Hacker News Reader

I think the lesson to learn from this is to be wary of anybody who says they can look at a system for organising people that works well and write down a recipe for how to reproduce the essential elements of that system. Even if they were partially responsible for creating it. Most likely, nobody understands why it works in enough detail to write down precisely what it would take to reproduce it.

View on HN

W. Edwards Deming got the closest I think?

System of the organization comprises the relationship between systems within it, how those systems change and vary, the methods of knowledge learning and transfer, and the psychology and behavior of the people within it. And importantly, it's how all those pieces interact with each other that makes the most difference.

It's a system. There are some common elements. Above that base level, there is much truth in what you say, but the most important thing you can learn is a mental model for organizations in the most general way possible.

One of the hardest parts of this is organizations are not separate from there problem domain. A process that works for manufacturing cars (high value) may not work so well for manufacturing radios (low value) let alone banking software. Pay, education, and company size are all huge factors that are often ignored.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com