Matt BraunMary Mulcahy

Colleen MooneyLorraine E. Zlupko

Organizations as Brains

Organizations as Brains

The brain as a system engages in an incredibly diverse set of parallel activities that make complimentary and competing contributions to what eventually emerges as a coherent pattern (p. 75).

Organizations as BrainsMetaphor Strengths

• Information Processing Brains Networked intelligence

Limitless supply of data Data-driven organizations Human-based computation

Humans and computers work together to solve problems Changing the divided brain paradigm

Left and right brain capacities are intertwined, not opposing

• Create Learning Organizations Scan and anticipate change in the wider environment to detect significant

variations (adapt or fail) Develop an ability to question, challenge, and change operating norms and

assumptions (double looping) Allow an appropriate strategic direction and pattern of organizations to emerge

(learn from mistakes)

Organizations as Holographic

Brains

Principle 1: Build the

“Whole” into the “Parts”

Principle 2: The

Importance of

Redundancy

Principle 3: Requisite Variety

Principle 4: “Minimum

Specs”

Principle 5: Learn to

Learn

Organizations as BrainsMetaphor Limitations

• Having to “evoke metaphors to elaborate the implications of a metaphor” (p. 111) – when discussing the Organizations as Brain metaphor we are forced to look at other metaphors to describe the first (ex: holographics and cybernetics)

• The possibility of “overlooking the important conflicts that can arise between learning and self-organization, on one hand, and the realities of power and control on the other” (p.114)

Real-World Connection• Is it possible to design learning

organizations that have the capacity to be as flexible, resilient and inventive as the functioning of the brain?

• Is it possible to distribute capacities for intelligence and control throughout an enterprise so that the system as a whole can self-organize and evolve along with emerging challenges? (Morgan, p. 72)

Organizational Need for Change…………

• The school organization has “grown” a great deal, moving from a struggling school to a STAR 4 center.

• It is imperative that knowledge and power become distributed in the organization.

• We have created these positive changes with a modified “machine” organizational model, but, it is time in our organizational growth to change our focus and mindset in order to continue our Continuous Quality Improvement goals.

Working toward change

Watch for:*Resistance of status quo* Managers must be willing to truly let go

Positives:* Building a Learning Organization* Requisite Variety - internal diversity* Corporate DNA

Moving from a “Machine” to a “Brain” Organizational Structure

W

Where the school is now…

Machine Metaphor

Change Process to Organization as a Brain Model

Where we want to be ----

Brain Metaphor• Great degree of

interconnectedness• Distributed

leadership• Learning Community• NOT imposing from

above – communication and integration

Reconstructing the brain piece by piece and building a virtual brain in a supercomputer—these are some of the goals of the Blue Brain Project. The virtual brain will be an exceptional tool giving neuroscientists a new understanding of the brain and a better understanding of neurological diseases.

The Blue Brain project began in 2005 with an agreement between the EPFL and IBM, which supplied the BlueGene/L supercomputer acquired by EPFL to build the virtual brain. (http://bluebrain.epfl.ch/page-56882-en.html)

An Example of Interconnectedness……..

Blue Brain Project

W

• Both holographic and specialized (Morgan 73)• Leadership, PELICAN, Work Sampling, OUNCE, STAR Requirements shared• Distributed Leadership• Organizational Diversity

Brain Metaphor

Where we want to move as an organization…

Organization as Brain (modified for our school)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snO68aJTOpM

References

• Morgan, G. (2006). Images of Organization. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

• The Blue Brain Project. Retrieved from http://bluebrain.epfl.ch/page-56882-en.html.