MWT Core Concepts / Themes

ManageWithoutThem has, at its heart, a set of core concepts or themes which bind the components of the model together and give it integrity. Management is what collaborating individuals share, and if everybody in the organisation shares these core concepts as they work through implementation of the MWT Model, management will be repositioned a a distributed process.

Your Organisation Doesn't Care Who Is Managing It... Quite simply, the efficiency and effectiveness of your organisation does not depend on who is managing it or on who is making decisions. Your organisation's effectiveness depends only on the quality of the decisions being made and the actions they invoke. Traditionally, 'management' was created to coordinate the separate, but related activities created through the division of labor. The key to management is coordination, not any particular 'who' of management.

'Management' has always been a distributed function... Always remember that the original purpose of management was to coordinate separate but related activities which resulted from the division of labor. Management must therefore be integrated with those separate activities. Good managers provide value-added services above and beyond this simple coordination. However, these value-added management services need to be structured as (possibly optional) shared services. There should be no risk that shared services reduce individual responsibility and accountability. If any of these value-added management services are made mandatory this is analogous to a monopoly on the service.

Organisational Usability!... People create economic value, not organisations (just ask the late economist Ludwig von Mises). Your employees (or your clients directly) leverage the capabilities and resources of your organisation to create new value. Using the analogy of web site usability your organisation's success is also dependent on its usability. Your organisation's usability is reflected in how difficult it is to do the activities that have been deemed necessary at the strategic level.

Managers and All: Make Yourself Redundant... It is the responsibility of each member of the organisation to use technology, process, innovation, and collaborative efficiencies to gain efficiencies and allow space for growth. Each member of the organisation must realize that making -yourself- redundant doesn't mean you are no longer of value to the organisation. It means you have changed the organisation. It frees you to pursue other challenges or make the same changes in other business units.

Management Portals. Management as a Service... In a ManageWithoutThem organisation most management functions are structured as optional shared services. Structuring management as optional shared services forces integration and collaboration of management functions. It also opens up the possibility the internal organisational market evolving efficiencies in management functions as well as for individual functional performers.

Market-based Coordination within the organisation (the market doesn't stop at the firm)... Why is the organisation the only entity in the economy that doesn't consider itself to be a market? With the Internet and other technologies reducing transaction costs all the time, firms can now coordinate as a market economy instead of a command economy.

Yes; it's all 'management's' fault! But, we are all 'management'... There is no 'them' to blame in distributed management. You may well blame management for the failings of the organisation but management is everybody's responsibility and there always exists options for improvement. Faced with coordination problems the answer is to offer an alternative into the internal market.

The Incredible Shrinking Management: Brand, Value, Projects, Competition, Markets... For management to become distributed it must change its perspective. No longer should it be seen to contain the rest of your organisation, rather it should again become an integrated part of the organisation. Everybody needs to understand management concepts and how they relate to their role within the organisation. Everybody has a value-chain, everybody has intellectual capital, everybody has a brand, everything is a market...

Better to be at war with your manager in the name of customer service and improved performance than it is to be at war with your customer in the name of outdated process and bureaucracy

Don't be afraid to be your customer's advocate. If you truly know your client, and if you truly know a process is not appropriate for the situation or hurting the relationship with the client - then fight the right battle.

(but don't kid yourself)

Employees as Customers... Ever increasing workforce mobility and ever increasing choices, options, and access to information for employees. This means that choice theory applies to your employees as well as your customers Leverage the Network. Not the Hierarchy The new operational shape of organisation is the network. Too many overlaps within your organisation will make rolling things up into a hierarchy an unnatural abstraction.

We are not creating control mechanisms, we are creating organisms that don't die... It is no longer enough to create a control structure or a process. In order to accommodate rapid change your structures, processes, business units, people, etc, must be adaptable. They must be alive. They must be able to adapt and improve without explicit, formal, intervention.

Disintermediation and Re-intermediation of Management... Management was originally a mechanism to coordinate separate but related activities brought about by the division of labour. Over the years management has become the ultimate middleman.

Everyone is responsible for their own Communication...

If your following up on 'This Stinks' you're already starting to self-manage...

Don't Underestimate the power of proximity... People who are physically, intellectually, or socially 'close' to you will appear much more clever than those who are 'far away'. Don't be too quick to judge - respect those you don't fully understand. On the other hand, when you are 'far away' from somebody you evaluate their results - when you are 'close' you are more likely to evaluate only their processes.

Politics and Bullsh*t are different... The 'politics' of your organisation is simply the actions required to get things done within the organisation. If those actions are purely filling out forms, nepotism, deceit, and fear, that is more specifically bad politics . Separate the good politics from the bad and name them. Perhaps some actions should be difficult to achieve as a safety check.

Avoid Level of Analysis Problems... When thinking of management avoid the temptation to only see things from one perspective. How does your approach seem when evaluated from a different perspective or level of analysis?

Architecture / Content... Self-organisation and growth require explicit focus on architecture. People need to collaborate around something. In general they will provide content for the architecture they are collaborating around. Ensure you all have a shared understanding of the architecture. The Internet has grow through massive collaboration around a shared architecture.

The Document is Not the Requirements/Design/Project... The document is not the requirements... (knowing the requirements requires a shared understanding) The document is not the design... (the design is only complete after the neurons in peoples head have been rearranged) The document is not the Project... (and it is the project that must be managed)

Away from 'Us' and 'Them' (Through 'I')

You can't tell people both 'What To Do' and 'How To Do It' (and then judge their performance)

Competence Beats Process

In a ManageWithoutThem organisation all are willing to accept that if somebody is truly competent in what they do they will do it better then somebody who simply follows a process - however perfectly.Process assumes linearity where competence must encompass more. Process, however, may assist in coordination.

Collaboration through Specialists with a Shared Architecture Beats Collaboration through Generalists

Seamlessness is bunk! (Article)

Hey! What about...? (Suggest a new Core Concept by contacting us)