The Structure of Organizations

The hardest thing to deal with in organizations is that other people think differently than you do and that that is ok. Different perceptions are useful. In fact, to fail to grasp The Other (in the form of the client or end user or other teammates) is a major problem of Design. Designers need to detach their egos to design well. Great designers, with maturity and discipline, have the ability to both express themselves and understand others in the things they create.

A designer needs to understand where she fits in an organization and how that organization works as a social system. Otherwise, as Dick Buchanan warned us, you can "be bitten in the ass" by organizations. Designers need to know there are informal relationships that are created and fostered by the formal structure of organizations ("The Concept of Formal Organization" by Peter Blau and W. Richard Scott). These informal organizations (personal relationships) are what make formal organizations go.

Designers need to know that there are mechanistic and organic systems, and the reality is that most organizations are a mix of the organic and the mechanistic ("Mechanistic and Organic Systems" by Tom Burns and G.M. Stalker). Designers need to find ways to accommodate different ways of thinking within the same organization.

Designers need to know the basic parts of the organization ("The Five Basic Parts of the Organization" by Henry Mintzberg) because the parts of an organization don't work in isolation, but only in relationship to each other. If you understand the structural relationships of organizations, you can use them (or else be used by them).

Originally posted on Wednesday, February 16, 2005