Scale & Soul: Navigating Bigness by Dr Andreas Wandelt.

Bigger is better! We all profit hugely from the fact that we live in a standardized, structured world: Cars adhering to reliable specifications, organizations with clear, manageable responsibilities, mass-produced, affordable and practical computers, furniture and clothing, standardized medical protocols if we need surgery.

The wonders of standardization and scale, and all it’s advantages in terms of availability, compatibility and reliability are all around us. The same applies to ourselves: A bacterium is impressive. But what is that in comparison to the billions of cells working in humans as a harmonious whole?

But we all realize that bigger is not always better. We feel forced to do meaningless things in huge bureaucratic organizations. We do see the downsides of mass production efficiency and cold standards. And as part of a society, we have to adhere to norms and behaviors which we may not always consider our own.

And not everything scales. Have you ever tried to scale up a great team? Does dialogue scale?

In this session, we will discuss what is gained, and what is lost, when things are scaled up. Where is bigger actually better, and where should we stay small at all cost? Or can that circle be squared? Can we have huge organizations where we feel we are part of the sensemaking? Standardized products which don’t have the soul squeezed out of them?

Andreas lives in Northwest Germany, and pursues an enhanced understanding of the world, mainly through a complex adaptive systems lens. His tagline could be "bacteria, brains and societies". When his degrees of freedom were more limited, he worked on process and organizational change and stability topics for large organizations, across a wide variety of geographical/cultural contexts. He also has a basic scientific education by way of a Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry. Andreas severely resents the notion that he has "retired". He instead insists that his learning just became profit-independent.