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Have you ever thought about what "departments" really means? The word "department" starts with another word: "depart". Stop, think, continue reading.

Technical Chief Officer's Dilemma: Departments and "Agency"

Are you in a situation where you honestly need people who purposely segregate themselves into groups that start with a departure from each other, rather than a congregation of ideas, people, and purpose?

If you are responsible for a technology "department", you are responsible for a "failure". #explain

Consider a geometric line, the most efficient way to connect one point to another. If only people were that easy. Get enough of them together and you start having to group them into manageable departments. IT, Development, Operations, Finance, Sales, Marketing, Management. Business lines to make things easy, right?

Departments are "Depart"-ments

Wrong. Department f*ck screw things up. Drawing lines isn't a good thing unless if it's to connect people with each other. They distract people from the simple truth that businesses who succeed are filled with people who instinctually understand that they are all on the same path, together.

Consider a geometric shape, the triangle. A line plus one point, an important point, an entire dimension. What good does it do to add another point beyond that? A square? Another department? Finance? HR? Marketing? Why?

I'm minimizing, I know wonderful, necessary in finance and human resource. Apologies to them, it's just to make a point.

Only the Right Lines Need to Be Drawn

People who work with very large organizations know this inside out. Enterprises, government agencies, financial institutions. Corporations. The more lines there are, the more overhead and lack of progress there is. Sure, there's stability, structure, fortitude; but the further we get away from connecting point A to point B in a straight line, the less efficient we are.

Truly effective business starts with figuring out how to define things with the least number of lines. Communication, organization, collaboration all benefit from simplifying how many lines are drawn. #karma

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