I just finished reading a WSJ article titled: ‘The End of Management.’ It is a good article and brilliantly exposes the weaknesses of the current management model – which is the legacy of industrial revolution. The bureaucracy in the current management model is also known as Taylorism - which is the principle of scientific management introduced by Frederick Taylor in the 20th century. Taylorism’s main contribution to the management is ’standardizing work’ so that workers can perform at their optimum level – and thus increase their productivity.  This means, to practice Taylorism, the managers would have to examine work and create a set of procedures and policies for workers to follow. And to avoid ‘sub-standard’ work, workers are allowed minimum decision-making. Only managers can and should make decisions regarding work operations.

But before we condemn ‘bureaucracy’ in the management, we need to understand why it exists. When we look at how small organisations (<= 150 people) operate, we would notice that there is little need for bureaucracy because people are familiar with one another. This means: (1) they can address each other by name; (2) they are aware of each other’s working habits; (3) they know ‘how things get done’ in the organisations; and (4) they trust that their colleagues will ‘do their part of work’. Malcolm Gladwell in his bestselling book, The Tipping Point, argued that once organisations grow to more than 150 people, that ‘functional familiarity’ is lost. People are not aware of what others are doing. And the trust among co-workers is low. To coordinate and align the works by various departments / work units, you need to publicise rules and regulations (procedures and policies).  Hence bureaucracy is born.

So bureaucracy has good intention (initially). And it works well if the work can be broken down to logical parts and workers can be dispatched to work on each parts. But as we move into the 21st century, work is getting complex. Work components are getting interrelated, and thus it is difficult to work on individual component separately. The work components need to be done simultanuously, instead of consecutively. This calls for collaboration – which is, by the way, the buzz word of today’s management. Alas, it is difficult to collaborate well, when you don’t have that ‘functional familiarity’. You need to have a sense of how individual collaborator contributes their perspective and expertise to the (complex) task at hand.  This is where Taylorism fails. It assumes (non-social) systems and processes can make up for the loss of ‘functional familiarity’ and they can ensure no work overlap – since each worker knows what to do (though he or she may not know what others do). But, as evident in the recent incident of Toyota’s car safety woes, failure to see that one work component is connected to others, can be devastating because it creates work silos.

How can we work around Taylorism now since it is pervasive in the business world? Surely declaring that Taylorism should be removed is going to create a lot of resistance and not mention that it is an impossible feat.

Enter web 2.0 (social computing). The real value of web 2.0 is to connect people across cubicles (departments and divisions) – whom otherwise would have little opportunity to strike chance conversations among each other – in a virtual space. People can share and learn knowledge at their convenience since learning is asynchronous. Web 2.0 tools like wikis, blogs, discussion forums allow people to get to know others’ skills / expertise / experience by posting, commenting, and reading the online contents.  Furthermore, once you get to know people in the ‘digital habitat’, you can always cement the relationship by arranging face-to-face meetings / conferences.  Though building trust is always important, it needs not necessarily take a long time in the online environment. Indeed, the success of Wikipedia shows that you only need a short time to get collaborative work done in the web 2.0. And that is the good news about web 2.0. It reduces the collaboration cost (time).

The implication of web 2.0 for the business world is huge. For one, it enables workers to self-organise and collaborate to tackle complex problem. The ability to self-organise is crucial since any group larger than 150 people is not effective (productive). Coordinating a large group of people’s (> 150 people) work is time consuming and difficult (Just imagine arranging a face to face meeting among these people – and you will get the idea). But if these workers are empowered to self-organise, they would be motivated and engaged to solve problems that ‘close to their heart’, with like-minded colleagues. These workers will be naturally drawn toward tasks that suit their interest (passion), abilities, and experience.  This will reduce the need for rigid systems and processes to regulate how people do their work. And it will increase productivity since people are autonomous, motivated and engaged – partly because they are liberated from bureaucracy.

The best part is Innovation happens when people are given autonomy, complex task, and clear link between reward and effort. And whenever Innovation happens, productivity improved.