The need to reconsider how we design things.

Today on NPR I was listening to an interview with Edward M. Libby, the new CEO of AIG, regarding AIG and the 120 billion dollar bailout they received from the Government and the changes they are looking to make. Libby was using the metaphor of AIG, and all big companies, being a battleship or aircraft carrier. His point was that AIG is a huge corporation and changing course is not a quick process, so do not expect any big changes in the near future.

Since I had spent part of the afternoon, before listening to this NPR piece, reading about systems theory and cradle to cradle design theory, I was in the mindset of redesigning processes. As I thought about the metaphor of a large ship being unable to adjust course quickly, I thought that this is a design problem. I also think the whole economic situation is a design problem, but that is for another entry. Anyway, if a large ship is too unwieldy and not an effective model, what might be a better paradigm? From a business context I was thinking of a group of smaller more agile watercraft as a metaphor. If a flotilla had a single boat in charge, its location would be fairly unimportant regarding its ability to provide leadership and communication. I can see a corporation resembling a flock of sandpipers moving in unison across the beach.

The lead boat could be at the front of the flotilla, in the middle, or on one side. And if a boat in another location of the group spots an issue, it could signal a warning to the lead boat. Then the lead boat could either relay the information, or each smaller boat could call for a whole group movement in a crisis. The model is more reactive, more fluid, and each boat can have a certain degree of individuality within the the larger model.

To continue the metaphor, each small boat could be a department or branch of a corporation. With a greater degree of agility and responsiveness, each boat and the entire flotilla, would be able to respond to a variety of challenges with a very different results to that of an aircraft carrier. It would take a degree of thought to redesign a corporation to resemble a flotilla of smaller crafts rather than the gigantic vessels they currently represent. But what are these CEO's getting paid millions of dollars to do? If they put in some effort into retooling and redesigning their corporations, I believe this huge corporations could weather financial situations like we are facing currently. I feel that it is time for our corporations to go through an evolutionary process. It is time to change.    

Here is the link to the piece, and another related story:

http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2008/10/22/corner_office_liddy_transcript/

http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2008/10/22/too_big_reich/