The Excellence Principle: Pyramids Versus Dandelions
By Dr. Joel Orr

Based on a portion of Dr. Orr's presentation at COE 2001: "The Future Is at Your Door; Should You Let it In?"

When my wife, N'omi, and I read In Search of Excellence, in 1982, we were excited. Tom Peters and Bob Waterman had not only observed some of the same problems in organizations that we had in our years as management consultants, but they had also found a few companies that had overcome them.

But when we searched their book for the underlying principle of excellence, we were disappointed. They only discussed the signs of the presence of excellence-not its cause.

So it didn't surprise us when Business Week interviewed the "excellent" companies of the book a year later and found that many of them no longer met the book's criteria for excellence.

We asked, "Is there a unifying principle that at least partly explains every "excellence" story?"

Our observations:

1. Organization itself seems to kill the spirit of budding enterprise

2. Most social and business structures are based on a vision of people as Legos-a material resource to be allocated by numbers rather than appreciated as individuals

3. Today's excellent companies seem to have a respect for individual creativity, talent, and enthusiasm

That is, excellent companies are structured more like a family, as represented by the cluster of a dandelion puff, than in the static relationships represented by a pyramid chart.

This led us to a unifying principal: Excellence occurs in organismic structures that encourage people to band together in project-oriented clusters.

This is humanity's natural work structure, and it permits expression of the highest level of excellence of which that particular aggregation of people is capable.

Start-ups are often based on the excellence-principle concepts of organismic management, but as soon as they began to succeed they say, "We're a real business now; it's time to organize!" So they set up a "real business" pyramid chart to guide them, and that is the end of excellence.

Pyramids do have certain good features: a pleasant symmetry, stability, and predictability: As a model for temporary enterprises, such as war or sports-activities where families and society are left behind while a mission is accomplished-the pyramid is the correct structure.

But as a business model, pyramids are flawed. The unhappiness they create in the people in them interferes with their functioning as humans in families and society.

Furthermore, businesses must stay flexibly in tune with the business environment - or they die. Pyramids are not flexible.

In a pyramid, power must filter through the layers separating each individual from the top. In a business structured like a dandelion-puff, each individual-represented by the seeds-is connected to the center, perched on the life-supporting stem. Within each functional area, workers have direct access to the highest level of authority they need to get their jobs done.

Excellent organizations like IBM, HP, and 3M are collections of dandelions.

Organismic enterprises also allow for individual development, as clusters of people endlessly form around projects, then re-form around new projects-learning and growing through interacting with the changing array of team-mates, and through each new project's challenges.

In a pyramid, everyone strives to "ascend" to a higher level. But at each level, there are fewer "slots." So the very structure of the organization guarantees that, if they are training good people, few can remain; the others must seek open slots elsewhere.

In a company structured on the excellence principle, there is no limit to the number of "dandelions"-new projects-that can be born. Talented people can grow rather than leave.

Bottom line: structure is destiny. The excellence principle is that organisms must be managed organismically.

Dandelions are hard to kill-and represent the fullness of life, growth, and perpetual replication: excellence.

So, avoid pyramids. Don't join them; don't create them. If you are in one, work to change it. Or leave, and start or find a cluster of dandelions.

Dr. Joel Orr (http://www.joelorr.com) has been a futurist, technologist, speaker, author, and management consultant to Fortune 500 companies, governments, and high-tech start-ups for more than 30 years. Look for his upcoming book: "The Pyramid and the Dandelion: The Excellence Principle behind Organismic Management."