Learning from History and application of those lessons in corporate world
I've recently been reading this great book called "Guns, Germs and Steel", and it got me thinking about a lot of things; especially in terms of technological evolution and factors contributing to the balance of power for civilizations. It seems a lot of these and similar ideas can be extended and applied to countries and corporations of today.
For instance, to sustain specialists in any civilization, someone needs to produce an excess of food to feed them, so that they can concentrate on the task they specialize in. Similarly, an important factor is the transportation system, it is vital to have the means to transport goods and people to their destination fast.
Jump to modern age, you have many specialists (eg. computer scientists) that roam the corporate world. What's more precious to any given corporation than to maintain an employee's concentration on the task of his specialty and to get as much of his time as possible? Not much, therefore, it's not surprising that many of the companies of today provide incentives for employees to stay longer at work and try to keep them concentrating on their tasks. Such incentives as free quality food, on campus gyms and classes popularized by Google, and cash incentives designed to influence you to live closer to work, provided by companies like Facebook, are there to do just that: minimize the transportation hassle and the time and pain of producing/finding food. Removing such obstacles from the daily life can also lead to happier people and consequently more loyal and committed employees to the given corporation. I wouldn't find it surprising at all if companies that provided such services would tend to hang on to their talent better than companies that didn't .
Another major factor is communication. In ancient civilization conflicts, possession of writing often proved to be a major advantage. It seems to me that speed of access to information and the quality of information available can be a huge factor in decision making, and quality and speed of the work produced. Therefore I feel it's essential to the success of a company to provide optimal communication channels and a good way to organize information. Not surprisingly, many corporations tend to try various management hierarchies to achieve just that, although sometimes those hierarchies are just imposed or grow from the given setup w/ little thought to optimizing for communication. What is surprising is that sometimes companies don't take the necessary steps to organize information efficiently and don't bother improving the internal information retrieval.
Imagine what could be achieved if we took these factors seriously when we designed the system in question and the advantage one would have over someone who didn't.
For instance, to sustain specialists in any civilization, someone needs to produce an excess of food to feed them, so that they can concentrate on the task they specialize in. Similarly, an important factor is the transportation system, it is vital to have the means to transport goods and people to their destination fast.
Jump to modern age, you have many specialists (eg. computer scientists) that roam the corporate world. What's more precious to any given corporation than to maintain an employee's concentration on the task of his specialty and to get as much of his time as possible? Not much, therefore, it's not surprising that many of the companies of today provide incentives for employees to stay longer at work and try to keep them concentrating on their tasks. Such incentives as free quality food, on campus gyms and classes popularized by Google, and cash incentives designed to influence you to live closer to work, provided by companies like Facebook, are there to do just that: minimize the transportation hassle and the time and pain of producing/finding food. Removing such obstacles from the daily life can also lead to happier people and consequently more loyal and committed employees to the given corporation. I wouldn't find it surprising at all if companies that provided such services would tend to hang on to their talent better than companies that didn't .
Another major factor is communication. In ancient civilization conflicts, possession of writing often proved to be a major advantage. It seems to me that speed of access to information and the quality of information available can be a huge factor in decision making, and quality and speed of the work produced. Therefore I feel it's essential to the success of a company to provide optimal communication channels and a good way to organize information. Not surprisingly, many corporations tend to try various management hierarchies to achieve just that, although sometimes those hierarchies are just imposed or grow from the given setup w/ little thought to optimizing for communication. What is surprising is that sometimes companies don't take the necessary steps to organize information efficiently and don't bother improving the internal information retrieval.
Imagine what could be achieved if we took these factors seriously when we designed the system in question and the advantage one would have over someone who didn't.
posted by Alex Pilchin at 12:41 PM
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