I have always been interested in architecture. I think that the work of an architect in designing structures is a noble and honorable profession. Architecture is concerned with the practice of designing and building structures that are unifying and coherent. Recently I had the opportunity to witness the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright. Visiting Fallingwater was an amazing experience. But that is another story.
I think that organizations are alot like buildings. If they are well designed and constructed, they feel unified and coherent. Poorly designed organizations, on the other hand feel disjointed and painful. I once heard someone describe an organization that was having growing pains as a as “10 story building that was sitting on a foundation designed for a four story building”. The organization was crumbling under its own weight. It needed to take some time to rethink the organization’s architecture and design.
The byline of this blog is The Architecture of Organizations. The term architecture was purposefully chosen. It reflects the growing trend in the literature on nonprofit and corporate organizations to use terms that can be traced back to the discipline of architecture or construction. Examples include:
- A recently published book by Roger Martin entitled The Design of Business.
- Another book on the managing the language of leadership by Gail Fairhurst and Robert Sarr is entitled The Art of Framing.
- Lee Bolman and Terrence Deal wrote a book entitled Reframing Organizations.
- Another classic book by Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann is call the Social Construction of Reality.
- Even Tom Peters has used architectural terms in defining his new performance operating system called the Future Shape of a Winner.
All of these books focus on the art of creating, designing, constructing, reframing organizations. I think the term architecture is a wonderful umbrella term the encompasses this trend. It also reflects my stance as I approach governance partnership.