PhD

PartnerHacker Weekend 3/26: Let's Get Quantum

Danah Zohar has a fascinating blog post called, Quantum Management is Chinese Management that breaks down two ways of looking at organizations: Through the Newtonian physics lens, and the quantum physics lens. She argues the quantum approach is a necessity.

New this week

A quick recap of the PhD from this week:


Quantum management, holistic thinking, and decentralized systems

Danah Zohar has a fascinating blog post called, Quantum Management is Chinese Management that breaks down two ways of looking at organizations: Through the Newtonian physics lens, and the quantum physics lens.

She argues the quantum approach is a necessity.

It's reminiscent of the book The Starfish and the Spider about "leaderless management".

Even more radically, it brought to mind the largest tomato processor in the United States, The Morningstar Company, which has no bosses, titles, or hierarchy and practices what they call "Self-Management".

You don't have to take it to its most radical end to gain something from this paradigm. The idea of an interconnected network of individuals that perform various, overlapping functions is definitely more accurate today than the linear, boxed-in, single-function ideal org chart from yesteryear.

Often the more we learn, the less useful old definitions become.

If you've ever studied human biology, you realize every part and system serves multiple functions and it's not always clear why, how, or when. Each new discovery reveals that things previously thought to serve just one function actually serve many.

Companies and the individuals who comprise them - employees, customers, partners, even fans and competitors - are similar. Yes, there are useful roles and titles and structures. But those should be held loosely, as we see more and more blurring and mutual interdependence.

Analytical thinkers can struggle with this. We want stuff to fit neatly. The thing is, your partner ecosystem doesn't need to be easy to define, it just needs to function well.

Yes, they go hand-in-hand. Understanding causal relationships helps. But when the ability to diagram and define stops, don't let that stop the complex value-creation in the ecosystem!

(Perhaps partner leaders should all be reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance before business books.)

Without rushing to make any major changes, maybe start by letting the concept of a more distributed, sometimes even redundant, fluid, and adaptive organization work on you a little.

There's something there.


Make the network grow in complexity and resilience

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