The Physics Behind Organizational Management

This comes with due apologies to Sir Issac Newton and all the other great sages before, during and/or after.

Everyone talks about the Chemistry within organizations and people. This post doesn't. If still not convinced, please read the title of the post again or as many times as required for further proof.

My basic premise here is that if these laws can explain (most) things going on in the Universe, there may still be hope for figuring out why organizations do what they do. Everything else can quite possibly be attributed to some ‘universal constant’ or the other.

All Math equations, laws etc have been provided not just for context, but also with the express, and altruistic I might add, intention of improving the reader's skills with the <page-down> key or equivalent on the keyboard or equivalent.

Coulomb's law

The magnitude of the Electrostatics force of interaction between two point charges is directly proportional to the scalar multiplication of the magnitudes of charges and inversely proportional to the square of the distances between them.

A good rationale for collocation of teams. The further they are apart, the lesser the forces of interaction amongst team members. More parties anyone? 

Even in face-to-face situations, where two team members are engaged in a conversation that appears to be going nowhere, my hypothesis is that the same rule may be in play; they may both think that the other party may be on/from a different universe or at least a different planet, thus contributing to the distance factor...

In the spirit of full disclosure, I may need a 'real' physicist to tell me how stuff works in/on a different universe.

Coulomb's law

If the two charges have the same sign, the electrostatic force between them is repulsive; if they have different sign, the force between them is attractive.

You definitely want a mix of people on your team. (Yet) Another reason for managers to avoid the natural tendency to hire people whose thinking mirrors theirs. Every team needs folks who won’t shy away from a good old brawl…I mean… conflict to get the best out of each other. 

Potential Energy

Potential energy is the energy of an object or a system due to the position of the body or the arrangement of the particles of the system.

Just as a drawn bow (half of the famous bow-and-arrow duo) stores energy, so does a loose cannon in an organization. You never know where or what’s going to come out when released. 

Work and Potential Energy 

OK this one is a tad elaborate for the gnats reading this...read on to the blue lines below if in a rush.

What is the attention span of a gnat? The attention span of a gnat is about .210005 of a second. :)

The work of force acting on a moving body yields a difference in potential energy when the integration of the work is path independent. The scalar product of a force F and the velocity v of its point of application defines the power input to a system at an instant of time. Integration of this power over the trajectory of the point of application, d=x(t), defines the work input to the system by the force.

If the work for an applied force is independent of the path, then the work done by the force is evaluated at the start and end of the trajectory of the point of application. This means that there is a function U (x), called a "potential," that can be evaluated at the two points x(t₁) and x(t₂) to obtain the work over any trajectory between these two points. It is tradition to define this function with a negative sign so that positive work is a reduction in the potential, that is

In any organization, it takes collective effort to help realize the potential in people. 
People tend to rise as high as their potential allows them to, as long as the effort is made. The higher, one rises, the lesser (reduced potential) room for growth there is at the top.

A (maybe) ‘corollary’, the Peter Principle, says people tend to be promoted to the maximum level of their incompetence. 

The law of conservation of energy

It states that the total amount of energy in an isolated system remains constant over time. The total energy is said to be conserved over time. For an isolated system, this law means energy is localized and can change its location within the system, and it can change form within the system, for instance, chemical energy can become kinetic energy but it can be neither created nor destroyed.

This one is a bit easier to put into an organizational context. Your typical organization has an enormous amount of creative energy. Of course some of it is put to productive use, while the rest stays unrealized. This never goes away unless the organization is subjected to catastrophic circumstances. Things like bankruptcy court, when the energy gets diverted toward paying lawyers. In which case the money goes to the lawyer and the law (energy conservation) still prevails 

OK, on to some of Sir Newton’s pearls of wisdom. No not the teeth, never seen a picture of the Great One smiling.

First law: An object at rest remains at rest unless acted upon by a force. An object in motion remains in motion, and at a constant velocity, unless acted upon by a force. 

Next time the boss says, ‘Get going!’ you know Newton had the original Intellectual Property rights on this bright idea. 

Second law: The acceleration of a body is directly proportional to, and in the same direction as, the net force acting on the body, and inversely proportional to its mass. Thus, F = ma, where F is the net force acting on the object, m is the mass of the object and a is the acceleration of the object.

Organizational acceleration tends to be in the direction where Leaders want to take them.  Agreed. Also makes a case for ‘lean’ for organizations in a hurry to get somewhere. Next time the company announces reductions, you know where this came from!

Third law: When one body exerts a force on a second body, the second body simultaneously exerts a force equal in magnitude and opposite in direction to that of the first body.

Clearly explains that there can be no such thing as unilateral or unidirectional forces in an organization. Even a rock exerts force in the opposite direction when pressed. Throw a verbal barb at a subordinate and be ready for a reaction. Something for every Manager to remember! 

My apologies in advance, if this has done little or nothing to help enhance the reader's understanding of organizational management. There may be fuzzy logic or neural network theories in play, requiring further analysis.


References: Wikipedia for some of this material

-- Srivatsan Krishnan