Distributing Decision Rights, Management and Leadership

A life science of management and leadership exposes the obsolete industrial age Taylor paradigm that still to this day is limiting so much individual and organizational performance. The Taylor model is based on Descartes’ 400 year old clockwork universe and does not  integrate new science discoveries of the last 100 years, especially quantum mechanics and complexity science. By recasting organizations as  living, complex-adaptive systems, an organization’s full capacity for Superperformance can finally be unleashed.

The traditional view of organization—woven together through a systematic framework of production, decision support,  knowledge, and information systems— is based on the model of a well-oiled machine engineered to deliver maximum performance derived from pre-defined parameters and specifications. This industrial age model considers performance a derivative of external controls defined by the designers of organizational systems. They have given only marginal importance to the self-adaptive and emergent nature of organizational systems and the dynamic environments they inhabit. In other words, they are still far from operating with an immune system of distributed decision rights and with management and leadership capacity distributed everywhere, to the very edge of organizations. These bottom-up, agile characteristics of living, complex adaptive systems are precisely what is needed during times of rapid changing operating and knowledge environments, such as those that exist today.

Nested Hierarchies are Natural

From Organism View the self-referencing fractal pattern of system inside of system is apparent. The parts and their environments are continually co-evolving. From this view there is perfect parallel between organization and organism, which present as a set of nested structures, each inside of the next, like Russian dolls.

Organization                                 Organism

Economy                                             Ecosystem
↓
Industry                                              Species
↓
Organization                                       Organism
↓
Function                                              Organ
↓
Department                                         Tissue
↓
Work Team                                        Cell
↓
Individual                                           Organelle

From Organism View the entire global economy can be seen as a gigantic ecology of interdependent and continually interacting (work) cells, organs, and organizations engaged in the production, buying and selling of goods and services. And like any ecology it is self-organizing, not centrally controlled or coordinated.

Regardless of scale or level of complexity, there is a corresponding compartment at every tier of the organization/organism hierarchy. This is not just a novel coincidence—it is the natural expression of order that pervades all of life, from ecosystem to economy. It is simply the most efficient way to organize.

In fact, throughout the entire text of  Darwin’s Origin of Species, the only illustration called for was the picture of a nested hierarchy.

Nested Hierarchy from Darwin's Origin of Species

Yes the evidence is that Superperformance  is available to all. But today’s lingering, strictly mechanistic models of management and leadership only take things further in the wrong direction. New knowledge and methods are needed to transcend these caveman paradigms.

Superperformance is a next-generation performance optimization approach that turns conventional wisdom on its ear.

It introduces a new category. As a group, organizational Superperformers outperform the S&P 500 by a margin of almost 5 to 1. They dominate their industries, produce a steady stream of breakthrough operating results, reach coveted levels of customer delight, and are able to continually accelerate and make responsive every aspect of their operations–over exceedingly long periods.

These organizations share the same remarkable traits.

• They all prove the Superperformance Formula (PxC=SP) and harness the same natural laws.
• They all outperform their industry peers over exceedingly long periods.
• They all are led by Superperforming CEOs, who are true servant leaders.

This exciting new approach can be applied to transform performance on any scale in any organization. Superperformance directly challenges prevailing leadership and management paradigms–and rewires many traditional assumptions about organizations and how they operate.

We urgently need to transcend obsolete management practices and operating models and recast organizations as living, complex-adaptive systems–and performance as their emergent fruit. There are numerous real life examples of Superperformance- that when examined as a group -reveal an entirely new understanding of organizations and their hidden potential.

The evidence pulls back the skin of a new life science and  introduces a new biophysics of optimization.