Die intelligente Organisation

In my job, I'm often confronted with organizing and building self-organized teams. Questions that occupy me include: What does agility mean? What does empowerment look like? How can you build an organization that learns by itself? All of this in the sense of the definition of New Work and everything that goes with it.

That's why I picked out several publications on the topic - one of them is "Die intelligente Organisation" by Mark Lambertz. In this book review, you'll find out why the cover appealed to me but the content didn't convince me.

The keyword is: complexity. The environment and the markets in which companies operate are becoming more and more complex. But companies themselves also become harder and harder to manage once they reach a certain size. Mark Lambertz tries to show a solution for how companies can deal with this.

To give his ideas and suggestions a framework, he uses the so-called Viable System Model (VSM) - or in German "das Modell lebensfähiger Systeme" (the model of viable systems). This model was first formulated by Stafford Beer in 1959. At its core, it belongs to systems theory: complex systems are broken down into smaller (easier to understand) ones that all influence each other.

I don't want to go too deep into the theory here, but it reminded me a lot of Niklas Luhmann's systems theory from my studies. Even back then, I found it very theoretical and only of limited use in everyday practice.

The basic ideas behind the VSM are good and get to the heart of fundamental elements of New Work:

• Finding a balance between self-organization and centralization
• Recognizing and fulfilling the meaning and purpose of the organization
• Developing the problem-solving skills of people and teams
• Establishing collaborative goal-setting processes
• and much more

All of these are good and right ideas that the VSM system is meant to establish and that can't be implemented with classic rigid hierarchical structures. This is the problem Mark Lambertz wants to address.

I would only recommend the book to someone who enjoys and is interested in systems theory. However, I consider it completely unsuitable for practice. I'd like to show this using the graphical model:

View graphic

Mark Lambertz really makes an effort to break down the complexity of the model and only ever shows one part after another in the book. For this, he uses the analogy of a national football team for an entire chapter. Still, I kept catching myself wondering who in companies (that I know) is actually supposed to implement all this?! To be honest, I couldn't find an answer to that.

My takeaway was that it's important to think about the various connections and dependencies within a company (e.g. networked thinking). If I change one thing, it affects another element in the company. I also share the big goals pursued in intelligent organizations,

The big shortcoming of the book "Die intelligente Organisation" is that the solution for reducing complexity in companies is itself far too complex. If the big picture is so extensive that you can only understand it with an explanation, I consider it unsuitable for use in companies. Even the (quite good) tools in the book, such as the communication lists for setting up companies, couldn't convince me of the model.

Furthermore (at least in my 2018 edition), I missed a discussion of other models on the market, such as SAFe, Holacracy. As we know, in everyday business, companies are approached by various consultants about different models. So, in my opinion, it could be helpful to establish this context.

Because of the points mentioned, such as too much complexity, missing context and, in my opinion, too little simplicity with regard to practical implementation, I unfortunately can't recommend the book "Die intelligente Organisation".