Your Organization’s Real Problem Isn’t People—It’s Information
Does your workday feel like a constant battle against chaos? Missed deadlines, overloaded email inboxes and chat channels, and a calendar packed with back-to-back meetings are the hallmarks of modern work. We often feel that things are far more complex than they need to be, leading to burnout and frustration.
We tend to blame these issues on poor management, a lack of effort, or flawed communication. But what if these are just symptoms of a more fundamental problem? What if the real issue is a deep mismatch between the work we do and how our organization is designed to handle information?
A surprisingly clear and modern answer comes from a 1974 paper on organizational design by Jay R. Galbraith. His “information processing view” provides a powerful lens for understanding why organizations struggle. This post will distill the most impactful and counter-intuitive takeaways from his work to help you see your organization’s challenges in a new light.
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1. Your Biggest Challenge is “Uncertainty,” and It Creates Information Debt
Galbraith argues that the central problem of complex organizations is “uncertainty.” He defines it simply as the difference between the amount of information required to perform a task and the amount of information the organization already has. When a task is well understood and predictable, it can be perfectly pre-planned. But as uncertainty increases, the ability to pre-plan collapses. The need to acquire and process new information during execution skyrockets.
This constant need for new information leads to changes in schedules, resource allocations, and priorities, creating a cascade of communication demands. Galbraith’s core proposition is a powerful one:
A basic proposition is that the greater the uncertainty of the task, the greater the amount of information that has to be processed between decision makers during the execution of the task.
This reframing is profound. It shifts the problem from “people aren’t communicating enough” to “our system is not designed to handle the level of uncertainty we face.” The endless meetings and frantic messages aren’t a sign of personal failure; they are a predictable outcome of a design problem. In essence, your organization accrues an “information debt,” and the daily chaos is the interest payment.
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2. You Only Have Two Ways to Solve It: Reduce the Need for Information or Get Better at Processing It
According to Galbraith, every organization starts with basic coordination tools like rules, hierarchical referral, and goal setting. When the task’s uncertainty creates more exceptions than these simple tools can handle, the system overloads. At this point, the organization faces a critical strategic choice. There are only two fundamental paths an organization can take to regain control:
1. Reduce the amount of information that needs to be processed.
2. Increase the organization’s capacity to handle more information.
That’s it. This isn’t just a list; it’s the fundamental fork in the road in Galbraith’s model. Every other strategy discussed is simply a tool to execute one of these two meta-strategies. Every complex organizational design, from creating agile squads to implementing a matrix structure, is a variation of one of these two approaches.
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3. Counter-Intuitive Strategy #1: Add “Slack” to Reduce Information Needs
The first strategy for reducing the need for information processing is deeply counter-intuitive in our efficiency-obsessed culture: create “slack resources.”
In this context, slack isn’t about laziness; it’s a deliberate design choice. It means intentionally lowering performance targets to absorb uncertainty. This can take the form of extending deadlines, increasing budgets, or holding more inventory than is strictly necessary. How does this reduce the need for communication? If a project has a longer deadline or a team has a bigger budget, fewer unexpected problems and exceptions arise. When fewer exceptions occur, there is less need for frantic, multi-level coordination to re-plan work and re-allocate resources.
Slack acts as a buffer, preventing every small deviation from escalating into a crisis that consumes the hierarchy’s attention. It’s a conscious trade-off. This requires accepting costs that make efficiency experts nervous: higher inventory costs, longer customer lead times, and larger budgets that may not be fully utilized. You sacrifice some on-paper performance to dramatically reduce the hidden costs of communication overload and constant firefighting.
——————————————————————————–
4. Counter-Intuitive Strategy #2: Create Self-Contained Teams to Stop Needing to Ask
Galbraith’s second strategy for reducing information needs is to create self-contained tasks. This involves a fundamental shift in how work is grouped: moving away from functional departments (e.g., a single engineering department, a single marketing department) toward output-based groups (e.g., a “Product A” team that has its own dedicated engineers, marketers, and other necessary roles).
The “why” is simple but powerful. This design drastically reduces the amount of information that must flow between different parts of the organization. Because the team has most of the resources and expertise it needs to accomplish its task, it can make decisions internally without having to constantly consult, negotiate with, and wait for other departments. It breaks the dependencies that create information processing bottlenecks.
This autonomy comes at a price. As Galbraith notes, the organization loses the economies of scale and deep functional expertise that come from centralized departments. A company with three product teams might need three marketing specialists who are generalists, instead of one centralized team of highly specialized experts. The design choice is to sacrifice peak specialization for lower communication overhead.
This concept, articulated in 1974, is the direct ancestor of modern organizational trends like product-centric squads, autonomous teams, and divisional structures. These are not new inventions but time-tested solutions to the age-old problem of information overload.
——————————————————————————–
5. If You Can’t Reduce Information Needs, Build a Bigger Highway for It
If reducing the amount of information your organization needs to process isn’t feasible—perhaps because of high performance demands or the nature of the work—then the only other option is to increase your capacity to process it. This means building better, faster pathways for information to flow. Galbraith outlines two primary strategies for this.
• Investment in Vertical Information Systems: This strategy focuses on making the traditional hierarchy more efficient. It involves investing in systems that move information up and down the chain of command faster. This could mean increasing the frequency of planning cycles (from yearly to quarterly), formalizing the language used for reporting (such as with accounting systems), or investing in “man-machine combinations” to process data faster and allow for more frequent re-planning. It doesn’t change the structure, but it increases the volume and speed of information the structure can handle.
• Creation of Lateral Relations: This strategy is about building connections that allow information to bypass the hierarchy altogether. These relationships are created in an escalating order of cost, complexity, and power:
◦ Direct Contact between managers across departments.
◦ Liaison Roles to act as formal, specialized connectors between two interdependent departments.
◦ Task Forces to solve temporary problems involving multiple departments.
◦ Teams that are permanent fixtures for ongoing cross-functional coordination.
◦ Integrating Roles (like a Product Manager or Project Manager) who are formally tasked with coordinating work across functions.
◦ Matrix Organizations where dual reporting structures are formally established as the ultimate form of lateral coordination.
These strategies are all designed to achieve one goal: move decision-making to where the information actually exists, rather than forcing information to take the long, slow journey up the hierarchy and back down again.
Your Organization’s Real Problem Isn’t People—It’s Information
Does your workday feel like a constant battle against chaos? Missed deadlines, overloaded email inboxes and chat channels, and a calendar packed with back-to-back meetings are the hallmarks of modern work. We often feel that things are far more complex than they need to be, leading to burnout and frustration.
We tend to blame these issues on poor management, a lack of effort, or flawed communication. But what if these are just symptoms of a more fundamental problem? What if the real issue is a deep mismatch between the work we do and how our organization is designed to handle information?
A surprisingly clear and modern answer comes from a 1974 paper on organizational design by Jay R. Galbraith. His “information processing view” provides a powerful lens for understanding why organizations struggle. This post will distill the most impactful and counter-intuitive takeaways from his work to help you see your organization’s challenges in a new light.
——————————————————————————–
1. Your Biggest Challenge is “Uncertainty,” and It Creates Information Debt
Galbraith argues that the central problem of complex organizations is “uncertainty.” He defines it simply as the difference between the amount of information required to perform a task and the amount of information the organization already has. When a task is well understood and predictable, it can be perfectly pre-planned. But as uncertainty increases, the ability to pre-plan collapses. The need to acquire and process new information during execution skyrockets.
This constant need for new information leads to changes in schedules, resource allocations, and priorities, creating a cascade of communication demands. Galbraith’s core proposition is a powerful one:
A basic proposition is that the greater the uncertainty of the task, the greater the amount of information that has to be processed between decision makers during the execution of the task.
This reframing is profound. It shifts the problem from “people aren’t communicating enough” to “our system is not designed to handle the level of uncertainty we face.” The endless meetings and frantic messages aren’t a sign of personal failure; they are a predictable outcome of a design problem. In essence, your organization accrues an “information debt,” and the daily chaos is the interest payment.
——————————————————————————–
2. You Only Have Two Ways to Solve It: Reduce the Need for Information or Get Better at Processing It
According to Galbraith, every organization starts with basic coordination tools like rules, hierarchical referral, and goal setting. When the task’s uncertainty creates more exceptions than these simple tools can handle, the system overloads. At this point, the organization faces a critical strategic choice. There are only two fundamental paths an organization can take to regain control:
1. Reduce the amount of information that needs to be processed.
2. Increase the organization’s capacity to handle more information.
That’s it. This isn’t just a list; it’s the fundamental fork in the road in Galbraith’s model. Every other strategy discussed is simply a tool to execute one of these two meta-strategies. Every complex organizational design, from creating agile squads to implementing a matrix structure, is a variation of one of these two approaches.
——————————————————————————–
3. Counter-Intuitive Strategy #1: Add “Slack” to Reduce Information Needs
The first strategy for reducing the need for information processing is deeply counter-intuitive in our efficiency-obsessed culture: create “slack resources.”
In this context, slack isn’t about laziness; it’s a deliberate design choice. It means intentionally lowering performance targets to absorb uncertainty. This can take the form of extending deadlines, increasing budgets, or holding more inventory than is strictly necessary. How does this reduce the need for communication? If a project has a longer deadline or a team has a bigger budget, fewer unexpected problems and exceptions arise. When fewer exceptions occur, there is less need for frantic, multi-level coordination to re-plan work and re-allocate resources.
Slack acts as a buffer, preventing every small deviation from escalating into a crisis that consumes the hierarchy’s attention. It’s a conscious trade-off. This requires accepting costs that make efficiency experts nervous: higher inventory costs, longer customer lead times, and larger budgets that may not be fully utilized. You sacrifice some on-paper performance to dramatically reduce the hidden costs of communication overload and constant firefighting.
——————————————————————————–
4. Counter-Intuitive Strategy #2: Create Self-Contained Teams to Stop Needing to Ask
Galbraith’s second strategy for reducing information needs is to create self-contained tasks. This involves a fundamental shift in how work is grouped: moving away from functional departments (e.g., a single engineering department, a single marketing department) toward output-based groups (e.g., a “Product A” team that has its own dedicated engineers, marketers, and other necessary roles).
The “why” is simple but powerful. This design drastically reduces the amount of information that must flow between different parts of the organization. Because the team has most of the resources and expertise it needs to accomplish its task, it can make decisions internally without having to constantly consult, negotiate with, and wait for other departments. It breaks the dependencies that create information processing bottlenecks.
This autonomy comes at a price. As Galbraith notes, the organization loses the economies of scale and deep functional expertise that come from centralized departments. A company with three product teams might need three marketing specialists who are generalists, instead of one centralized team of highly specialized experts. The design choice is to sacrifice peak specialization for lower communication overhead.
This concept, articulated in 1974, is the direct ancestor of modern organizational trends like product-centric squads, autonomous teams, and divisional structures. These are not new inventions but time-tested solutions to the age-old problem of information overload.
——————————————————————————–
5. If You Can’t Reduce Information Needs, Build a Bigger Highway for It
If reducing the amount of information your organization needs to process isn’t feasible—perhaps because of high performance demands or the nature of the work—then the only other option is to increase your capacity to process it. This means building better, faster pathways for information to flow. Galbraith outlines two primary strategies for this.
• Investment in Vertical Information Systems: This strategy focuses on making the traditional hierarchy more efficient. It involves investing in systems that move information up and down the chain of command faster. This could mean increasing the frequency of planning cycles (from yearly to quarterly), formalizing the language used for reporting (such as with accounting systems), or investing in “man-machine combinations” to process data faster and allow for more frequent re-planning. It doesn’t change the structure, but it increases the volume and speed of information the structure can handle.
• Creation of Lateral Relations: This strategy is about building connections that allow information to bypass the hierarchy altogether. These relationships are created in an escalating order of cost, complexity, and power:
◦ Direct Contact between managers across departments.
◦ Liaison Roles to act as formal, specialized connectors between two interdependent departments.
◦ Task Forces to solve temporary problems involving multiple departments.
◦ Teams that are permanent fixtures for ongoing cross-functional coordination.
◦ Integrating Roles (like a Product Manager or Project Manager) who are formally tasked with coordinating work across functions.
◦ Matrix Organizations where dual reporting structures are formally established as the ultimate form of lateral coordination.
These strategies are all designed to achieve one goal: move decision-making to where the information actually exists, rather than forcing information to take the long, slow journey up the hierarchy and back down again.
——————————————————————————–
Conclusion: Are You Solving the Right Problem?
The constant stress of the modern workplace isn’t an inevitable reality. More often than not, it’s a symptom of a design flaw. As Galbraith showed decades ago, effective organizational design is about deliberately matching the company’s information processing capacity to the uncertainty of its work.
When you feel overwhelmed by meetings, messages, and misalignments, stop and look at the underlying system. The problem may not be the people, but the informational demands you’re placing on a structure that was never built to handle them.
Consider your organization’s biggest information bottleneck. Which of these strategies are you using by default, and which could you apply more deliberately? Are you balancing the trade-offs, or just reacting to the overload?
Conclusion: Are You Solving the Right Problem?
The constant stress of the modern workplace isn’t an inevitable reality. More often than not, it’s a symptom of a design flaw. As Galbraith showed decades ago, effective organizational design is about deliberately matching the company’s information processing capacity to the uncertainty of its work.
When you feel overwhelmed by meetings, messages, and misalignments, stop and look at the underlying system. The problem may not be the people, but the informational demands you’re placing on a structure that was never built to handle them.
Consider your organization’s biggest information bottleneck. Which of these strategies are you using by default, and which could you apply more deliberately? Are you balancing the trade-offs, or just reacting to the overload?
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