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If You Want To Network Your Organization, Avoid These 4 Myths
In an age of disruption, everyone has to adapt eventually. However, the typical organization is ill-suited to change direction. Managers spend years — and sometimes decades — working to optimize their operations to deliver specific outcomes and that can make an organization rigid if the face of a change in the basis of competition.
So it shouldn’t be surprising that the idea of a networked organizations have come into vogue. While hierarchies tend to be rigid, networks are highly adaptable and almost infinitely scalable. Unfortunately, popular organizational schemes such as matrixed management and Holacracy have had mixed results, at best.
The truth is that networks have little to do with an organization chart and much more to do with how informal connections form in your organization, especially among lower-level employees. In fact, coming up with a complex scheme is likely to do little more than cause a lot of needless confusion. Here are the myths you need to avoid.
Myth #1: You Need To Restructure Your Organization
In the early 20th century, the great sociologist Max Weber noted that the sweeping industrialization taking place would lead to a change in how organizations operated. As cottage industries were replaced by large…