Geeks and organisational design

Andrew McAfee has some pedigree. He wrote “The second machine age” and “Machine, platform, crowd”. Both are excellent. He decided to take a different avenue with “The Geek Way: The Radical Mindset That Drives Extraordinary Results”. The book aims to give an alternative perspective on organisational design. Going geek. Following in the footsteps of Jeff Bezos. Geeks going mainstream.

Why?

Why should we tolerate corporate cultures that are the biggest barriers to innovation instead of the biggest supporters and nurturers of this critical activity? Why should we accept that important efforts are just about always going to be late or that high levels of bureaucracy and hypocrisy are to be expected? Why should so few employees actually know why they’re doing what they’re doing?

• In a 2017 Harvard Business Review survey, nearly two-thirds of respondents reported that their companies had moderate to severe bureaucracy, and only 1% felt bureaucracy-free.
• Hamel and Zanini constructed a “bureaucracy mass index” (BMI) survey. Any score above 60 was considered at least moderate bureaucratic drag, while any score below 40 showed “a relative absence of bureaucracy.” Fewer than 1% of respondents scored less than 40.
• 2020 study of over five hundred large US companies found essentially no correlation…