The other day, I received an email, and I shouted “Hurray” out loud, to the amusement of those around me. The message said a change at work was coming. I was elated because I suggested this change over a decade ago. I wondered why it had taken so long to make the decision.
I often get frustrated by committee-based decision-making. It’s not just where I work, but at every university in the UK as far as I can tell. Decisions take ages to make and even longer to implement. I was once told by an executive board member at Cambridge that the change I was suggesting they make wasn’t necessary. “We’ve survived 800 years without it,” said the professor, “why do we need social media now?”
However, talking to businesspeople in commercial sectors, there are increasing complaints that decisions and actions are taking much longer than they used to. People of my generation cannot understand why things that would have taken a short time in the “olden days” now take their company months or years.
It’s because, over the past few decades, the notion of “consensus management” has taken hold across businesses worldwide. Everyone has to have an “input” into shaping the way the business proceeds. Committees and teams spring up to support decision-making and to feed their ideas to the Board. The problem is that by the time they reach the board, much has been watered down to ensure everyone is happy.
The change at my workplace came about after years of discussion, which eventually stalled because it was going nowhere. Then, along comes a new senior manager who chatted to a couple of people and made the decision himself. Gosh, it’s just like those olden days.
So, imagine how happy I was when I read an article in the latest Harvard Business Review suggesting that the era of consensus management could be over. The authors argue that, in the age of artificial intelligence, slow decision-making is no longer an option. Speed will not come from merely talking about agility. It will come from changing structures, responsibilities and ways of working.
The article argues that speed will not come from talking about agility. It will come from changing structures, responsibilities and ways of working. They go beyond the notion of “agile” to suggest that businesses need to alter the way they work.
It reminds me of the research conducted by Professor Robert Solow, who won the Nobel Prize in Economics. He showed that you could see the computer age everywhere except in the productivity statistics. In other words, simply adding technology did not automatically make organisations more productive. It is called the Solow Paradox. The gains came when businesses changed their structures, workflows and management systems to make proper use of that technology.
It appears the Harvard article says much the same. You will only benefit from AI if you change the way you work, structure your organisation and make decisions. Slow decision-making and delayed implementation of change are no longer an option. So, when will you decide to reorganise to adapt to the AI world? Or will that take you a decade to work out, once it has gone through several committees and resulted in a “one-size-fits-all” option designed to make “everyone happy”? It is always worth remembering the adage that when a committee was asked to design a horse, it ended up producing a camel.
