thingamy manifesto

In these day of New Year Resolutions, Five Things You Do Not Know About Me and Hugh’s rapidly increasing list of Manifests I crumbled under pressure (thanks Hugh!).

Actually, manifesto? Well, more like a summary of reasons why we’re doing the thingamy:

1. The Organisational Hierarchy is kaput - as single purpose executor of the Business Model it requires reorganisation every time you need to get better, an utterly futile exercise most of the time. Replace it.

(Some more here, here, here and here.)

2. Managing is a waste of time. Leadership I need, getting out of bed in the morning I can do myself.

(More here, here, here, and here.)

3. Legacy software models the "way we always did things" - usually a model from the days of paper, quills and desks. Model reality instead.

(More here, here, here, here and here.)

4. Tree-structures are faulty. "Where it resides" is only two dimensional and suitable only for places. Use tags and any other means to enhance the knowledge and make finding easier.

(More  here, here, here and here.)

5. A report is simply logic applied to raw data. Apply when needed and keep all data in raw form. That will do away with applications, middleware, complexity and deliver far better reports.

(More here, here, here and here.)

6. Accounting was “invented” in 1573 1494 using paper and quills, dump it and let the IT system that delivers the flows capture the real data and display it any way you want real-time.

(More here.)

7. Budgets are completely silly. You know nothing about the future so forget it and leave such to soothsayers and magicians.

(More here.)

8. Think of processes as "what happens to things", not "what things happen".

(More here and here.)

9. Documents and forms are bad - they only document "what things happen" creating reconciliation, errors and rigid processes. Let the thing itself capture what happens to it.

(More here.)

10. Process is not a track, it's a football game where you see the goal and look for and try openings all the time. The ball is the flow.

(More here, here and here.)

11. Flow is everything - flow is relationship, flow is knowledge, flow is context and flow creates value. Your business is all about flows, never forget it. Build the flows, then better the flows to better the value and your margins. Do it, then do it again, then do it more. Think extreme Business Planning.

(More here, here, here, here and here.)

Here's an earlier twist to the issues if you care - You Know Something Is Wrong :)

Comments

[Simon]

I couldn't agree more.

We have developed an internal project and finance tracker. Its all just a load of xml in there. We can pull out stuff as and when we like it. Very useful. We called it Cassandra, it tell us what is going to happen but we never seem to belive it. Seemed to link to your predicting the future point nicely.

Simon.

[Dennis Howlett]

Sig: I think you'll find accounting as we know it today was invented in 1494 by Pacioli

[sig]

Dennis, you're right - I was referring to the book where he elaborated on the principles of double-entry, while you got the one before that where he first describes the methods used in Venice... all thanks to Wikipedia of course :)

Will update promptly!

But, hehe, old as dinosaurs it is any way ;)

[Evan Erwin]

Well said.

[John Dodds]

That "summary of reasons" strikes me as a powerful string to the marketing bow Sig, since it implicitly encapsulates the failings in current solutions and practices and begins to explain the Thingamy path without resorting to glib propositions.

[Ric]

"Managing is a waste of time" - have you seen "First, break all the rules" from Buckingham and Coffman at Gallup? Their idea is that managers are vital, and their roles are:
1) select a person
2) set expectations
3) motivate the person
4) develop the person.

Could you live with that? Not much command'n'control or hierarchy there ...

[sig]

Ric, your leading straight up to the difference between the "leader" and the "manager" - between "standing up front, transparent, and show the way" and the "node in the command and control structure".

Your points - to me it seems to me that some "managerial" semantic twists to something that does not have to be management, but can be leadership has seeped in - but, English is not my mother tongue, allow me still:

1) "Invite" person instead of "choose", that would be more leader than manager, would it not? "Select" seems to be somewhere inbetween...

2) Set expectations. Leader or manager? Well, depending on how it's put forward I would think: "I expect you to follow me!" would fall in the leadership category, while throw a number at someone and go "deliver this or else!" would be a tad command and control :)

3) Motivate - as I do not think you can command and control people into motivation we would be squarely in leadership land here.

4) Ditto for develop the person, unless it's following some strain of the "Preussian" school of development!

[Jon Husband]

I like the manifesto ... given that I have been thinking about hierarchy and wirearchy for a long time, that's not a surprise.

With respect to the two last blog posts, and Gallup's book (which I would argue is a marketing tract for Gallup's OD services) .. those OD services will always be necessary as long as jobs / roles in any organization are evaluated and slotted into pay grades or levels or scales.

The methodologies for doing this were invented in the late '40's and early '50's, derived directly from FW Taylor's time-and-motion studies, basic assumptions about division-of-labour and an hierarchical arrangement of knowledge in a given area. These methods essentially have not changed since their invention, are still very widely used, and do not live easily with information flows driven by hyperlinks within social networks of information-sharing and knowledge construction.

And regardless of the person-centered methodology suggested by Gallup, or others in other variant forms, there will almost always be hierarchical arrangements of jobs and working relationships (and the attendant power dynamics and constrained one-dimensional decision-making) in most organizations of any size .. until the basic work design and work evaluation methodologies to which I have alluded are changed to address informations flows in networks.

The current situation therefore for most workers creates (at least) subconscious dissonance.

I have in the past worked with these obsolete methodologies to which I refer (for over a decade) as a management consultant helping large organizations design and re-design (and re-design and re-design) their hierarchies.

[Duncan Drennan]

Sig, you might be interested to have a look at a discussion that is happening on a business owners forum, http://www.theforumsa.co.za. The particular thread can be found here, http://www.theforumsa.co.za/forums/showthread.php?t=608

Your comments would be welcome

[Duncan Drennan]

Hi sig, just wanted to say thanks for popping in at www.theforumsa.co.za. Your feedback was much appreciated.

[Jean Lalonde]

Wow! I LOVE this... thing you are building. I looked around the Thingamy website, and was simply too confused and puzzled as to how your product really works, but reading your manifesto makes me dig this idea in a most enthusiastic way.

If I get this right, it's simply a more natural way of keeping track of business, and it really uses technology in a powerful way. Zen-like, follow the flow. The creative minds will jump over this, if done properly. A serious edge over the more traditional competition.

One pressing suggestion I have:

Publish a videocast/Flash demo of Thingamy in action, while building a fictious business case. It will do wonders for my personal comprehension and of other's, I bet.