New World of Work (Part 1)

By Michael Sepe, Materials Analyst

Despite the sprouting of inspired management practices among smaller firms that bred highly motivated employees, today’s companies are getting larger and performing worse than ever.

Twenty-five years ago Tom Wolfe wrote a brilliant article entitled, “The Tinkerings of Robert Noyce.” It chronicled the genesis and rise of the Silicon Valley phenomenon and focused in particular on the events that led to the founding and flourishing of Intel.

It was not a business article in the sense that we have come to understand business writing today. Instead, it examined the cultural ramifications of companies founded on the principles of unbridled passion for the product, a natural egalitarian approach to management structure, and a feverish devotion to speed and innovation. Wolfe described in colorful terms the cultural divide that existed between the East Coast establishment firms that originally funded and owned the emerging technologies that gave birth to the electronic age and the companies that actually developed these technologies and gave them life.

The new companies operated without the trappings of hierarchy and protocol that typified the business world that had come before. They were chaotic, exhilarating, and scary. Every person working for the new upstart firms was intimately connected to the goals and aspirations of the company. And the traditionally organized companies didn’t get it. Flush with vice presidents and a preoccupation with status and position, the established firms that initially bankrolled the technology endeavors could barely communicate with company leaders who didn’t have an executive dining room and made a point of sitting at battered wooden desks in the middle of the production area while giving their staff better ­accommodations.

Long before the business schools began to study the flat organization and the upside-down pyramid, these new companies and models already existed in a natural and unself-conscious form. They represented a new type of participatory management style where everyone was on the line for results in a way that naturally distributed accountability without the need for an organizational chart.