Improve Interactions, not Actions

Cooking taught me about management.

“The perfect bolognaise” I declared, handing my wife a plate.

“Looking good,” said my wife as she took a bite. “Shame about the taste.”

“What!? I used the best ingredients!”

“Sweet husband. Cooking isn’t about optimising every ingredient, but about optimising the dish as a whole. Good tomato, good sugar - but in combination they taste tart!”

Something in my head clicked.

Organisations exist to achieve something greater than we can as individuals. This necessitates cooperation. No one part of an organisation is responsible for shipping good software. Shipping good software is a result of the interaction of the parts.

Quips Ackoff: “You can write, your hand can't write. That's easy to demonstrate - cut it off, put it on the table, and watch what it does: nothing. You can see. Your eye can't see. You can think. Your brain can't think."

So, improve organisations by improving interactions.

Organisations seem complex. Our common reaction is to divide them into manageable pieces, and appoint managers to improve each piece in isolation.

However, improving each piece in isolation more often inhibits cooperation and destroys the whole. What value would come from increasing sales if we’re already struggling to serve today’s customers? More unhappy customers.

Suggests Ackoff: “We’re taught to take a complex system, divide it into parts, and then try to manage each part as well as possible. And, if that's done, the system as a whole will behave well - and that's absolutely false. Because it's possible to improve the performance of each part taken separately, and destroy the system at the same time.”

So where should managers focus?

Most staff are now more proficient than their managers. This means managers no longer need to supervise staff, and can instead focus on what matters: improving the interaction of the parts, and not the actions of the staff.

Suggests Ackoff: “It is now estimated that 90% of people can do their jobs better than their boss. That requires a fundamental change in the concept of management: it's no longer supervision, but it's leadership. It's how you get people to work together to get desired objectives, not to tell them how to do what you want them to. You tell them what outcome you want, but not how to get it."

The takeaway? As managers we must focus on improving interactions, not actions. And as husbands we must focus on the dish, not the ingredients.

This article was inspired by a conversation between Ackoff and Deming, and a talk by Ackoff. Quotes adapted for brevity.