Linking
The best-known forms of linking in organisations are organisational charts. They regulate who talks to whom in which way (directing or reporting), or who does what. There are countless more processes of linking. These have an innate tendency to grow (commonly called bureaucratic structures). Organisations are prone to further, new and extensive branching of connections for controlling, planning and yearly goals, statutes, contracts, resource allocations etc..
But here, too, the paradox rules. The more bureaucracy, the more informal pathways start to develop, and the harder it becomes to harmonise the interim goals with the main goal. The more they are decoupled, where possible ‘under the radar’, the more employees spend their time, when in decision-making meetings, not in dialogue, but by working on their calculator, and the more important it becomes, at some time, to create autonomous areas for innovation and development.
Link the decoupled, or decouple what is linked? From the point of view of the guiding process ‘Networking’ this is a fundamental management task, for which one can find no recipe and no time-consistent correctness.