Why do organisations score so many home goals? - John Dobbin

Every day, in almost every organisation on the planet, individuals and teams will score some terrific goals…against their own organisation!

A customer service team will hit their call-closure target, but lose a bunch of customers in doing so. A sales person will close a sale but promise the impossible. A new business initiative will be funded just to appease the ego of a director.

Unchecked, such patterns can cause great harm. Wells Fargo’s “Eight is Great” cross-selling campaign led to widespread fraud, firings, and reputational collapse. Volkswagen’s drive to meet emissions and performance targets resulted in one of the largest corporate scandals in history.

Despite a proliferation of expensively educated MBA graduates, why are so many organisations deeply flawed at defining and pursuing goals and sub-goals that are beneficial to the organisation as a whole?

In this Drinking Dialogue, John Dobbin argues that it is related to a flaw in our collective thinking dating back to the Scientific Revolution’s rejection of teleology—interpreting structures or dynamics in terms of their functions or goals.

We will explore how organisations, just like living organisms, have a teleonomic architecture—an adaptive, self-organising structure shaped by nested hierarchies of goals. The session examines:

• What is teleology and teleonomics
• Why teleology is largely absent from managerial disciplines
• How it is leading to breakthroughs in other domains
• How it can be applied to organisations

The dialogue is centred around the open question: how important is teleological thinking for organisational leadership and work?

John Dobbin

I help organisations become more adaptive, to help them survive and thrive in volatile and complex conditions and equip them to better face difficult and uncertain challenges.

In a career spanning 30 years, I have amassed considerable knowledge and experience leading digital transformation and Agile programs for large media, telecommunications, retail, government and finance entities in APAC and EMEA.

My current work is focussed on helping organisations significantly improve their performance through the implementation of Agile and Lean techniques, designing adaptive organisational structures, and through teaching Agile and Adaptive Systems theory.

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