Push-Pull, and the Physics of Organization Alignment
In his 1989 work Mintzberg on Management, Henry Minztberg describes professional organizations as “seemingly upside-down organizations, where the workers sometimes appear to manage the bosses.” Mintzberg notes that he himself works in a professional organization (at McGill University in Toronto) at least partially “because it is the one place in the world where you can act as if you [are] self-employed [and] yet regularly receive a paycheck.” My work with organizations yields a similar understanding. One of the striking attributes of professional services firms is the incredible autonomy enjoyed by practicing professionals, often alongside an apparent ’line item veto’ on […]