Dave Rogers On Hierarchy And Wirearchy

I have read and re-read Dave Roger’s post on Hierarchy. It’s a well thought out piece … and I think he’s largely correct.

I don’t want to rebut Dave Rogers, per se. Notice the “And” rather than “Versus” in this post’s title (though I have posted “versus” types of blog posts on this issue before).

I want to learn from Dave, and I want to explore the thinking he sets out.

I found it interesting that he started out his post with definitions of hierarchy … which is one of the first places I started when I first began thinking about “wirearchy”. From there I went, of course, to the truism “knowledge is power”, which I think is often used to trace the arc from the time when “knowledge” began to be more widely distributed due to the printing press and the re-invention, if you will, of books .. and all of the social change that has been ascribed to that point in history.

From there he goes on to say that really nothing much has changed – humans have always existed in and worked in hierarchies, and hierarchy is to be found throughout our biological and existential worlds. I couldn’t agree more.

Dave Rogers says

The advent of a networked world has created an enormous new medium in which people can compete for authority, and therefore, rank within the hierarchy. We all want to be higher in the hierarchy, even if it’s only for the brand of beer we drink, or the manufacturer or our automobile or pickup truck; or, for that matter, our operating system. Some unique thing sets me above others, and therefore you should pay attention to me and listen to my authority. It’s all about being able to pass along my genes. Of course, that’s by no means what it’s really all about, but that’s what we spend 99.44% of our time doing and worrying about.

There is nothing truly new here. It’s all about monkeys climbing in trees. We’ve got a new forest now, and everyone believes “that changes everything.” It’s not true, and anyone who tells you that is just promoting themselves, not the truth.

Indeed, all of the above is true, I think. I find myself wondering a little bit about the last sentence. I’ll admit – right here – that when I started thinking and writing about “wirearchy”, an element of doing so was to try to promote some of my thinking and experience and capability in organizational consulting. That’s not really the case, any longer … too many arrows in my back now … sadder and wiser 😉

For years I worked as a management consultant helping to design hierarchies … and I have a solid working knowledge of the methodologies, rules and processes whereby organizational designs are created and implemented. And I got really, really fed up with what I saw, the simplistic logic behind the methodologies, and the ineffectiveness and rigidity that these methodologies helped create … and sustain.

Around about 1991 – 1993, information systems began to penetrate and infiltrate more and more of the planning and reporting that accompanied business and organizational management processes, and business process re-engineering became all the rage – ostensibly in search of efficiencies and yes, flexibility whilst retaining all the control that hierarchies are used to, want and believe they need.

I was quite interested in what I perceived as the impacts of information technology on the nature of work, and on organizational design and dynamics … this was, roughly speaking, when organizations began flattening their structures, cutting out middle management levels, and using information technology for a wider range of purposes within the business processes and for reporting and monitoring work activity and results.

Following that period, from let’s say 1993 on, we were introduced to the Web, and slowly but surely, hyperlinks. The Cluetrain authors said, famously … “hyperlinks subvert hierarchy”. Well, yes … if you truly believe that knowledge is power.

Five years on … is this having any effect ? I suppose you could say “yes”, in terms of all the reporting on transparency, relationship capital, the need for trust, the effect of blogging on the established expertise and authority of mainstream journalism, the use of the web to give consumers more and more power which some say has led to the need for new business logics and new business models (are Amazon, Dell, and eBay examples of this, as is often suggested ?).

Many more intelligent and more aware people than me have suggested that there’s something up wirth the impacts and dynamics of distribtuted networks ( some that come to mind are Joi Ito, John Perry Barlow, Kevin Kelley, the Cluetrain authors … let’s see, who am I leaving out – oh, several thousand, no doubt).

One of the influential thinkers that kept me interested in the notion of “wirearchy” was Stan Davis, whom I was re-reading in 1998 or 1999. Stan Davis is an influential business thinker who wrote books such as Future Perfect, 20/20 Vision, Future Wealth, Blur, and most recently It’s Alive – The Coming Convergence of Information, Biology and Business. Stan was (I think) the business thinker who coined the term “mass customization”, and speculated very early on about the impacts of information technology on time, space and matter as it pertained to the process of turning matter into products and time combined with knowedge into valuable services.

I was particularly impacted by several paragraphs at the end of Chapter 3 of his book Future Perfect, wherein he speculated that distributed networks of information and people would (eventually, but over quite a long period of time) lead to new forms of organizational structure and new organizational dynamics.

I specifically focused on the implications of these two paragraphs.

“Electronic information systems enable parts of the whole organization (here, we can read organization in the large sense, as a nation or society as well IMO) to communicate directly with each other, where the hierarchy wouldn’t otherwise permit it. What the hierarchy proscribes, the network facilitates: each part in simultaneous contact with all other parts and with the company (see expanded definition above)as a whole. The organization can be centralized and decentralized simultaneously: the decentralizing mechanism in the structure, and the coordinating mechanism in the systems.

Networks will not replace or supplement hierarchies; rather the two will be encompassed within a broader conception that embraces both. We are still a long way from figuring out the appropriate and encompassing organization models for the economy we are now in. At the very least, it is clear that we will have to reconceptualize space, transforming it by technology from an impediment to an asset.

The phrase emphasized above is what I hold in my mind as the guiding question regarding “wirearchy”, and the references to the (perhaps) emergence of a new organizing principle, which Mr. Rogers deconstructs and derides.

For the record (again, as it’s not the first time) I am not suggesting wirearchy will replace, or sho
uld replace hierarchy. I do think that the widespread access to and distriubution of information will have impacts upon hierarchy as we know it today. And I think that linkage back and forth will mean something very different ten or twenty years from now than what we understand it to be and mean today.

What seems clear to me is that we all ARE involved in and engaged with (to greater and lesser degrees) a set of conditions that humans have never before encountered or experienced … our minds, imaginations, and expressing potentially linked to whomever else out there wants to take the time to examine and consider. And … there’s a Save button ! Conversations, ideas and evidence don’t disappear as easily as they might previously have done.

And much of the impact is yet to come, I think. Much has already been thought and written about the digital generations that are coming along, containing all those young people who persist in calling me (and probably Mr. Rogers) “Mr.”. It has been noted that they have much smarter thumbs than do we old people … and I think kids today are learning what search engines and Google mean before they even get to school. The impact on language and how we structure thought, thinking and decisionmaking is inevitable, and seems to portend immense structural changes in language and the process of human communication – what things mean and how thtat meaning is conveyed and exchanged.

Will some fundamentals of human interaction persist ? I am certain they will, and I do think that animals ( yes, in spite of computers and regardless of what Ray Kurzweil has said in his book The Age of Spiritual Machines, we humans are still animals ) use social hierarchy as a primary organizing principle.

Will interconnected distributed networks of information and people have more impact than is apparent today, on what we understand as traditional hierarchy today ? Again, in my opinion, it seems certain.

Will “wirearchy” replace hierarchy ? I don’t think so. Will hierarchy in an era of interconnected, intelinked humans and information be substantively altered, in terms of how it functions in the setting of organized purposeful social systems we call organizations. In my opinion, yes. How ? I don’t know, though I think we can observe some of the patterns that have been forming. Do they lead to new business and organizational logics, and new organizational forms and dynamics. I think the answer is a qualified “yes”.

And … I want to come back to the examination Mr. Rogers has offered us, specifically with respect to self-promotion and the effects that working and living in hierarchies have on many humans. I too believe that it is useful to reflect on the degree to which striving for and using status has deleterious effects on being an effective human being who must live in society with other human beings. We see lots of crap being done to others, sometimes we do it to others, and there is that famous expression “shit flows downhill”.

I don’t want to crap on anyone, and I don’t want anyone to crap on me. I do want to try to find ways to do interesting things that will help us all live together better, and so far I think that the Web and interconnectedness has helped us do more of that, and challenge unhealthy, power-blinded hierarchy. So far, so good, in my opinion.

Here’s Mr. Rogers’ conclusion. I feel like I could say much the same thing. Thanks, Dave.

As for me, I maintain you shouldn’t listen to me. You should think for yourself. I am an authority on nothing, this is all just my opinion. I make it all up. I don’t want to play in the hierarchy game, but I don’t want to see people abused when others play it either. I don’t have a blogroll, and I don’t usually link a lot, because that supports the hierarchy competitors. I don’t post advertising and I don’t affiliate with Amazon and I don’t have a “tip jar.” I’m not trying to convert my lack of authority into wealth, the liquid form of authority. I’m just here to try to say what I think, and I hope I approach whatever “the truth” is. Maybe it’ll give someone else something to think about too. And if it doesn’t, that’s okay by me too. I’m not trying to “change everything.” I’m just trying to change myself.

At the end of the day, I think that’s what it’s all about.