Managing the Informal Organisation

I think the realisation that the informal organisation, i.e, the one that is in people's heads, rather than that which is posted on the org. chart, is of equal or greater value is a good thing. What is even more exciting is that we think 4G gives people the ability to measure and manage it! A number of people have been commenting on a study in ComputerWorld to this effect. This extract is taken from Jim Ware's The Future of Work

The study, reported recently in ComputerWorld, found that informal groups that developed around informal experts and communicated openly about a problem generally outperformed formal experts who were attacking the same issue.

Jim goes on to ask

Why do organizations seem so oblivious to the intelligence and expertise of so many of their members? Sure, it's messy and often time-consuming to get everyone involved - but the results are often astounding.

I think the key is that such an informal approach has traditionally been hard to measure and manage in a conventional sense, not to mention the issues around privacy and big brother. Stowe Boyd has also mentioned that

Management will continue to believe in the decision making powers of formally designated decision makers, even when there is increasing evidence that the distributed intelligence in social networks is smarter than the org chart.

From our own perspective, we believe that giving people access to tools like 4G and Visible Path then enables them to get the most out of such situations and turn an unknown into a known.

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