Nowadays, the “sandbox” metaphor is frequently used when talking about security and trust where the sandbox restrictions provide strict limitations on what resources the can be used for what. This same metaphor I see applied to organizations. Essentially, people that act only within the sandbox, much as children are allowed to make anything they want to within the confined limits of a real sandbox. The boundaries of the sandbox provides security to the outside world – what happens within the sanbox has little to no impact to the outside world – as well as to the sandbox itselft – what happens outside the sandbox has limited impact on the inside world.
Have you ever worked in a Sandbox organization? Let me illustrate what I mean. In a Sandbox organization, people are empowered to get things done, as long as they stay within the borders of their 'sandbox' (area of responsibilities). These same people – and even more their managers – guard the sandbox boundaries for interference from “outsiders”. In these organizations, business processes are chains of sandboxes. Each sandbox takes care of internal optimization which works well ... at least for that sandbox. But the overall effectiveness of the process chain offers "room for improvement".
Roots of Sandboxing:
Sandbox organizations emerge through - fast - organizational “growth” flavored with spices of "change" and “heroism”. These organizations typically do not take the time to "refactor" which again is catalysed by growth, change and heroism leading to a next level of Sandboxing eventually leading to a state of imobilism.
When it comes to growth and change, these are factors that are required throughout the whole lifecycle of an organization. The heroism factor, what people typically call a "cowboy mentality" works fine in start-up organizations that need to provide results in a limited time frame and with limited resources. To state it more bluntly, in these start-ups, going the "heroism" way is a matter of survival. But once an organization has passed this stage, it needs to apply a more long term strategy, also for the development of the internal organization. What worked fine yesterday, is maybe not what is working today, and is probably not what you need tomorrow.
The reason I stress on this “heroism” factor is because it’s the factor that sneaks in – like the Trojan horse – and settles down in terms of legacy achievements.
Effect of Sandboxing on corporate culture:
Getting "involved" in someone else's sandbox is "not appriciated". This leads to a reaction of protectionism that after some time gets embedded into the corporate culture. People defend the borders of their sandbox as if it were a matter of life or dead. People who act outside the sandbox are "they", people in the sandbox are "we". "They" are losers until the day they get transferred to our sandbox, than they become "experts". Managers, in charge of a sandbox, in many cases stimulate this and turn the optimization of their sandbox in to a top priority.
Tearing down the Sandbox culture:
Corporate leaders who become aware of the fact that their organization has become sandboxed, typically start by reducing the number of sandboxes. Departments get merged and as people become part of a same sandbox - after the transition period - their way of working together improves and a new suboptimal process link emerges. Until the new sandboxes have become legacy and the problem starts all over again.
Removing all the sandbox bounderies is not feasible and even if it would be feasible, it would lead to chaos. The problem is not the organizational structure (as we know by now, the "ideal" organization structure does not exist). Departments will always become "sandboxed" as long as we do not tackle the sandbox thinking between the ears of management. In most organizations, this sandbox thinking is stimulated through incentive programs that focus on the suboptimal instead of on the end-to-end process performance.
Dealing with the Sandbox culture takes courage and the more “heroism” that was required to build the organization, the more courage it will take to refactor it.
End-To-End process thinking:
What is causing the sandbox thinking is the fact that people are not able to or even refuse to reflect on the big picture and the effect their activities have on this big picture. Literaly: “thinking out of the box”. Senior management needs to become aware of this and of the negative effect lack of it has on the overall performance of the company.
Casting:
Casting is about "The right man/woman on the right place". In the context of sandboxing, senior management needs to be aware of doing effective casting. Giving a "sandbox" manager a bigger "sandbox" is not going to make him and "end-to-end process" manager. It will ease the pain for some time, but the root cause has not been removed. He/she will again run into the borders of the new sandbox. When he/she finally becomes CEO of your company (that's the biggest sandbox you can offer), you'll find out that he runs it as a sandbox, refusing to see that your company is also "only a link" in a bigger end-to-end process. The longer you wait to deal with the real root causes, the harder and more painfull it'll get. Soft doctors make stinking wounds.
