Someone was talking to me recently about process and how different functions do or don’t work successfully together in an organisation, and as part of that they talked about the need for fuzziness between functions. That is, if we are to work together successfully we need a bit of give and take—the ability to flex in what we’re able to do and say. Rigid processes too often lead to mechanical, robotic interactions, a loss of empathy, and a loss of respect for each other. This is detrimental to both the individuals and the work that needs to get done. If we were to ask our ourselves how much fuzz we need, a broad heuristic would be that it depends on the size of the organisation. In a tiny startup—say, four people—there needs to be a lot of fuzz, particularly internally. Everyone needs to help out with everything, and probably there is constant chatter that helps everyone keep up with each other’s world. At the other end of the spectrum an organisation with tens of thousands of people needs a lot of very clear process, just to avoid chaos from so much going on and so many people unaware of each other’s situation. As a first estimate it looks as though we need near-zero fuzziness. But there are a couple of other considerations. First, even in an large organisation some flexibility and understanding is welcome. When I’ve worked in large organisations and needed something from someone in a team I’ve never contacted before, if I don’t immediately get what I want it’s quite depressing to get just a No, or a “Please fill out this form” without any hint of what might happen beyond that. It’s much more encouraging to enter into a short dialogue, each of us learning about our mutual context, and some exploration of options, however brief. Even in a 10,000 person organisation that distant team might only be three or four people, and it’s good to get to know one of them by name and to make some contact on a human level. Second, we don’t always want to help every person—they might turn out to be fraudsters or otherwise not acting in good faith. SIM swap fraud happens too often because of social engineering, in which that human level contact is seen as a weakness to be exploited. In this case, at least, process that depends on people won’t work; protections need to be built into mechanical systems. One example would be a (computer) system that does not show the call centre agent the customer’s password (as was that case at one telco I used to be with) but instead simply confirms or denies three of its characters. So, not all organisational boundaries should be equal. But I do find it helpful recognising the need for and value of fuzzy organisational boundaries. _Photo by Pati_ ### Share this: * Share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) LinkedIn * Print (Opens in new window) Print * Email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email * Share on Tumblr (Opens in new window) Tumblr * Like Loading...