This Focused Performance Weblog started life as a "business management blog" containing links and commentary related primarily to organizational effectiveness with a "Theory of Constraints" perspective, but is in the process of evolving towards primary content on interactive and mobile marketing. Think of it as about Focusing marketing messages for enhanced Performance. If you are on an archive page, current postings are found here.
"[I]f you're in business, government, or education and you're thinking about how to scale a project massively, you have to think about the possibility of doing it in Netlike fashion. You have to consider the opposite of what thousands of years of experience have shown us to be the only way to scale a project. You have to give up control over it.
"The belief in centralized management isn't just a business decision. It's part of a larger, neurotic understanding about our place in the world. For the past century, Americans have been obsessed with controlling everything. It's neurotic because the human condition is about living in a world that we didn't make and that we can't control. In that sense, the Web's lack of control -- its very architecture -- is a celebration of being human in a universe that joyously overwhelms us."
Trying to control the uncontrollable is the source of much of what goes wrong in organizations and in projects. Trying to control time through task due dates and impossible commitments, trying to control resources through micromanagement of task activity, and trying to control scope through premature definition and rigidity of details all lead to a range of unintended consequences and therefore loss of control. Rather, you need to understand the system and the limitations of control over it, separating the mere sources of noise from the real issues of concern.
In order to achieve success, the impulse to control needs to be replaced with the urges to understand, learn, and connect, and organizational process must be designed to support them, including, as Hal has recently written, the leadership process of listening before acting to control.
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