2013年12月3日星期二

ASQ InfVoices - Law of Organizational Motion

The Topic of ASQ Influential Voice in December is not defined and free. I would like to discuss the organizational motion (implied organizational change / performance improvement) phenomena which could be explained by using Newton's Laws of Motion.


Newton's First Law: Every body continues to be in a state of rest or to move with uniform velocity unless a resultant force acts on it. (The inertia of a body is its reluctance to start moving, and its reluctance to stop once it has begun moving. Mass is a measure of the inertia of a body.)
(In Chinese: 動則恆動,不動則不動。)

When a organization is steady or be moving to one direction, it is very different to change their state or direction again. It is similar to the Inertia of a body. The bigger the organization is (Mass ↑), the more difficult it changes (Inertia ↑). In order to change the organization, we need to consider the Newton's second law.

Newton's Second Law: The change of momentum per second is proportional to the applied force and the momentum change takes place in the direction of the force. (A force (F) acts on object which is equal to its change in momentum (mass x velocity) per second (F = ma))
(In Chinese: 增力加速。)

When you would like to change organizational practice or direction, you need a force internally or externally. Internal force is come from top management and external force is come from market/stakeholder/interested parties. If we would like to accelerate that change, we need to increase the force. Most of time, staff do not feel good because of the Newton's first law - Inertia. If we use too much internal force to overcome this Inertia, we need to consider the Newton's third law. (Adding heavy internal force in Cantonese named 大石壓死蟹)

Newton's Third Law: Action and reaction are always equal and opposite. (F = -F)
(In Chinese: 對等抗力。)

Sometime too much force to change organization practice will cause bad results such as strike.

How can we overcome these laws in order to achieve organizational motion (implied organizational change / performance improvement) smoothly? Reference to the book "The Power of Pull", we should not consider and focus on the traditional Push System. The Pull System like "Gravity", which attract everything automatically, should be considered seriously. The Power of Pull can create sustained extreme performance improvement for big and small companies .

Reference:
Michael Nelkon & Philip Parker (1987) "Advanced Level Physics - Sixth Edition", Heinemann Educational Books (HEB).
John Hagel III, John Seely Brown & Lang Davison (2010) "The Power of Pull: How Small Moves, Smartly Made, Can Set Big Things in Motion" Published by Basic Books


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