The Organizational Sweet Spot
The Organizational Sweet Spot: Engaging
the Innovative Dynamics of Your Social Networks
Charles
(Kalev) Ehin, Ph.D.
Emeritus Professor of Management
The Gore School of Business
Westminster College, Salt Lake City
The organizational sweet spot is like the sweet spot on the
strings of a tennis racket. In a general sense, the sweet spot of the racquet
is the area of the string bed that produces the best combination of feel and
power. In an enterprise, the sweet spot is created by the overlap of the formal
and informal systems of the organization. That is, under the right
conditions the informal components of a venture will begin to overlap more and
more with the formal elements of a business.
This overlap is a
very desirable state for any venture. That spot, in essence, represents the
area where the formal and informal systems of an organization have reached “a
meeting of the minds” over the fundamental goals, policies and processes of an
organization. What is particularly noteworthy about this agreement is that it’s
not reached through any sort of formal negotiations. Rather, it is emergent.
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Categories: Thought Leadership
Tags: unmanagement informal Organization formal Charles (Kalev) Ehin
Dr. Ehin shows that the power of any organization is not in money, CMII or Six Sigma ratings, or any other external ranking system. The power of organizations is its people. One can only hope that management will take this message to heart and encourage postive networks in their organizations. An enlightening read.
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I fully concur with this article. I say that the meeting of the opposites, or the edge of opposites, is the zone of the greatest creativity and insights. The meeting of formal and informal systems of an organization is exemplary of the meeting of opposites and I believe this is a precondition for maximum organizational productivity.
I like the metaphor of strings of a tennis racket that Dr. Ehin used to express the sweet spot.
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