Globalization and the City: The Kind of Problem a City is…? #1 Organizational Alignment

In a rapid and continuous globalization of markets and fluxes of capitals, data, goods and cultures, we're witnessing old problems becoming bigger. #Cities are growing following rules and principles made for the past centuries but now are under our nose the implications of this insane business. Cities, considered in the past the solution to the problem of giving a functional place to organized society, in our times are often considered, in terms of impact on natural resources and contribution to #ClimateChange, the #RealProblem.
I think that in this particular moment not only are Cities the real problem but also that if we are able to define the real kind of problem they are we have a good chance to create new and efficient environmental friendly solutions.
The good news is that we have so much studies around in complementary research fields focused on how to better face globalization that can give us fresh ideas and new operational frameworks in particular comparing Cities and Enterprises.
In this case, according with Trevor and Varcoe, giving that I intend to substitute the term "Enterprise" with #City, "business environment" with #Globalization and "enterprise's purpose" with #Mission is interesting to consider that

• strategically aligned Cities have a much better chance to face today’s challenging globalization.

• City leaders must find their own distinctive approach to align their business strategies, organizational capabilities, valuable resources, and management systems to fulfill their mission.

• However, when confronted by the scale of their City alignment challenge, many leaders balk at the opportunity for positive but difficult change because of the unrelenting pressure for short-term results.

•  The penalty is unsustainable performance and an uncertain future.

The 2014 revision of the World Urbanization Prospects by United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, prospects a situation in which from 2007, the first time in history the global urban population exceeded the global rural population, the world population has remained predominantly urban. Three milestones are useful to track the phenomenon: in 1950 about 30% of world’s population lived in urban settlements; in 2014, 54 per cent of the world’s population was urban and by 2050 the urban population is expected to continue to grow to about 66 per cent of the world's entire population, reversing the global rural-urban population distribution of the mid-twentieth century.

From "World Urbanization Prospect 2014 - Highlights", figure 2

Globalization is running fast and the geography of this process puts in light the role of #Cities and more specifically the so called #GlobalCities (Sassen, 2001) where specialized financial and producer services make the globalized economy run.

This phenomenon is increasing principally because the activities of production, scattered on a global basis, are organized in complex production networks. These networks require financial and producer services to manage them and, on the contrary of of ICT gurus' previsions, are leading to spatial agglomerations that tend to cluster in a limited number of cities where complex services and highly specialized skills are available.

But what defines better these spatial and socio economical entities is that dynamics and processes that get territorialized are also strongly significative at a global level.
So, we can define #GlobalCities even those where the financial and production aspect is minimal respect the impetuous growth in population that for the most is constituted by poor people that lives at the margins. And wherever we take a look to the problems related with massive and fast urbanization we can see that quality of life and the human condition are the main concerns.

From another point of view Cities can be described as #ComplexAdaptiveSystems shaped by deep interconnected process from the local to the global level and vice versa. Now those systems are home for over 50% of the entire world population with a prospect of a growing future.

#ComplexAdaptiveSystems (Holland, 1996) is a way for describe urban systems as constituted by an internal and external environment connected with multiple #Interfaces (material and immaterial) throughout which flux of data and matter are exchanged.

Moreover, those systems are structured like collective and interconnected #ComplexNetworks constituted by nodes and relationships among them. The complexity of these networks is directly consequence of the number and nature of nodes and relationships. Single agents or groups of them involved into #ComplexAdaptiveSystems belong to different and interconnected #ComplexNetworks where they act with an individual behaviour that can be related to collective behaviours.

#ComplexNetworks are no the realm of chaos but of a so called #OrganizedComplexity (Weaver, 1958; Jacobs, 1961) and that's the trickiest aspect for a Planner because into this word combination the concept of organization is not only embedded but also the key and the major challenge. It's a challenge because scientific knowledge and practice approach of professionals involved in managing Cities struggle since each expert tend to focus on a single aspect with exclusion of the others since the inter-dependence of multiple causes and effects requires an attitude to work on interfaces instead of core problems. And this is not only scary but something to avoid for those professionals who retain to have the best knowledge in town. So, the answer is to design solutions that are worse than the problem before.

When we try to deal with big or even huge problems, as problem of #OrganizedComplexity are, experts should think and act in order to find simple solutions and not contribute to produce even more complexity.

When I have to explain to someone what a City really is, also in case of someone who's in charge to manage the city and who thinks to know it well, I really can't start talking about #OrganizedComplexity if I want to catch its deeply understanding.

So, I want to make it simple but not simpler and then, before to begin explaining the functioning of a City, I put on the table this simple question: what makes a City and an Enterprise so similar? Don't panic and take few seconds to answer …

Yes!

They are both complex organizations with an internal and an external environment; both have a general purpose, the so-called mission; both needs strategies deployed in the long, mid and short term capable to ensure the accomplishment of the mission.

But since the mission of Enterprises is ever to make money and we have a plethora of literature deeply focused on what to do in order to make more money, for Cities we can swim on an ocean of diverse ideas and point of view on what the mission of #City is without a clear baseline. But to be honest only in the first type of literature I often found papers that keep my attention and provide me what I call #TransVergentConcepts and the last I have encountered is what the authors call

#Alignment.

Trevor and Varcoe explain that "… strategies, organizational capabilities, resources, and management systems should all be arranged to support the enterprise’s purpose" and more in particular, that enterprise alignment is a feature of a winning organization based on efficiency and on the design of that type organization". For my purpose and referring to Trevor and Varcoe article, as I just stated in the premise, in the following I will compare and substitute the term Enterprise with City or Organization, business environment with globalization and enterprise's purpose with mission.

More in deep, when problems get more complex and the organization dimension has become wider what really matters is: " … the form of formalized hierarchies of performance accountability, a high division of labor, routinization of specialist tasks, and teamwork at the point of sale". And at the operational level they states that "It means winning through a tightly managed enterprise value chain that connects an enterprise’s purpose (what we do and why we do it) to its business strategy (what we are trying to win at to fulfill our purpose), organizational capability (what we need to be good at to win), resource architecture (what makes us good), and, finally, management systems (what delivers the winning performance we need). The enterprise value chain is only as strong as its weakest link".

And I come along with that concept of #Alignement because it's more simple to figure out.

Trevor and Varcoe suggest a series of questions that can help to evaluate how Aligned is our own organization and I think that's a real useful framework for City Leaders to be used in every single department.

So, if you want to cope with globalization and you are in charge of a City organization try to ask yourself:

what we do and why we do it?
This question is related to the enduring purpose, that is the #Mission of your organization. So, considering your own case is basic to define what's the mission of your City department and if it's going out of business tomorrow why would it matter in terms of consequences on the entire City management. What's more you have to be sure that this mission is clear enough to the Council, employees, partners and Citizens.

what we are trying to win at to fulfill our purpose?
This question is related to the #BusinessStrategy of your Department. Now that you have a sound and clear mission, you should plan and deploy a responsive strategy based on flexibility in order to keep advantage of future opportunities or tackle future threats. You should also measure the effectiveness of your strategy by observing the degree to which your Department strategy fulfills its mission. To do so you need clear descriptors and indicators. You should write down a clear statement of which product and services you are delivering to your "Customers", that is both Citizens and other Departments, and then define how to measure if they are consistent with your mission, if something is missing, and what to do in case of failing.

what we need to be good at to win?
This question is related to the #OrganizationalCapabilities of your Department. Now you are at a first critical control point because it's vital to understand if your Department is able to execute the strategy as efficiently as possible in order to accomplish the mission. In traditional business terms, it could be defined a problem of matching supply to demand as efficiently as possible. But given the fact that if you're running a core City Department, no matter the dimension of it, you should deeply take care about an agile and innovative behaviour on satisfying customers need.

what makes us good?
This question is related to the #ResourceArchitecture of your Department. That's a second critical control point because now you should understand on what you can count on, that is you should consider your own resources. Because "Strategically aligned enterprises are made capable by their organizational resources, including people, structures, cultures, and work processes, and by the degree to which they are configured to be strategically valuable". So it's time to ask yourself which type of skills, experience, and knowledge are required to perform you're Department's every day work and how your resources are close to that; what type of organizational structure should better empower formal and informal relationships, networks, and functional connections through which work in your Department is structured and how your structure is close to that.

what delivers the winning performance we need?
This question is related to the #ManagementSystems of your Department and is the third and last critical control point because now you should assess your management infrastructure. During this assessment, you should understand what management practices, systems, and technologies best fit your winning strategy for fulfilling your mission and how far is the reality of your Department from the optimal configuration. That is key also to define the appropriate measures to align the state of the art of your organization with what's needed to get success, both short and long term.

Easy? Not at all. But what I think is even more interesting in Trevor and Varcoe article is that they see some main reason why is more easy to encounter a misaligned organization then an aligned one. And according with my knowledge and experience I totally agree with that:

1) First of all, it seems that leaders are unaware of the risks of misalignment. In fact, many senior executives can't see Cities as connected and coherent value chains but merely a set boxes and wires of a static organization chart instead of responsive and agile customer focused units with a variable geometry structure.

2) Second, it seems also that nobody “owns” organizational alignment. That's because almost ever, neither single nor group of executives is directly and functionally responsible for overseeing the arrangement of the entire organization. So, individual leaders are more interested in optimize and protect their own processes lacking a real improvement across the entire organization or often making their own optimization a source of problems for other "internal customers";

3) Third, complexity makes organization alignment that much harder especially in a rapid globalizing environment where factors like number of inhabitants, variety of ever new issues related to old problems, pressure on public services and sprawl make complexity arise. The most complexity arise the greatest amount of leadership effort in organizational alignment is needed.

In conclusion, knowing how complex is an organization, and how well-equipped is the leadership team to beat the alignment challenge is key.

Trying to figure out how aligned is the whole organization should be a daily issue for City leaders in order to understand how to take and keep the good direction towards the expected accomplishment of the mission.

Strategically aligned Cities have a much better chance of winning in today’s challenging globalization. City leaders must find their own distinctive approach to align their business strategies, organizational capabilities, valuable resources, and management systems to fulfill their mission. 

However, when confronted by the scale of their City alignment challenge, many leaders balk at the opportunity for positive but difficult change because of the unrelenting pressure for short-term results. The penalty is unsustainable performance and an uncertain future.