Wiring for Flow

In the metaphors of the modern business world, the model of organizations as networks is emerging as a primary construct for understanding how they function at scale. Organizations are complex and dynamic. They are not just structures of hierarchy and process but a vibrant fabric of interconnected individuals, teams, cultures, tools, systems, artifacts, and technologies. Work and information traverse this network, traveling across the organization to create value for customers.

Organizations have evolved along with humanity, but the scale and rate of change they now grapple with is unprecedented. The flow of work, information, and communication can easily become impeded, fragmented, wasteful, and slow. Understanding how to improve this flow will take an analysis and appreciation of this underlying network structure.

This approach is getting attention, most recently in Wiring the Winning Organization, where authors Gene Kim and Steve Spear make use of “social circuitry” to illustrate the network, explaining that “organizational circuits are the connections by which ideas, information, materials, services, resources, and support can flow.” So, how can we make these circuits more effective?

In our quest for improvement, an intriguing parallel emerges when we consider the realm of computer networks. Over just decades, the internet has stretched to every corner of the globe, improving constantly and enabling unimaginable innovation. In our most successful network, the internet, there are lessons we can learn from its success. There are models to be leveraged, and principles and practices that can be borrowed to address our most challenging network: the organizations we work in.