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Articles
The Enterprise Polymath
The Industrial Age saw the rise of large
publicly traded manufacturing enterprises. Because efficient structures of
command and control were central to the success of the organization, they
were organized hierarchically. They were very good at passing information up
to decision makers and passing instructions down to implementers. They were
relatively poor at lateral communication and coordination. As the global
Information Age civilization continues to emerge, traditional hierarchical
organizations are having progressively more difficulty contending with the
new forces that the new age brings.
New structures and new professions will be needed to deal with
them. The Enterprise Polymath will be
critical to the Information Age enterprise’s success.
Beginning in the 1980’s, the types of problems that occur at the lower levels
of the organization became more complex and not easily summarized.
Consequently, when the problems were passed up the organizational hierarchy
many of the essential nuances were stripped out for the sake of clarity and
brevity. Many people complained that they passed up complex problems and
received back simplistic solutions. Corporate leadership was aware of the
problem and began speaking in terms of pushing decision making
responsibilities down to the lowest prudent level.
This, however, created a new set of problems. For example, the organization
began to evolve organically and top management frequently didn’t understand
why the enterprise was behaving as it did. Their response often was to create
a department of Strategic Planning to coordinate the more distributed
decision making. This may have worked if there had been Enterprise Polymaths
to execute the function. However, there were not and it quickly devolved into
a struggle between Finance and Marketing as to who should control the new
activity.
With regard to decision making authority, in the traditional Industrial Age
organization, a problem was passed up the hierarchy until it reached the
individual who had authority over the complete decision. When decision making
authority was pushed down to lower levels, it necessitated interdepartmental
meetings, committees and task forces to coordinate laterally. They grew out
of control until they came to dominate the managerial experience. The job of
the departmental manager became, ‘go to meetings and defend the department’s
interests against interlopers.’ The term, ‘turf battle’ entered the lexicon
as departmental fealty was often placed above quality decision making.
Compounding the problem was the difficulty that individuals from different
professions had communicating with each other. It is not an exaggeration to
say that the various professions live in different epistemological realities.
To the marketing professional, perception is reality. To the finance
professional, reality is explored through quantitative analysis. To the
operations professional, everything is about process efficiency. Each
epistemology is correct for the profession, but incorrect for the enterprise.
Interdepartmental meetings frequently seemed like the Tower of Babel revisited.
Essentially, hierarchical organizations were attempting to behave like
networked organizations and the result was, to put it deleicately, less than
satisfactory. No matter how many ‘fixes’ were put into place, they just ended
up creating a new set of problems. The obvious solution was to switch the
organization to a network structure that could more naturally accommodate
distributed decision making authority. Naturally, the terminal decision
makers, sitting at the top of the corporate pyramid, were less than
enthusiastic about the idea of eliminating the hierarchical structure itself.
Consequently, over the past decade, the large, Industrial Age corporations
have become sclerotic and are slowly being replaced by more flexible,
entrepreneurial enterprises. It is these organizations that should and will
be led, organized and coordinated by Enterprise Polymaths.
As to training, an Enterprise Polymath should have a year of Accounting, a
year of Marketing and a year of Operations/HR. They will need to be, as all
Information Age knowledge workers will, proficient in IT. However, they will
need to be something more than a resultant business version of a ‘jack of all
trades, master of none.’ Their important areas of expertise will lie in the
epistemologies of the various business professions, group dynamics and future
studies, modified to the needs of their specific organization and industry.
The Enterprise Polymath will have several duties. First, they will serve as
interpreter and traffic cop as the organization struggles to make optimal
decisions.
It is well established that when representatives of different professions
interact in a committee environment, the result is determined more by the
relative numbers and strength of personality of its members than by what
constitutes a good decision. One of the primary responsibilities of an
Enterprise Polymath is to orchestrate the dialogue and assure that the
correct decision takes precedence over group dynamics. This will be done by
assisting in overcoming the confusion caused by differing epistemological
structures, interrupting the process when a strong personality begins to
dominate the conversation and by translating points from one profession into
terms the other professions can understand.
The Enterprise Polymath will, to a degree, become a new form of leader in the
network enterprise structures of the Information Age. While Industrial Age
hierarchies made decisions by fiat, the leaders of the Information Age
enterprises will exercise their authority through persuasion and consensus
building. In other words, the Enterprise Polymath will force an organization
to move in concert toward the best solution for the enterprise, even when, as
will often be the case, it is not its natural inclination.
At present, most Information Age enterprises are still young and, for them,
the founding entrepreneurs will most likely be the primary Enterprise
Polymaths. Consequently, today the process of mentoring and developing an
Enterprise Polymath is not easily distinguished from mentoring an Information
Age entrepreneur. As the Information Age matures and many of its first
enterprises find their founder entering retirement, a professional class of
Enterprise Polymaths will emerge. This will necessitate a more formalized
educational process and more clearly defined career paths within
organizations.
In conclusion, as the Information Age emerges, the dominant enterprise
structure will transform from a hierarchical structure to a more networked
structure. As this happens, the need for Enterprise Polymaths capable of
organizing and facilitating enterprise network operations and decision making
will emerge. Their development is not so much a matter of mastering the
skills of the various business processes as it will be gaining command of the
philosophy of business, organizational development, group dynamics and future
studies. From a practical standpoint,
most Fellows of Polymathica will need to be Enterprise Polymaths in training.
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