TATA INFOTECH OFFICES	Companies put up walls of all kinds, all the time. and by doing so, they restrict the movement of their people, the flow of information between them and the market, and ultimately all opportunities. Only by evolving at the speed of the connected economy can a company stay in business. If you hand control to the marketplace, then you'll be amazed at how quickly changes will be made. The organiser that your company needs most is the market. External change takes place exponentially, internal change takes place arithmetically. When a change happens outside, it triggers repeated cascades of economic changes among customers, suppliers, and competitors, each altering the others. When a change is made inside, the ripple effect is lessened by power struggles, politics, culture, status, and organisational inertia. The filters imposed by organisations are so strong that, even if external economics work their way in, it's too late. A gap has opened between where your organisation is and where your business needs to be. Into this gap pour all those who help organisations change. The more deeply you buy into whatever organisational theory your guru favours, the more thoroughly trapped you are likely to be. So forget about designing organisation. Internal transfer prices, for example, are as inadequate within for-profit corporations as they are between government-run and owned companies in regulated economics, and in those with central planning. Operate your business by the rules of the market, and you'll enjoy the same advantages that propelled market economics ahead of the planned economies of the world. Ensure that your internal organisations run by marketplace rules. Stretching the Mindset Freedom has many difficulties and democracy is not perfect, but we have never had to put up a wall to keep our people in, to prevent them from leaving us. John F. Kennedy, Berlin, 1963 …ON THE BORDERS Despite their competitive analyses, bidding processes, and industry associations, companies suffocate themselves with centrally planned budgets, network firewalls, and packaged communications to employees. The internet and all other electronic connections with outsiders reduce the costs of quickly finding, buying and getting what you need from people outside the organisation. Friction-free capitalism makes internal organisation obsolete. The market rules outside, power rules inside. Ironically, as Peter Drucker points out, "Computers have done a great deal of harm by making managers even more inwardly focused. Executives are so enchanted by the internal data the computer generates and that's all it generates so far, by and large they have neither the mind nor the time for the outside. Yet results are only on the outside." Many tried to expand their vision by building "extranets". They saw only downside risk to blurring the internal fixtures of administrative power with the chaos of efficient markets. Inter matters more than intra. The internet resolves the conflict, linking the smallest and largest players, and erasing the boundary between inside and outside. Doing business within your firm may even be riskier than doing business with the outside world. next page>>>