Pondering the Organization of Societies

I have recently been reading The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow. The authors re-evaluate human history in light of recent discoveries in archeology and anthropology. They conclude that the narrative that human societies evolved from small groups of hunter-gatherers through agricultural societies to modern urban states does not describe what actually happened. The book provides ample evidence that humans have organized societies in a much wider variety of ways than we have traditionally assumed. We as a species seem to have always had a genius for inventing different ways to organize our societies.

The authors attempt to bring order to this proliferation of social organizations by categorizing them according to what freedoms they allow individuals and what sort of domination characterizes them.

Freedom

The authors identify three freedoms for individuals that societies can promote or suppress:

• the freedom to move: to travel or to leave an oppressive social structure.
• the freedom to not follow orders
• and the freedom to organize social relationships

Domination

The authors also identify three ways of domination that societies can employ to obtain power over individuals:

• using coercion or violence to compel obedience
• restricting information or knowledge to a small elite
• inspiring people to subordinate their freedom in service to a charismatic leader.

Worlds within societies

As I read David Graeber and David Wengrow’s book, it struck me that their insights about societies are also true about organizations that exist within a society: families, churches, civic organizations and corporations to name just a few. Each of these organizations is a world with its own purpose, structure, attitudes toward freedom and domination, values and mindset. We all live within several of these worlds and interact with several more.

Worlds we inhabit…

For example, I am used to living in several different worlds every day. My birth family values wisdom and kindness. I belong to a church that is governed by mutually agreed upon covenants. I belonged to a choir where the director had dictatorial powers over what and how we sang. And I worked for a large medical device company organized in a way not too dissimilar to a feudal monarchy of the European Middle Ages.

Worlds we encounter…

I am also used to dealing with worlds that I don’t inhabit but do encounter. The family that I married into values togetherness and mutual support. Friends and neighbors belong to other churches that are governed by hierarchies of authority. The hiking club I belonged to scheduled hikes by group decision. And some companies I have worked for were more like dysfunctional families than feudal monarchies.

Worlds within the workplace

Worlds also contain worlds. The medical device company that I worked for contained not only the product design world that I inhabited, but several others that I worked with.

Product Design

This is the world I belong to. Obviously, it is the most important, so I list it first!

The world of product design exists to create new products and to improve (or fix) the design of existing ones. It is organized into teams of engineers, each person with expertise in a specific area of design. Effective product design teams become skilled at understanding the needs of everyone who will use the product. They negotiate design compromises that satisfy conflicting needs. They synthesize all this information into a product design.

Effective product design teams foster a lot of freedom. Designers are free to express disagreement with a proposed design without fear of being fired. Designers cultivate professional relationships with others both inside and outside the organization.

Product design teams discourage all forms of domination. Designers obey team leaders only on the basis of merit. Designers share information freely. We are suspicious of charismatic leaders, fearing that they are detrimental to teamwork.

The product design world values technical expertise, intellectual curiosity and cooperation. This world fosters a collaborative mindset.

Management

The world of management exists to perpetuate the success of the organization. It is organized as a hierarchy. Managers carry out orders handed down from above. They make decisions for their own department. Managers may, or may not, consider the opinions of their subordinates when they make decisions.

Management tolerates a limited amount of freedom as long as it promotes the success of the organization. People may quit and people may, within limits, organize social relationships within the organization. People are not free to disobey orders.

Domination is the essence of management. It prefers to rely on charismatic leaders that inspire their workers to put forth their best efforts. But since charismatic leaders are in short supply, most managers rely on other methods to compel obedience: Reprimands, poor performance reviews, demotions or firing to punish; raises and promotions to reward. It controls information, jealously guarding salary information and requiring employees to sign non-disclosure agreements.

The management world values obedience and accomplishments (in that order). It fosters an authoritarian mindset.

Sales

The world of sales exists to sell lots of products and make lots of money. It is organized into teams of semi-autonomous agents who are judged by how much they sell. Successful salespeople gain a deep understanding of the needs of their customers so they can make attractive proposals that are likely to lead to a sale.

Salespeople value freedom. They have a lot of autonomy to perform their job as they see fit. They develop extensive social relationships inside and outside the organization. And they see themselves as free agents, ready to quit to work for a better (or more profitable) organization.

Salespeople aren’t much interested in domination. They are more interested in collaboration and competition. Salespeople see themselves as independent agents that collaborate with customers to work out deals but compete with other salespeople to win sales and earn commissions.

The world of sales values competition and performance. Note that it shares these values with the sports world, which may be why sporting metaphors are so popular in the business world. It fosters an optimistic mindset: success will follow from some combination of hard work and hustle.

Testing

The world of testing exists to make sure that products work as intended BEFORE they get delivered to the customer. It is organized into teams that perform work specified by others. Good testing organizations also include at least one test engineer expert in sample sizes, regression tests, simulation and test automation. But most people who work in this world are testers that follow testing protocols developed by engineers.

Testers must be meticulous and detail oriented. They must cultivate an attitude that assumes there are defects in what is being tested. Testers need a thick skin when they find and report defects. Engineers won’t welcome evidence that their designs are less than perfect, and managers will be unhappy that their schedules will need to be adjusted to include time and resources to fix defects.

Neither freedom nor domination are valued much in testing world. Testers don’t have the freedom to choose how to perform their tests; on the other hand they must be independent of authority for test results to be honest.

The world of testing values objectivity and meticulousness. It fosters a mindset of careful observation.

Manufacturing

The world of manufacturing exists to make products. Like the world of testing, it is organized into teams that perform work specified by others. It runs according to schedules and shifts. People on the manufacturing line follow detailed instructions but also have to deal with many things that don’t go according to plan: equipment that breaks down or needs maintenance, defective parts, missing parts, absent co-workers and scheduling changes.

Manufacturing lines don’t allow for much freedom. The manufacturing line itself imposes obedience to schedules and assembly instructions when running and requires creative troubleshooting skills when it is not. However, manufacturing works best when the knowledge of assembly line workers is acknowledged and respected.

The world of manufacturing values reliability and productivity. It fosters a practical and pragmatic mindset.

Service

The world of service exists to fix products. Like the world of sales, it is organized as semi-autonomous agents who are dispatched to fix customer problems. It includes a support staff that handles dispatching and ordering parts. Good service people, like good scientists, make careful observations, develop hypothesis and test them. Following this process, they figure out the cause of the problem. Then they determine how to fix it.

Neither freedom nor domination characterize the world of service. Service people don’t always work a predictable nine-to-five schedule. They are often under pressure to fix something quickly. Some problems are difficult to diagnose. Some problems are difficult to fix. Their work is determined by the nature of the problem rather than the people they are working with or for.

The world of service values the ability to figure out and solve problems and enjoys making people happy. It requires a pragmatic and helpful mindset.

Human Resources

The world of HR exists to help management make employees more productive. It is organized as a bureaucracy under the direction of management. It is a difficult world to work in because it has dual goals that are often in conflict: to help employees but to police employee behavior to conform to the rules set up by management. And like the police, people in HR often see people at their worst.

This world values freedom only insomuch as it promotes worker productivity and obedience.

The world of HR values following rules. It fosters a mindset of conformity.

When Workplace Worlds Meet

Systems engineers need to work effectively with people that inhabit other workplace worlds. Take the time to understand these other worlds. Learn how to work with them.

Working with Managers

Working with managers presents many challenges for design engineers. The management mindset is often at odds with the design engineering mindset. We become alienated when managers expect that their decisions should be obeyed simply because of their position above us in the company hierarchy. They become impatient and frustrated when we make decisions by following a process of collaboration among technical experts and people affected by the decision.

We can do several things to foster a good working relationship with managers.

Focus on the common goal

Step back, look at the big picture and focus on our common goal. Both managers and systems engineers want to design good products and get them out the door and into the hands of our customers. Managers need to rise above the daily concerns of administration and the temptation of self-promotion to realize that their position ultimately depends on the success of the products that they are responsible for. Systems engineers need to realize that the perfect can be the enemy of the good: even the most brilliantly designed product is useless if it doesn’t get out to the customer.

Make our design teams effective

Develop the soft skills required to create an effective design team. Schools of engineering do not teach these skills. Nor do most companies. I have written posts about some of the most important soft skills. See especially the post Leading a Design Meeting.

The collaborative decision-making process used by systems engineers may be uncomfortable, even threatening, to managers used to a more authoritarian way of making decisions. Make sure your design team works effectively to come up with good designs. Then point out to your manager that better designs translate into many benefits: more predictable development schedules, more reliable products and happier customers.

Empathy

We can also empathize with the difficulties that managers face. Just as we have to balance the needs and wants of various stakeholders when we design a product, managers have to reconcile the demands of many different people in order to accomplish the tasks assigned to them. Satisfying their own managers, their employees, other departments in the organization and the HR department is not an easy job! Don’t make their job more difficult than it needs to be. Be an ally.

Working with Sales

Managers complain that our products are behind schedule and over budget. Testers point out our design flaws and botched implementations. People in manufacturing ask us to modify our designs to make them easier or cheaper to build. Service people pass on complaints from customers and share their own experiences of the failures of our products. So much negativity!

But in the world of sales, our products are technologically advanced. They meet every conceivable user need. They are easy to use. And they are so reliable. Our design engineers are creative geniuses!

Although sometimes their optimism leads them to make promises that are difficult or impossible for us to keep, it’s still fun to spend some time in this world whenever we need a dose of positive thinking.

Working with Testing

Systems engineers spend a lot of time working with test engineers and testers. These relationships can turn antagonistic – the job of a tester is to find defects, and no one likes to have their errors pointed out to them. But put aside your ego when working with test engineers and testers. Learn from them. They will teach you things that will make you a better design engineer.

Working with Manufacturing

In many companies, the manufacturing world is now physically remote from the product design world. Many managers, looking narrowly at labor costs or simply following the fad for offshore supply chains, have concluded that manufacturing should be done in a low wage country. But in doing so, they throw away all of the proven advantages of co-location.

When your manufacturing is done thousands of miles away from your product design, design engineers can no longer communicate quickly and easily with manufacturing. Design engineers no longer have enough understanding of the manufacturing process to design for ease of manufacturing. Workers on the factory floor will no longer be able to make informal suggestions and observations to design engineers. Design engineers will not be able to help sort out manufacturing issues in person. And sometimes a supplier learns enough about your product to become a competitor!

Co-located manufacturing

I was lucky enough to work for a company that resisted the low-cost lure of offshore supply chains. Our manufacturing facility was in a building just on the other side of the parking lot. Our design engineers could visit the manufacturing world whenever we wanted to. We were amply rewarded by a deep understanding of the manufacturing process. We designed products that were easier and cheaper to build. And we could fix manufacturing issues quickly, which improved the reliability of our products. All this gave us an advantage over our competitors.

Offshore manufacturing

If you do have to work with offshore manufacturing (or offshore design teams, for that matter!) try to cultivate a relationship with an offshore counterpart. This person becomes your agent and you become their agent. They will keep you informed about what is going on in the manufacturing facility and you can explain to them what is going on in headquarters. They can solve manufacturing problems and you can explain designs and decisions and clear up any miscommunications. Schedule regular phone calls to work out any issues. Try to meet in person at least once at the beginning of the project. You will learn how to work together and that will make the remote relationship smoother.

Working with Service

You may not have much contact with service people because they are located wherever the customers are – all over the country or all over the world. But remember them when you are collecting wants and needs for a product. Service people are usually happy to be asked for their opinions and insights. They can give product design engineers valuable information about product weaknesses. They can also tell you how customers actually use the product.

Working with Human Resources

Remember that this world is completely subordinate to management. Therefore, redirect any resentment you may feel toward HR to management. Respect the valuable help that HR people can provide and sympathize with the difficulty of their policing duties.

We’re good at this!

Effective systems engineers must be comfortable navigating the different worlds within the workplace. Fortunately, systems engineering itself provides us many skills that help us with this navigation.

We know how to understand the various categories of users and their needs so that we can design good products. Apply these skills to understand the worlds of the workplace.

We know how to synthesize a good design out of all of the sometimes conflicting needs of our various categories of users. Apply these skills to see how the individual worlds within the workplace can work together to form a harmonious and effective whole.

Successful products depend on good design. Successful products also depend on an organization that can develop good designs into great products. Systems engineering skills help us achieve the good designs and the effective organizations that lead to great products.