What is an “organization” learned from Amazon's internal email?
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It is said that the organization that designs the system creates a design that mimics the structure of the organization, and the organization is important in product development. Amazon has completely changed the way the organization and how to communicate within the company to create products, Leonardo Federico, CEO of ` ` Sametab '', which provides a service that reduces the weight of the homepage, Using Amazon as an example, “Organization options” are explained.
The Single Most Important Internal Email in the History of Amazon
https://www.sametab.com/blog/frameworks-for-remote-working
Google engineer Steve Yegge has spent six years at Amazon and six years at Google, following an article about “ Stevey's Google Platforms Rant ” about organizational architecture and IT management. In this article, we revealed how Amazon has used Amazon's cloud service, Amazon Web Services (AWS) , and Google is not.
Mr. Yegge's post was made in 2011, and here is a summary of emails sent to Amazon employees by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. Bezos said to employees, “From now on, all teams will expose all data and functions through the service interface.” “All service interfaces must be designed from the ground up to be open to the outside.” If you do n’t, you ’ll be fired. ” Bezos CEO is thought to have sent such an e-mail because he thought that “we need to change from internal dynamics to create a service like AWS”. This is based on the concept of Conway's law that 'an organization that designs a system creates a design that mimics the structure of the organization.'
So, what kind of pattern is there in the structure of the organization and the form of communication, Federico explains as follows, organized.
◆ Framework of organizational structure
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・Organization by function
As the name suggests, functional organizations are organizations organized by function with a focus on experts. Apple is one of the functional organizations, design is a group led by Jonathan Ive , product marketing is a group led by Philip Schiller , and operations are a group led by Jeff Williams . It was.
The functional organization is based on the “unification of command” by Henri Fajol , a business scholar. Consistency and alignment within the organization can provide a high level of customer experience. On the other hand, however, the rules of the organization are strict, the movements are strict and slow, so the team's autonomy is low. In functional organizations, innovation tends to occur top-down.
・Business unit organization
In contrast to functional organizations, divisional organizations are not centered on “specialized knowledge” but rather on “products”. Amazon is an example of a business unit organization, and Amazon's “ two pizza rule ” that “all teams in the company must have the perfect size to eat two pizzas ” represents this. One product-centered team has roles such as marketing, sales, engineering, and finance, and each employee is required to be autonomous and accountable. Apple has one income statement in the company, whereas Amazon has a profit and loss statement, so you can see the difference between the two companies.
Teams born with the two-pizza rule have a tendency to be quick, clear, bottom-up innovation, but there are also disadvantages such as lack of consistency, highly maintainable communication structure, low quality customer experience . Mr. Yegge, the engineer mentioned at the beginning, pointed out that 'We have the disadvantage that the overall consistency of the team is not horrible because each team employs its own staff.'
・ Hybrid strategy
On the other hand, there are also hybrid-type organizations such as “organizations by function that incorporates the characteristics of some business organization” or “business organizations that incorporate the characteristics of some organization by function”. One example of this is Netflix, where Reed Hastings said, “As the company grows, it will become less flexible and centralized,” with a strategy of “a highly aligned, loosely coupled organization.” It is. Under this strategy, it is possible to communicate more openly even in different groups.
◆ Company communication framework
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The internal communication framework affects internal policies, procedures, and interfaces. There are roughly two internal communication frameworks: “synchronous communication” and “asynchronous communication”.
Synchronous communication is, as the word suggests, a conventional communication method that communicates on the spot at that moment. On the other hand, asynchronous communication is a time when communicating with employees in a remote environment, and can communicate with each other at a convenient time, but the drawback is that there is a delay in sending and receiving data . Furthermore, the following things exist if we deeply refer to synchronous communication / asynchronous communication.
・ Coexistence synchronization
The traditional “coexistence synchronization” where employees are in the same place is the way Apple adopts. These organizations are centralized and have a high degree of simultaneity and harmony, but at the same time rules tend to be strict and slow. As the number of employees increases, the movement becomes particularly slow and the organization organization becomes more difficult. It should also be remembered that organizations taking the form of coexistence and synchronization are difficult to adopt divisional organizations and asynchronous communications.
・ Coexistence asynchronous
Amazon is an example of “coexistence asynchronous” where staff who follow the principle of asynchronous work together in the same place. Amazon's communication is autonomy and independence and is rooted in the spirit of service-oriented architecture (SOA) . Each team communicates like an API by asynchronous communication. Contrary to Apple, which inspires ideas through meetings, Amazon has limited meetings as a way of communicating between teams.
・ Distributed asynchronous
An extreme example of decentralized asynchronous is that there is no physical gathering place such as “no head office” or “no office”. Employees with autonomy are distributed and each person works in a convenient location. For this reason, of course, communication is asynchronous. Many take the form of divisional organizations, turning physical constraints into competitive advantages.
・ Decentralized synchronization
Even coexisting organizations do not need to take the form of synchronous communication, and even distributed organizations do not need to be asynchronous. InVision does not have a headquarters, but employees work in the same time zone from 9am to 9pm . It may be out of sync, but because it is synchronized for a minimum of 4 hours, it seems to be able to move quickly and gain flexibility in an emergency.
・ Remote asynchronous
The project management tool “ Basecamp ” is headquartered in Chicago, but the majority of the team is spread across 32 cities around the world. In such an organization, there is a communication framework called remote asynchronous.
Remote work is not divisible, and the usefulness of each communication method in an organization cannot be expressed in a word. However, the option of 'asynchronous communication' is worth considering because it can accept remote work even if employees are in the same place. Everything that works with asynchronous communication also works with synchronous communication. If the range of human resources that can be hired expands and the color of asynchronous communication becomes stronger, we will move to a distributed organization. However, it should be noted that initially asynchronous communication can be confusing because it requires more processes, documents, and infrastructure than synchronous communication.
Federico says, “Working in the same place is good for many people because of the rich communication, but some people may prefer a remote environment.” “The physical nature of the organization “Asynchronous communication and synchronous communication can be adopted regardless of location,” “When investing remotely, pay attention to the communication pattern formation method and invest in improving communication.”
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