Have You Built a Tower of Babel?

To mess up the ambitious plans for construction of the Tower of Babel, God "confounded the language of all the Earth."(Genesis 11:5-8). In a bit of a mischevious intervention, God divided the people by getting them to speak different languages, where before they had spoken one. Without the ability to communicate, they were unable to coordinate their efforts. There was no possibility of getting the job done at all, let alone getting it done on time or under budget.

In the 1967 sci-fi short story "Babel II", available in War Games, Harry Crosby (aka Christopher Anvil) describes a world where the technology has gotten so complicated, where the degree of professional specialization has become so extensive, that none of the professionals can understand each other, and no-one understands completely how the technology works. Their attempts to build an Esmer-drive starship are doomed!

In your company, it's very likely that the people in purchasing have no idea what any of the stuff they're buying is used for, or how to tell a good flux capacitor from a bad one. Your people in operations probably have no idea what finance means when they talk about "Net changes in non-cash working capital items related to operations". As we divide our companies into departments, into specialists that speak different languages, we build a Tower of Babel where people are truly unable to understand each other.

As you examine the sequential steps that your organization takes to satisfy your customers, you'll see many handoffs from one department to another, from one language group to another. More often than not, the handoff is not well understood by either group. A complete order, for the sales department, means they got a deposit or purchase order from the customer. A complete order for the shop means all the line items are correct and all required materials are in stock. A complete order for shipping has no back orders and clear delivery instructions and address.

When we try to improve, it's common to work within a department, trying to make our work as efficient as possible. We aim to meet our departmental targets in the belief that this will achieve the company targets. We work to improve our individual departments in the belief that this will improve the organization. Paraphrasing a little more of "Babel II": All the departmental curves showed progress. It was natural to assume this meant company progress. But what about the connections between the departments, between their managers and between people generally. It would be possible to carry this specialization so far that nobody understands anyone in any other line of work, and then what will we have?

What we'll have is the typical modern company, where departments speak their own languages and work to improve within themselves, but the real flow of work and value never gets much better.