Migrated and modified from my old blog.
Via Systems Leadership: Creating Positive Organisations,
A useful way to analyse systems and organisational behaviour is to ask how authorised and productive they are:
- Our target is Authorised and Productive systems which are those that are effective to get work done and are supported by the bureaucracy.
- Authorised and Counter-Productive is the classic problem with excessive red tape.
- Unauthorised and Productive are workarounds necessary to get things done. The problem with this quadrant is that it indicates that the organisation is missing opportunities to learn. However, this is also the quadrant where innovation occurs.
- The final quadrant of Unauthorised and Counter-Productive is about systems and behaviour based on intimidation and bending the rules for personal, rather than organisational, benefit. Anything in this quadrant should be eradicated.
Related
- There is a similar discussion in IT Governance about the problem with “renegade” but productive processes.
- NOTE: “authorised” implies “known” and “explicit” but the reverse isn’t true. It is possible for processes and systems to be “known” and are not really supported by the organisational bureaucracy so much as tolerated.
