Here is an excerpt from an article written by Huggy Rao and Robert I. Sutton for Talent Management magazine. They suggest that mastering the art of scaling a human organization requires learning when and how to shift gears from fast to slow ways of thinking. To read the complete article, check out all the resources, and sign up for a free subscription to the TM and/or Chief Learning Officer magazines published by MedfiaTec, please click here.

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Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman demonstrates that human beings are blessed and cursed with the ease and speed with which we can make judgments and take instant and largely mindless actions — “the automatic System 1” as he calls it.

Human organizations, with their ingrained histories, rules, practices, standard operating procedures and mindsets, are similar. When people who work together share the right skills and motivation, coordinated and often complex action can unfold rapidly and with few errors. When it comes to scaling, this happens when an organization is packed with people who embrace and act on a shared mindset.

But there is danger in relying on ingrained behaviors too early and too often, even though people and organizations are prone to do so. A study by Boston College professors Clifford Holderness and Jeffrey Pontiff examined the fate of 122,765 American prisoners of war captured during World War II. They examined whether the senior officers among the POWs replicated the military’s rigid hierarchy or moved to a flatter and more flexible organizational structure in the camps.

The results were striking: prisoners in the most hierarchical camps suffered a death rate about 20 percent higher than their counterparts in the least hierarchical camps. Traditional hierarchies are effective given the need for quick and coordinated action on the battlefield, but they are too rigid given the flexibility and individual judgment required in prison camps. Captured senior officers who automatically replicated and clung to the traditional military mindset created inferior organizational structures compared to those who realized that a different model was required and then acted on such beliefs.

The broader lesson is that mastering the art of scaling a human organization requires learning when and how to shift gears from fast to slow ways of thinking. As Kahneman suggests, slowing down and thinking about what you are doing and why — shifting to that laborious, reasoned, deliberative and conscious “System 2” thinking, as he calls it — is the best defense when “you are in a cognitive minefield” — when you don’t know enough, risks are high or you are stuck.

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Here is a direct link to the complete article.

Based on an excerpt of the new book Scaling Up Excellence: Getting to More Without Settling for Less by Stanford University professors Huggy Rao and Robert I. Sutton.

I highly regard two other books that do not receive the attention they so richly deserves: Gerald Edelman’s Bright Air, Brilliant Fire: On The Matter Of The Mind (1993) and Guy Claxton’s Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind: How Intelligence Increases When You Think Less (1999).