to work somewhere that has a family atmosphere.
- It is hard to rejoin an organization if you leave - as with divorce you are a traitor!
Organizations as family dynasties
- The family dynasty metaphor makes sense of decentralized conglomerates.
- The parent organization acquires offspring or spins them off as new divisions.
- It is also conducive to images of successions of generations taking control.
- And of decentralized divisions wanting the independence to run their own lives.
- Viewing divisions as children in need of support is also quite paternalistic, however.
- As if a business has to be protected until sufficiently mature to be let to run itself.
- Often it is "parental" interference that destroys an "offspring's" chances of success.
- This metaphor suggests a certain rigidity and resistance to change.
- What counts in a family dynasty is tradition, maintaining links with the past, respect for elders, continuity - everything but dynamic change to meet future challenges.
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