michael_nielsen

I often find myself torn between “Wow large organizations are astoundingly incompetent” and “On the other hand, logistics underlies basically everything around me.”https://twitter.com/SwiftOnSecurity/status/1080637153539952647 …

As I'm sure you know, if you look at a heat engine, they're astoundingly inefficient; it seems like a waste, until you understand there are fundamental reasons why this is true. I wonder if the same is true of large organizations?

When I think about places/organizations such as airports and universities, I'm astounded at the number of people with highly specialized functions who need to work so precisely together to make it all work and not fall apart. And yet, yes, there is astounding inefficiency too.

Yep. I often think about this when technical people complain about meetings. I do think better meetings are often possible, but it's subtle what they're about: achieving co-ordination, common knowledge, uncovering what the group doesn't know it doesn't know, etc.

Many of these seem like processes which are inherently inefficient.

Sunstein and Hastie have a nice accessible book (a few years old now) summarizing empirical research on making groups smarter. (https://www.amazon.com/Wiser-Getting-Beyond-Groupthink-Smarter/dp/1422122999/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1546560021&sr=8-1&keywords=wiser …)