I’ve worked over the years in a variety of environments that were totally chaotic and always wondered why employees didn’t do something about it. Why do people put up with chaos when they could be fixing systems to make them more orderly?
Well thanks to a comment from Oksana Fedan I finally understand what causes the acceptance of chaos and it is Business Entropy. Now I am not much of a physicist and I’ll have to resort to physics to explain this so hold on.
Entropy is a “measure of disorder or randomness in a closed system.” The concept originated in thermodynamics but has been applied to all sorts of fields. In physical terms, energy flows from a hotter region to a colder one until they all become equally distributed and less able to utilize that heat.
Business Entropy
Business entropy occurs in bureaucratic organizations when people begin only to see their own jobs and not interactions with others. Employees do only what is expected of them and cease trying to organize the work in a manner that best suits the entire organization.
It takes extra effort to bring order out of chaos and when things get chaotic, organizations just find it easier to adjust to the chaos than to fix it. It takes less energy to do this (and less cost).
Unfortunately, Business Entropy is almost inevitable as an organization grows, becomes more process oriented, jobs become more specialized and bureaucracy emerges.
Bureaucracy begets more bureaucracy and as employees become more process oriented they tend to defend their processes against intrusion from outsiders and change that would benefit the organization as a whole.
It takes a shift in business thinking from a process orientation to an orientation around results to counter Business Entropy and for most companies, that’s just too much of a switch.
….my….brain….It hurts! Should’ve waited until later this morning to read this one.
I think the danger in this type of environment occurs when one molecule (employee) is fervently trying to transfer its heat to another molecule that is already warm. Role responsibilities are taken as dogma resulting in plenty of progress towards a goal that is already achieved or is no longer a priority. The employee is reviewed and excels at the position – but the position’s function has changed or should change. Now you’ve got molecules in different systems that are continually passing their heat energy on to too many cold molecules – the warm environment no longer needs the warmth while the cold environments can’t ever seem to achieve the right temperature.
In a biological system (let’s take the human body) the brain (management and executive) must recognize when one particular organ (department) is failing. This will send more antibodies and oxygen (resources / manpower) to the damaged organ in the hopes of reviving the entire system. But if the heart works fine and the brain isn’t responding to the attention the liver is crying out for, the entire system is at risk of collapse.
Some people can have a crappy liver and plow through, making compromises (no drinking or fatty meat) and live a long time – but over time the longer a problem goes untreated the more likely it will be the thing that kills you.
In the age of change, adaptation, and expansion, is Business Entropy really something that can be accepted as the norm? A lot of North American automobile manufacturers are limping out of hospital after a near-death experience because they were not willing to adapt to a change in their environment. GM required several amputations (Pontiac, Buick). Like a heart attack victim who survives, will they modify their lifestyle or will they go back to smoking and drinking only to require additional life support in 10 years?
And once fixed it slowly happens all over again. Look at the airline industry as an example.
I’m loving this transfer of energy we’re sharing. Gimme more heat!