Hidden Assets: Harnessing the Power of Informal Networks Review

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Hidden Assets: Harnessing the Power of Informal Networks ReviewThe author's previous book Unleashing Intellectual Capital was concerned with the working conditions required to stimulate maximum development of intellectual capital. This book expands the same general theme to wider aspects of the effectiveness of organizations.
The main thesis is important. It is also fairly simple and a variation on the theme of several other authors:
* humans have an ability to self-organize in small groups around shared tasks: this ability is very deep-seated, being derived from our ancient hunter-gatherer past;
* historically more recent developments have led to hierarchical arrangements for carrying out tasks and these arrangements have tended to ignore or even actively discourage the capacity for self-organization;
* with the rise of the knowledge economy and recognition of complexity theory as a better descriptor of human affairs than previous more deterministic and linear theories, self-organization is increasingly evidently a more effective means of achieving results than top-down command-and-control in many (even most) situations;
* we therefore need to find forms of organization and of leadership that support and encourage self-organization.
The author suggests approaches, based on examples of organizations (particularly W.L. Gore and Associates) that use these principles successfully.
As mentioned above, variants on this general thesis are attracting attention from a number of other authors, notably Dee Hock: Birth of the Chaordic Age and Lewin and Regine: The Soul at Work.
Ehin goes into substantial detail to explore the various innate drives in humans, show how they interact and explore how the tensions between different drives (such as the drive for cooperative self-organization and the drive for power) play out. My reaction is that the discussion is interesting and useful but that, if you accept the importance and value of self-organization - as I do - it is not necessary to follow these arguments in detail, although it is important to note the implications that the author draws out of his arguments.
The more important practical issue is "how do we get best use of these 'hidden assets' under different organizational circumstances and how far is the currently dominant hierarchical form of organization necessarily hostile to harnessing these 'hidden assets'?"
This can be broken into two rather different questions which raise substantially different issues:
1. How to build an organization from new (or from small and flexible beginnings) that makes best use of these human characteristics and capacities.
2. How to adjust procedures and attitudes within established hierarchical organizations, such as to gain maximum benefits from self-organization.
Unfortunately, the author does not make a clear distinction between these two situations and much of his argument is implicitly more directed to the first than the second situation. Arguably, the second situation is more important and offers the greater challenges.
In this context, two of the factors influencing access to self-organization that he does discuss are style of leadership and (briefly) physical layout (For more on this interesting and important issue, see Turner: New Workspace, New Culture). Both are important as facilitators or serious inhibitors of self-organization.Hidden Assets: Harnessing the Power of Informal Networks Overview

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