Humour

Unnatural herds

T A Balasubramanian on why organizations divide themselves into effective micro-herds (project teams)

We are back for another session of arcane advice blended with twisted tales, tossed up as a salad by the inimitable chef Dr Don Jong, as he continues probing curiously into the wobbly world of Bobo Jitter, the unsettled CIO of Bazooka Corporation. Dr Jong, known to his inner circle as The Oddfather—because of the dubious insights he offers—is, nevertheless, an enthusiastic explorer of technology’s bumpy avenues.

“Ah, well, Bobo, you seem to be too—what is the nice phrase for it—‘preoccupied with heavy thoughts,’ today eh? So what is brewing in the inner chambers of your head, if I may ask?” says Dr Jong, grandly, as he lights up his pipe.

“It is Brooke Bond,” says Bobo, pacing around nervously, “My head of software projects. He has been with me for a dozen years. And now he says he is thinking of leaving Bazooka.”

“Ah, so Brooke wishes to move on, eh? That is indeed, sad. And what could be the excuse for this action?”

“He says he is finding the spirit of Bazooka too unnatural.”

“Unnatural, eh? And how exactly has the spirit become unnatural for Brooke after so many years?”

“Well, he was out in Africa on a vacation recently, and there he saw many animals in the wild that he had only seen in zoos before. He was struck by the remarkable difference. Particularly among elephants. He says elephants in the wild appear to be more alive, and more natural—as if they were a different species. And coming back to Bazooka, he felt that his programming teams, and he himself, have become like domesticated elephants in a zoo.”

“Hmm. So he wants to become free like a wild elephant again?”

“Yes. He now feels that he is missing something as an employee of a large organization like Bazooka. I do not understand him at all. He was always content at work—oh, he complains endlessly about his projects—but mostly that is the usual professional griping. I thought he was like me—ready to stay on until retirement. What’s so unnatural about working for a big company, Doc?”

“Hmm. Let me try and explain his new—shall we say—wild perspective? I think vacations are a great excuse for making people look at their entire life afresh—because they suddenly have a lot of free time, no routine stress and bingo, they become thoughtful and more introspective. Now, our Brooke has been exposed to a whole new world. He observes that these animals in the wild naturally form herds of a certain size that naturally follows their evolution as a species. A herd of antelope may have 100 or more adults. A band of monkeys, maybe 20 or 30. Lions form prides of maybe 5 or 10. As humans, we also appear to be designed to work in herds—like all the other animals. From what we instinctively know, the ideal size for a human herd to function smoothly is about 8. You must have noticed that as we add more members, there is a tapering off in the spirit. By 20, the herd becomes hard to manage. And if we have a group of 50, it becomes almost impossible.”

“That’s true, Doc. I have about 50 people, and clearly, as you have observed over the years, I have problems.”

“Well, whatever the upper limit may be, humans, as a species, are certainly not fashioned by evolution to function in masses of several hundreds. But even so, for reasons that have more to do with technology than human nature, we have a great many people stuffed into huge organizations with thousands of others marching to the same tune, so to speak.”

“So organizations are not respectful of human nature?”

“Oh, they pretend to be, Bobo, even if the reality is that are supremely indifferent to the plight of the individual animal. Companies know that large herds will not work, so they divide themselves into micro-herds small enough to work like a lump—such as a project team. And to make these function, they have to introduce something to help them survive and stick together. So we have one of the micro-herd members nominated as a head—called a boss—such as Brooke Bond.”

“Wow, Doc. I never thought of it in that way. A micro-tribal head, eh?”

“Well, these micro-herds are always arranged in a tree structure. You, the boss, are the point where your collection of your micro- herds gets attached to the larger trunk of the Bazooka tree.”

“But is it not quite natural for an organization to be this way?”

“It would seem so. However, observe that when you use this strategy for dividing a large herd into smaller ones, something strange happens that I have always found to be exciting. In the herd one level up from yours, your super-micro-tribal boss represents your entire bunch of micro-herds. A herd of 10 bosses is not the same as a bunch of 10 individuals working together in the usual way. It is actually a super-micro-herd of micro-herds. Clear, so far?”

“Quite so, Doc.”

“Now, observe that for a super-micro-herd of 10 bosses to work as if they were simply a bunch of 10 individuals, the micro-herd working for each boss would have to behave as if they were a single member. The individual creatures and the boss of the micro-herd—such as Brooke Bond and a member of his project team—would each share only one individual’s worth of freedom between them.”

“That’s a lot of restriction, Doc, but I suppose we have to fall in with the tribal vision if the tree is to survive, eh?”

“Right. So now we begin to see why Brooke is unhappy. In reality, a herd of humans never quite manage to act as if they are one happy creature—like a school of fish wheeling around in tight formation in the ocean. Yet, in a large company like Bazooka, the compulsion is always in that direction. Each micro-herd tries its best to function as if it were the ideal bunch of about 8 individuals that humans were designed to work in. Now, if we multiply the pressure to conform, each creature gets lesser freedom as the size of the entire herd grows larger.”

“So that’s why Brooke wants to break away?”

“Voila! You comprehend well, my friend. You can be sure that any spirited human who has been in a large organization has felt this urge. Brooke is, at heart, a programmer, so he likes to build new things. Big companies do not allow space for wild elephants. Put in a different way, on a bush with just 10 creatures, your song can be heard. But if you are a bird on a tree with 10,000 others, who can hear you, even if your own flock has only 10?”