Structural Cybernetics

by N. Dean Meyer

Political in-fighting, limited teamwork, lack of customer focus, weak strategic alignment, slow pace of innovation, fragmentation and disintegration, a bureaucratic rather than entrepreneurial culture, pressure for decentralization and outsourcing, poor morale, and too much management time spent resolving internal problems... Why do these familiar problems seem so ingrained in organizations? Because they are. Many performance problems are unintentionally designed into the organization's structure. Organizational structure is a science, not a matter of personalities, politics, fads, and intuition. There are twelve fundamental building blocks of structure present in any organization. The way these are combined determines the health and performance of the organization. And the mechanisms of teamwork determine whether or not the organizational design actually works. Structural Cybernetics is a comprehensive treatment of the issues of organizational design. This brief overview presents the basics of organizational theory, clear definitions of the building blocks of structure, practical principles for designing organization charts, and an approach to high performance teamwork based on a "network" of entrepreneurs.

687 pages, Paperback

First published November 15, 1997

Reviews

[Stuart · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is out of print and hard to find - yet, it is a " must read" for anyone in business and planning a company re-organization. Long story made short: I've participated in 16 major corporate reorganizations (caused by mergers) during my career and only two were successful: both of them used the concepts outlined in this important work.

[Tammy Clark · Rating 1 out of 5]

Outdated information that 'sounds' good but doesn't actually work. Dean Mayer set back the progress of a prominent university's IT department 2 years with his cumbersome and unrealistic process. The organization is still recovering from it today. He's got some good ideas but he also promotes some really bad ideology.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

Looks at IT organizations through a systems lens. Helped me understand the need for specialization and also that specialization only works with effective teamwork to prevent disfunction due to siloing. This material has been refined and expanded in Meyers Principle Based Orginizational Structure.