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Less Successful Managers Think of Their Organisation as a Tower...

Many managers see their organisation as "money making machines". I have no problem with the "money making" part, but I get concerned about the "machine" part. Because they see it as a machine, they treat it like a machine. They see nothing wrong with "reengineering", "downsizing", "tinkering" or "fitting people into boxes". If they think about people at all, it's about trying to control, limit and organise effort. They see it as an "entity"; independent and largely separate from the environment or outside world. They focus on the various bits (processes, machines, systems) rather than the whole. It's the stuff of silos and politics. They look like the diagram below.

Characteristics of Tower-like

• Slow
• Rigid
• Tall
• Political
• Unstable
• Closed
• Isolated
• Mechanical.

There are many problems with Tower-like organisations, including:

1. They lead to the creation of silos within organisations with poor communications across the boundaries

2. They lead to the development of structures and organisations that purely serve the egos of the executives

3. They lead to poor focus rather than on meeting organisation's strategies and outcomes.