THE WALL AS AN ANALOGUE
It’s rare to see a physical wall that is such a perfect analogue for an organizational wall. Most of the walls in companies of all kinds are intangible, invisible, and often unknown to senior management.
Although the call center wall seemed absurd, it had been erected for perfectly good and rational reasons that had to do with lines of business, reporting structures, and cost management. But the wall ended up getting in the way of real work that people had to do, so they found their own ways of getting around it.
To us, the wall represented the formal, hierarchical organization—the lines, if you will, that can be drawn to show the official relationships and power structures and workflows and channels of communication. ...
Get Leading outside the lines: How to Mobilize the (in)Formal Organization, Energize Your Team, and Get Better Results now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
