Limitations of the managed team

It must be very perplexing, for managers and executives trained in the ways of the Industrial Age, when they find conventionally managed teams are not very efficient when working in the environment of the Internet. They will know properly managed teams work well in the bricks and mortar world. They might even see them working efficiently in the bricks and mortar side of e-business and e-commerce solutions. But, as soon as any activity involves using the Internet, the managed teams of the Industrial Age appear to be inefficient and dysfunctional.

Why this problem seems so enigmatic is because Industrial Age thinking sees the managed team as the basic structure to be used throughout the whole hierarchy of any system of organisation. At the top, a commander in chief effectively manages a team: a board of directors. Each director manages his or her own team: a team of key managers and executives that are responsible to them. Each of these key managers also has their own departmental teams to manage. This hierarchy of teams stretches right down, from the top through to the bottom of the organisation so that the whole edifice becomes a hierarchy of teams. Effectively then, it is a system made up of teams of teams, where every team - (except for those at the bottom of the hierarchy) consists of people who are backed up by a team.

In such a system, everyone in the hierarchy is being pushed and supported from people below. Managers and executives become increasingly more powerful and functional the higher up the hierarchy they are. Even incompetent managers can retain their places in such hierarchies because they can do so on the backs of those below them. This channelling of information and effort into a common goal has proven to provide great power and stability in the Industrial Age.

Now imagine such a hierarchical structure suddenly having everyone in the system connected to the Internet. Information and knowledge need no longer be channelled exclusively upwards and in steps of one hierarchy at a time. Information can go in all directions; anyone can by-pass the usual communication channels. This can throw the established communication system into disarray. External communications will also be affected; instead of the system being linked to the outside world through a few controlled outlets, everyone will have their own independent connection.

This would not be a trivial change to the system. It would be a major transformation. Almost every way in which the system is controlled and managed will be affected. Not only will the controls and management be affected, the system is likely to function in a totally different way, perhaps throwing up bizarre side effects.

Employees will have knowledge and value according to how effectively they can communicate in this linked communication environment. Knowledge, and the power that it brings, will no longer be determined by procedure and precedence. Managers, who normally go to meetings, armed with all the knowledge of the people below them, will begin finding this information is already known to everyone else by the time they arrive. There will be a great reduction in the value and effectiveness of physical meetings This could greatly weaken the hierarchical structure because the phenomenon of "the meeting" provides the focal points that stabilise it.

More alarming for the Industrial Age organisations is that connectiveness will allow employees skilled in the art of communicating by email to emerge from the ranks to usurp control from designated team leaders. Such emergent leaders might have goals far removed from the goals of the appointed managers.

It doesn't take much thought to realise how connectiveness by way of the Internet can totally disrupt a hierarchical system of managed teams.