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The flatness of an organization is proportional to the required level of shared purpose.

In a hierarchical organization orders come from above. The purpose of the organization is known and kept at the top. This is desirable, because knowledge is power. It doesn’t matter if those ranking low in the hierarchy do not share the purpose, because the worker bees are there only to do what they’re told.

The less hierarchical, and the more flat an organization wants to be, the more important it is that everyone in the organization shares the purpose of the organization, its reason for existence, its direction and its goals. A shared purpose allows the organization to work without the burden of hierarchy, as knowledgeable workers are trusted and empowered to make the small daily decisions that are needed for the organization to run efficiently.

Shared purpose is rare. Without shared purpose a flattened organization could become busy and without direction, or stagnated and without motivation. But for sure the organization will become inefficient. The inefficiency and lack of focus will cause the organization to splinter, effectively shifting the power back to the management, but — this is important — while at the same time reducing organizational transparency. In a hierarchical organization you always know which way is up, and from where the orders are coming in. In a flattened and splintered organization visibility is clouded and the direction of orders is not clear. This allows for far more intricate and sinister power games and organizational politics.

I still believe the flattening of organizations is the future, but it requires a real increase in shared purpose and empowerment. To create more value from the organization, and to reduce hierarchy for real, a strong sense of purpose needs to be instilled in the organization first, before reducing hierarchy.

Inspired by Sig’s post, E 2.0 – not joining the debate, but….

Intestines, originally uploaded by Leonardo Aguiar.

First of all: I’m a fan of Google Wave. I see huge potential in it. But does Wave have a chance of replacing email?

My 50 cent guess would be no.

No, because historically, world-shifting technologies are technologies, not applications. Pubsubhubbub can change the world. Wave can’t. Email protocols changed the world, Eudora or Pine didn’t.

Google has been at the receiving end of the hype wave before: No matter how revolutionary the “Google phone”, the open sourced Anrdoid, was (or felt like) when it was first hinted at, it hasn’t changed the world.

It’s a case of revolutionary systems versus revolutionery ecosystems. A revolutionary app is exciting, but often daunting for those who start using it. A revolutionary ecosystem is exciting for those who see the revolution coming, and often feels natural for those who start using it.

Google Wave is presented in a way of: “look at all the cool things you can do with this: you can turn an IM conversation into a wiki, merge emails into it, invite more people to collaborate, create embedded event invites and mashup maps and give directions to everyone! whoa!” How exciting! But after the excitement of receiving the rare invite fades, I’m left thinking “now what”.

To get the Wave going (oh, the endless puns possible with this product…), Google needs more than a few million signups. They need more than a potentially world-shifting new paradigm. They need more than all the useful features one can think of. They need their own “throw a sheep” app.

Let me explain: Facebook didn’t blow up because it was a potential major force in the shift how people use the internet (and a bridge for the masses into the real-time internet, some would say). It didn’t blow up because it was useful, quite the contrary: Facebook blew up because you could throw your friends with sheep. And you could send your vampires to bite your friends. Facebook provided an irresistible call to action, which some found hilarious, and clicked through, some were dumbfounded, and clicked through, and some were annoyed, if not totally pissed off, and swore to never enter that evil hole that was Facebook. And after a week they clicked through to see what the fuck made all their sane friends start throwing virtual farm animals at each other. (Now the same friends have moved on to the more civilized activity of looking after the said virtual animals on their virtual farms. Oh well.)

Google Wave lacks this irresistible call to action. The hopeful in me wants to add: “for now”. As stated, I am a Google fanboy, and I have utmost faith in that they can and will make Wave a success (although they do have a few lukewarmly received products: think Knol, Notebook, even Checkout or, even Android). Also, Google operates on a scale that makes it impossible to estimate their clout in these things.

I’ll leave you with this Steve Jobs quote on the super secretive pre-launch Segway, on which he prophesied: cities will be built around it. It’s easy to be very excited about something that feels completely new. Yet it is very difficult for something completely new to live up to the hype and take over the world.