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From the range of serious people cited in Ross Dawson’s blog post pointing to Karen Stephenson’s article in People & Strategy magazine, it would certainly seem so.
Please note .. I think that the Stephenson article and Ross’ blog post are excellent, and set out most, if not all, of the elements I have explored here and there in writings about ‘wirearchy’. With a quick search, I noted that Andrew McAfee, coiner of the generic term Enterprise 2.0 (and someone who knows his stuff), has also written on heterarchy.
Picking up on the heading in Ross’ post “Heterarchy: Technology, Trust and Culture“, here’s a link to a brief article I wrote for HR.com in 2003, titled “Transparency and Trust – Wirearchy and the Emerging Business Environment“.
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An Argument for Heterarchy: creating more effective organizational structures
Certainly understanding that heterarchy is a better organizational form than current alternatives is an important first step. But for that, it is important that ‘heterarchy’ is a term that can be used with clarity and common understanding. Unfortunately there appears to be no consistent definition of heterarchy available from standard dictionaries, and the term is in fact used differently in social sciences and biology.
The definition for heterarchy offered by Stephenson in her footnotes is “an organizational form somewhere between hierarchy and network that provides horizontal links that permit different elements of an organization to cooperate whilst individually optimizing different success criteria.” While this is a useful definition, this needs to be understood and accepted by others before the argument for heterarchy can proceed to action. A more commonly used definition is that used by Carole Crumley, who suggests that heterarchy is “the relation of elements to one another when they are unranked or when they possess the potential for being ranked in a number of different ways.”[1] This evokes both the reality of multiple levels, and the communication between levels that is critical in transcending the dysfunctions of pure hierarchies.
The latest issue of People and Strategy Journal has an extremely interesting Point/ Counterpoint feature. Download the full article and responses here.
Karen Stephenson, a leading network theorist and practitioner, wrote an article Neither Hierarchy nor Network: An Argument for Heterarchy, examining how heterarchies, that bring together elements of networks and hierarchies, are the most relevant organizational structures for our times.
Leading people in the field were invited to respond to the article, with responses from Edgar Schein of MIT, Robert Eccles of Harvard Business School, Charles Handy, Tracy Cox of Raytheon, Patti Anklam, Barry Frewof Center for Executive Education, Art Kleiner the editor-in-chief of Strategy+Business magazine, and Ross Dawson of Advanced Human Technologies (me 🙂 ).
My response is below. If you are interested in how organizational structures can be more effective in a connected world, I strongly recommend reading the full article and responses – this is an extremely topical issue.
Heterarchy: Technology, Trust and Culture
Stephenson is absolutely right to emphasize both the rapid rise in interconnection that individuals, organizations, and societies are currently experiencing, and the resulting interdependence that stems from that. Relatively few have yet grasped that the degree of interdependence generated in a global connected economy significantly changes the drivers of individual and collective success. Central to these drivers are the organizational structures that coalesce value from disparate participants.
It is valuable to remember that organizations are intrinsically systemic. Systems theory and its progeny have helped us to understand how some characteristics of systems and organizations can be self-sustaining. As such, shifting from hierarchies to heterarchies can only be done effectively by viewing the interrelated entities as elements in a system, which very likely will incorporate mechanisms that make structural change difficult.
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I am also reminded that now-deceased Gerard Fairtlough, ex-CEO of Royal Dutch Shell, wrote a book titled “The Three Ways of Getting Things Done: Hierarchy, Heterarchy and Responsible Autonomy” (5-star rating on Amazon). Euan Semple introduced him to me about 5 years ago in London at a meeting, where I also met Arie de Geus, author of “The Living Organization”.
To reinforce some of the key points the cited authors and theorists have made, I end this post with a quote from Stan Davis in the 1987 book “Future Perfect” that was an early inspiration for wirearchy, followed by the last line of my brief titled “What Is Wirearchy ?“:
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“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 hierarc
hy 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 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.”
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From “What Is Wirearchy”:
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All of the above responses point to new dynamics of relationship between employees and organizations. The world is moving too fast for the primary relationship to remain the “master-servant” archetype of the Industrial Age.
An adult-to-adult model (rather than parent-child) is emerging – with all of the attendant responsibilities for both parties in the relationship.
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Any terms that help people get the core concepts are helpful to getting these ideas accepted as “how we do things”.
I am struck by the impressions I receive:
“Wirearchy” makes me think first about technology, even though that is not what it is about.
“Heterarchy” makes me think first about the culture wars and becomes a turn-off as a result.
“Responsible autonomy” is terminologically correct and dry as dust. It’s not a rallying cry — even “Wirearchy” is that.
“Adult to adult” vs “parent to child”: now we’re on the right track.
So: how about working off the idea of equality (you are as capable as me in making a decision, making an issue clear, and as autonomous in initiating as I am, etc.) and subservience (it is a matter of obedience that you wait to be told; no matter how much I tell you I want you to be autonomous I want to yank it back at a moment’s notice).
I’d have said “democracy” but too many people think that’s about voting, as opposed to “rule by the people” within a framework (“rule of law”) which is what I mean here.
(Actually, the French have said it best: Liberty in the workplace (for autonomous action), Equality (none of us is better than another) and Fraternity (we’ll work out our differences rather than play power games with each other.)
Agreed .. in a real sense I don’t care whether the term is wirearchy or heterarchy or netarchy or linkarchy or hyperarchy (all terms I’ve come across), but it’s clear that there’s a growing new set of conditions that is impacting what I call traditional hierarchy (top-down commanding). Traditional hierarchy IS being changed in spite of its commanding from the heights, whether it is the business models of one-way top-down broadcast media, organizations that are facing interconnected markets, customers and employees without inviting them in or not listening to them, or political activity being impacted by knowledgeable and widely read political commentary on blogs.
We’re just in the early days of what the Tofflers and others identified as the Information / Knowledge Age. There was a lot of muttering about “paradigm shifts” a decade or more ago .. well, we’re in it for real now, and it’s biting more and more non-changeist oriented people in their derrieres, every week.
“Wirearchy” makes me think first about technology, even though that is not what it is about.
Yes, you’re right that is not (mainly) what it is about, but in my opinion the issues we (and many other people) are discussing ad infinitum would not be on the table were it not for the ubiquitous pervasiveness of integrated IT systems combined with the ubiquitous Internet and increasingly easy-to-use web tools and services in the hands of now-interconnected peoples’ minds and hearts.
So: how about working off the idea of equality (you are as capable as me in making a decision, making an issue clear, and as autonomous in initiating as I am, etc.) and subservience (it is a matter of obedience that you wait to be told; no matter how much I tell you I want you to be autonomous I want to yank it back at a moment’s notice).
You mean a real power shift ? Heavens to Murgatroyd (I remember that phrase from a cartoon I watched as a kid 😉
Suffering Succotash, too. (I am also an aficionado of the classic American cartoon.)
I have been playing around — in one way or another since my university days — with Tom Langan’s notions of the hypocritical divergence of institutions from the traditions they are meant to embody (e.g. the Church from the [in his case, Catholic] faith; PMO-led Party Executive decisions vs responsible government through Queen-in-Parliament, etc.) (see Langan, Tradition and Authenticity in the Search for Ecumenic Wisdom) coupled to this whole notion of a society of equals vs a society of hierarchy. (As Langan noted in Being and Truth, organizations form (to use Eric Voegelin’s term) cosmiota, or “little worlds” — IBM, to use Langan’s example, would not sell hot dogs on the street regardless of how much money was in it, because it does not fit the “world” that is IBM — and thus can be thought of as closed systems in order to analyse their organizational structure, processes, beliefs, etc.)
So what does this mean? The hypocritical divergence is that at any point in time, an institutional player finds it easier to impose dominance, probably “for the greater good”. But this is (to use a story from Bereshit or Genesis) the bite of the apple of the Tree of Good and Evil. Once this is introduced, it acts as a power source for its spread: it is easy to justify the shortcut hierarchical “forcing of the situation” introduces, hard to wait for equals to deliver from autonomy, and thus the greater potential of autonomous equals is sacrificed for the “sure thing”.
Thus the Wirearchical world is not a transition but the acceptance of a permanent tension, a constant rebalancing (since even if hierarchy was eliminated it will reassert itself, witness the quest in even small start-ups for “titles” and other hierarchical trappings for use later in the life of the firm during the early, equalitarian days of a small team suffering together for a common vision and outcome). Panton semper reformanda! — Everything always needs reform!
Opening the managerial horizon of interpretation is thus the wedge required to make Wirearchy (use whatever word makes sense) the operating mode for organizations and institutions. Until then, the closed world of management as a technique for commanding objects (which is what it is) will make the equal exchanges subordinate to the leader. The leader, until he/she truly sees the team as subjects — his/her equal — cannot “get out of the way”, “leave things alone”, etc. to give the interactions between the members the time needed to produce the greater value/results this non-commanding, assent-seeking way of dealing with each other can bring.