So what did I see with my telescope of time - what were my moons of Jupiter? What organization did I find that shows me the reality of what a human high performing organization would be like?
Like Galileo, I needed to get a better perspective than the obvious - so I have used time as my perspective maker. Jim Collins used up to 20 years to find the insights for Good to Great. I went back 2,500 years and applied much of his sorting criteria - what organization was outstanding for a very long time. I found one in particular that stands out on a pinnacle of excellence. I found another one a couple of hundred years in the past and one that exists today.
Before I name the most important exemplar of the high performing and human organization, I want to list its features so that we can see the DNA before we look at the surface.
OK here we go.
This core organization is about 5,000 people. It has inside of it, all the capability to do any work.
These core units were part of a larger organization of about 150,000. It had a junior but related organization making up another 150,000. The total network was about 300,000 people. There was a small secretariat that was responsible for the entire larger unit. This secretariat had one major focus, talent spotting and talent building. More on that a bit later.
The design for the core organization took about 400 years to reach peak. It evolved like a fishing boat evolves in a region: as a result of trial and error until the optimal design settled. After reaching optimum, this design remained relatively stable for nearly 400 years. Key elements of the design are still found in organizations that require peak performance today 1,500 years later suggesting that these design principles are natural and not invented.
Unlike our fantasy design today, this was not a CEO or head office dependent organization. It was designed to be brilliant with ordinary people who were put inside an extraordinary design for a society. It was the social design that made it so high performing.
Senior leadership was designed to be transient. The CEO of this 5,000 person core organization changed every 3- 5 years. He had a head office administrative staff of 6. The Staff Executives usually only stayed for 6 months!. The CEO usually had held one of the staff jobs earlier in their career. The CEO relied on 2 senior middle managers at head office for all the important operational decisions that he had to make. They had at least 40 years experience each and would be the best of the best in the larger organization of 150,000. Their posting lasted for one year.
So this was a 5,000 person organization with almost no head office! All the the head office jobs are temporary including the CEO's. No dependency on star CEO's here.
So how did this organization perform with such a low dependency on the CEO? When the CEO was brilliant, the organization routinely performed miracles. When the CEO was OK, the organization was usually brilliant. When the CEO was awful, the organization could fail.
But of course, the CEO was statistically at least OK and that was enough to be brilliant most of the time.
Not only does this organization have no dependency on a star CEO, it had no specialist departments. It had organizational units but none like we do. There were no functional barriers between units. All sub units were loaded with specialists. But the organization used these specialists to do almost any task in holistic and seamless manner.
So without a reliance on a Star CEO and without the organizational clarity of functional departments, how did this organization perform brilliantly as a matter of routine?
It was organized around social lines. It was organized to give humans the environment where they could find the best in themselves and in each other. It was designed to maximize the potential of every person and to bring this spirit to bear in their work.
It was a human organization.
The base organizational work unit has 80 people in it. Depending on the task of the time, these were sometimes doubled up into a work group with 160 people. When a big job had to be done, 6 of the base groups would be assembled into a work group of about 480 people. This 480 person grouping was ideal for complex work of all types. Such a group could also be separated from the main body by thousands of miles and by years and still hold its cohesion.
These work group sizes evolved over a development period of 400 years. Notice anything about them?
Underneath all of this work-based organization was the social organization. No one in this larger organization was an atomized individual. Everyone was embedded into a tight social unit. The design transcended kin or blood with Mateship. The highest order of friendship - even stronger than marriage.
You as one person joined for a 25 year contract. No jobs for life here. 25 years at full tilt but then in your 40's you were your own person.
You joined not alone but you joined with maybe 3,000 others of the same age. When you joined you would be about 20 years old. So everyone in the joining group were young and came from the same place. Many would have been related. Many would have been friends. Most knew something of the others. There was a bond even at the outset.
The remaining 2,000, making up the 5,000, were people who had joined 25 years previous. They would have chosen to sign up for another 25 years. Imagine the bond that held this group together? Imagine the trials, perils and achievement that this senior group had shared?
In addition to their work experience, they would also have had 25 years of training like no other group
has trained before or since. Training in this organziation is not some
idealized study group with exams. It is based on Doctrine. Doctrine is
the evolving embodiment of
hundreds of years of institutional memory of how best to do things. The test was not a paper but how well you could do the task.
This organization was an avid learner. If an opponent had a better way, it was
incorporated into doctrine and practised until no one had to think.
The learning and the practice never stopped.
This approach of endlessly practicing the practice, enabled the organization to do the impossible as a matter of routine with little need for management. They were like an NBA team in the playoffs all the time.
As a newbie, you would be assigned to a group of 8. With luck you would spend the entire 25 years with this group. Imagine how close this would make the group? Imagine what it must have felt like to be known this well. Our "Teams" are rather sad when compared to this.
The social organization was even tighter. It was custom to find a buddy in the 8 who would be closer to you than any other person in your life. You would swear an oath to defend each other to the death and you would be each others executors.
This then is the core social underpinning of the entire organization. Notice anything about the numbers? This is where the science enters. All these relationships are governed by the Magic Numbers of the human ideal.
All these unit numbers had evolved as a result of trial and error. They became doctrine, but their design was emergent. No consulting wheeze de jour here.
So given this well founded social design, how did the work get done. Was there leadership and if so where was it located? Is this a centralized or a decentralized design?
This organization is in reality a network of social building blocks of 1 - 2 - 8 - 80 - 160 - 480 - 5,000 - 150,000.
The hubs of this network where all the nodes intersect is in the 80 unit molecule. Every unit of 80 has a Hub Connector. Yes a span of control of 80! This works smoothly and routinely because of the social structure inside the 80 of 1 - 2 - 8. The world of the 8 is the "Trusted Space" that is designed into the organization.
At every level after that a Hub Connector is either in charge or has the major say operationally. The Hub Connector is the link at every point including the larger world of 150,000. The Hub Connector is not tied to the 5,000 person organization but serves inside the entire system.
None of these HC's go to "school" - there are no management classes - they are picked on attribute and experience and they are "schooled" in a ladder of experience that has up to 64 steps. As HC's they are part of a global network and they are rotated through as wide a range of experience as possible in many countries, many situations and many challenges. The system secretariat, evaluates talent all the time from a system perspective. In a wider social world where it is "who you know" that counts, no one advances in this role except by merit.
6 of these units are usually combined into a group of about 480 when complex work is required. In this unit are all the skills needed to do any job - and I mean any job. With less complex work, a frequent subunit is 2 of these core units making about 160 maximum. Note how the 160 fits into the Dunbar numbers.
Guessed yet?
Yes our Jupiter's Moons are the Roman Legions. This is not a machine - it is a massive wolf pack! The soldier with the transverse plume in the background is the Centurion Vorenus. Our example of the "Hub Connector. Did you know that Pullo and Vorenus actually did exist and were mentioned by Caesar?
Note how the filmmakers have got the legionaries to hold onto each other.
This intimacy and total confidence in each other was created by both a training regime that made war look easy and by this.
This is the Trusted Space of the Legion - the Conterburnium - an 8 man leather tent
It's not a 10 person tent. It is not a 6 or 4 person tent. It is an 8 person tent. In barracks and in forts, the "Gregales" had a room of the same dimensions. This was the Band of Brothers. Of course this feeling of brotherhood exists in all armies as this moving example by William Manchester shows. But no other army designed the relationship to last for more than 20 years!
This "Mateship" is the nuclear reactor of energy built into the legion. It transcends the training, which itself is remarkable. Conterburnales would often live as neighbours in retirement and marry off each others children who in turn would tend to join up in pater's legion.
Every army still uses many of ther unit numbers that the legions settled on. The section is usually 8-12 and falls quickly to 8 in action. The Company is usually 250 but falls to 150 in action. The battalion is usually 600plus but falls to 500 in action. Who talks about these unti numbers in consulting or in business school? No one. We ignore these unit numbers and never discuss morale or "cohesion" concepts vital in any military organization.
Every effective army also has their Centurions. We call them Sergeant Majors. They are leader/doer/coaches. They do not stand apart from the work or the risks of their men. They stand above in their experience and smart officers take advice from them - especially from the RSM or CSM who often will bunk up with the Colonel. Where are the Segeants, CSM's and RSM's in your organization?
Oh you say we are not an army. We don't fight. But in practice the Legions did not fight much either. Most of the time they were building the economic infrastructure of the Empire. No one has built like them before during or since.
Legions were not only wolf packs but they were the worlds greatest ever construction organization. They built the empire - roads, aqueducts, forts, towns. Much of what they built remains today - The Pont du Gard has no mortar and its gradient is perfection.
This was built by Agrippa, Augustus's boyhood friend and chief military adviser who won all his battles for him.
Here is a link to the ramp at Metzada that the Legio X built in weeks to storm the impregnable.
Every trunk road in Europe was built by the legions. Here is a link to a large scale map of Britain showing the extent of the achievement.
My favourite place to go when I need to be restored is to walk Hadrian's wall built by Legio's II, VI and XX.
This is a marker found in the wall from Legio II, the legion that came to Britain with a young commander, Vespasian. The wall has many of these markers and really human graffiti along the lines of Marcus and his gang built this bit.
Legions built, farmed, made building materials and nation built. Most major cities in Europe had their origin either as a legionary fort or as a retirement colony. No organization has left such a legacy.
400 years of excellence in all that they set out to do.
In my next post in this series I will take the lessons of the Legions and argue that they can and should be applied to all organizations that want to perform. I intend to put a stake in the gound as Galileo did. I intend to invalidate all the organizational dogma that has a grip on how we perceive organizational life today.
Any true model will be replicable. I will also offer you two further examples of the DNA of the Legion model so that we can be assured that it was not a one time fluke and that it can be used today. In my last post I will make the connection to what is happening with social media. My intuition tells me that we, like the Legions, are naturally evolving back to the optimum and that the emergent new organizational rules of the social web, match the DNA of the Legions.
Oh and yes what are my two other examples? They are the Frigates of the Nelsonic era of the Royal Navy and the modern Fire Brigade.
