Co-evolution of organizations and technology

My first clue about the coevolution of technology and organizations came very early in my career.  I hate to admit this was in the 1970s!  As an employee, consultant, business architect and coach, I have had occasion to observe and participate in a wide variety of businesses over the years.  Along the way, I have become convinced that what we are dealing with here are living systems.  I am not saying that metaphorically.  I really mean that these companies and other organizations are alive in a way that is similar to biological live, but different from biology in important ways.  This applies to government agencies as well.  In fact I started out in my career working for a city government, where I held numerous positions.

One experience stands out in particular.  It’s a long story, and I will spare you many of the details, but the short version is that right out of college I decided to follow my preference to live life as a generalist in a world of increasing specialization.  The means to that end was to focus on library work, both with a Masters degree, and a job in the public library system of the City of Palo Alto (where people take their libraries very seriously indeed!).  

I had occasion to do some analysis of the circulation system, which at the time was entirely manual, and s very labor-intensive.  The work largely consisted of filing and accessing a large volume of paper records of individual transactions.

The analysis that I led, and reported, suggested that there might be some advantage in “automating” much of this volume of transactional record-keeping.  This was a fairly new concept at the time.  This was in the 1970’s, when computer technology was not widespread.  The analysis was convincing enough that upper management agreed to investigate “automated” systems, and, long story short, a turnkey system was located and acquired.  There was a period of transition, when existing records were laboriously keyed in to computer files.  But once the system became operational, the time-saving features began to be realized.

What happened, in addition, though, was quite unexpected.  The workers whose jobs were impacted, appreciated the relief from tedium of handling large volumes of paper, and found that they could actually provide much higher quality service to the public.  And furthermore, they began to see possibilities of ways to use the computer technology to further ease their burdens, but more importantly, become more effective and efficient in the public service they provided.  It was if there was a kind of symbiotic relationship between the workers and the technology.  New automated functionality led to improvements in the work, but also new ideas for further improvement.  And, the symbiotic relationship was not with the technology per se, but rather with the humans on the other side of the technology, who had the programming skills to make the desired changes. 

In this instance there was a limitation to this apparent coevolution, because, as I mentioned, this was a “turnkey” system that the vendor originally expected to be installed, and then run without modification.  But the point was not lost on my young, impressionable mind.  There was some kind of maturing or optimizing force at work, that was bigger than any one worker, and that was trying to drive the organization in the direction of continuous improvement, once a mechanism of improvement was put in the hands (and minds) of the participants.  Through this experience I developed an intuition that the organization had a life of its own, which arose from the interaction of the individual members, but transcended their individual thoughts and efforts

To get back to the technology discussion, click here.
To get back to the hub list of healthy business factors, click here.

To get back to the discussion of businesses as living systems, here.