Organizations are such a large and steady feature of the landscape that imagining a fundamental shift in their nature is a bit mind-bending– sort of like seeing a mountain flex. But that didn’t stop Dave Gray, founder of XPLANE and SVP of strategy at consultancy the Dachis Group, from tackling the problem not too long ago on his blog Communication Nation. The long post is a compelling read and worth checking out in full, but the central notion is that we need to re-conceive of companies not as machines but as organically growing cities. Gray writes:

Historically, we have thought of companies as machines, and we have designed them like we design machines. A machine typically has the following characteristics:

1. It’s designed to be controlled by a driver or operator.
2. It needs to be maintained, and when it breaks down, you fix it.
3. A machine pretty much works in the same way for the life of the machine. Eventually, things change, or the machine wears out, and you need to build or buy a new machine.

But of course, redesigning a machine while it’s in operation is incredibly tricky and that’s exactly what today’s fast-moving marketplace demands. Plus, as organizations grow larger they often choke under the weight of their own bureaucracy. There’s a better way to conceive of a company, according to Gray:

It’s time to think about what companies really are, and to design with that in mind. Companies are not so much machines as complex, dynamic, growing systems…

What happens if we think of it less like a machine and more like an organism? Or even better, what if we compared the company with other large, complex human systems, like, for example, the city?… If we start to look at companies as complex systems instead of machines, we can start to design and manage them for productivity instead of continuously hovering on the edge of collapse.

What does city-inspired organizational design and management look like? Gray begins to answer this question by pointing to research carried out by Shell in the 1980s that identified long-lived companies. Shell found that many of them had an organic, city-like organization that was decentralized, tolerated the eccentric, and featured a strong, shared culture and a dedication to actively listening and being responsive. Referencing this research, Gray has practical suggestions as well as philosophical points to make

He urges bosses interested in social business design to give everyone in their organization a home — “a place where they can put, and see, their stuff: their projects, the links they want to get back to, the documents they have created, their role, qualifications, expertise and so on” — and find ways to encourage serendipity. Gray also stresses studying the culture you actually have before you start to try and change it, so you can nurture and bring out your organization’s inherent character – there’s no use trying to turn Omaha into Brooklyn. And as you progress, listen and adapt. He writes:

Think about how city streets evolve: one small step at a time. One retailer moves to a larger space; another goes out of business. One old building is torn down and replaced; another is rehabbed and turned into lofts. Pay attention to the culture, and watch how people react to the tools you provide. Are they using something in a different way than you expected? Find out why and see if you can enhance that. And what are they ignoring? If they’re not using something you expected them to use, go talk to them and see if you can figure out the reason.

But it’s not just Gray who is examining the implications of shifting from company as machine to company as city.  Yammer’s blog recently suggested another consequence of this shift, one that should sound familiar to regular GigaOM readers. The post’s suggestion: empowering employees far more than previously.

“Companies are slowly realizing that without the right employees and the right internal culture and environment, they will never be able to compete externally and deliver goods and services at the speed of today’s business,” says the post. “The massive opportunity lies in a deliberate, collaborative and respectful partnership between the Company, the Employee and the Customer. To really capture this opportunity, we need to abandon our fear and figure out how we can work with our employees to harness their passions and their sense of power.”

Look at the future of work from the employee’s perspective and you see a move towards empowerment. Or start from an organization-wide view and you come to the same conclusion. Either way new ways of managing look more like supervisory urban planning, husbanding a network of individual citizens, rather than wrench-wielding managers tinkering with systems with that cast workers in the role of cogs.

What do you think of Gray and Yammer’s vision of the organization of the future as more like a city of empowered citizens than a machine?

Image courtesy of Flickr user Mosman Council.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Millennials in the enterprise, part 1: strategies for supporting the new digital workforce
• Personal tools lead to practical business
• Working out loud: how work media and social cognition are altering business

Laminar Research has recently released two new versions of its X-Plane flight simulator for the iPhone and iPod touch; X-Plane Airliner and X-Plane Helicopter. Each can be purchased for $4.99 from the App Store — around half the price of the standard X-Plane game for iPhone.

X-Plane Background

X-Plane is an innovative application when compared to other flight simulators, as it uses a concept known as blade element theory. Rather than using lookup tables for determining the specific way an aircraft behaves, blade theory assigns independent values to every single element of an aircraft. This makes the software suitable for hardware such as the iPhone as it scales easily. Each download clocks in at under 10MB (incredibly small for a flight simulator).

X-Plane is capable of modeling complex aircraft designs easily, including helicopters, rockets, the Harrier Jump Jet, and the NASA Space Shuttle. There are three versions available for iPhone at present; the standard X-Plane release, X-Plane Airliner, and X-Plane Helicopter. This review will be focusing on the latter two versions which joined the line up in the last couple of days.

X-Plane Airliner Features

X-Plane Airliner lets you take control of four different jumbo jets. You can fly a Boeing 777, 747 or 787, or an Airbus A-380. Each of these aircraft have their differences and similarities, but the software does an excellent job of making it feel as though you really are in control of a powerful machine.

The controls for the Airliner edition take the form of a throttle, flaps, speed brakes and trim, and incorporating a full Electronic Flight Instrument System (EFIS). This full glass EFIS system, with airspeed, heading, altitude, vertical speed, Mach number, DME, and HSI is displayed in the same manner as real airliners.

While it is simple to get an aircraft off the ground, maneuvering it correctly and landing safely is somewhat more of a challenge. Tilting the iPhone controls the direction of the plane (banking left and right, or pushing the nose up and down).

You can fly between 98 airports spread over 60 x 180 miles of terrain, giving you plenty of scope for trying new areas and landing strips. The texture detail isn’t amazing, but for a 10MB download I was suitably impressed. It’s difficult to fault such an accurate flight simulator being ported to such a stripped down device.

X-Plane Helicopter Features

X-Plane Helicopter is, as the name suggests, a flight simulator for helicopters. You are able to control a lightweight Robinson R-22, the commercial Bell-206, the military Black Hawk, or the land and sea rescue ‘Sea King’. These encompass the majority of different styles of helicopter out there, providing a great range of machines to fly.

The flight-area centers around the Grand Canyon, giving you amazing views as you fly your across the various canyons and valleys. It’s a really visually appealing simulation and, according to Laminar, the software offers “the most challenging and realistic flight-models they have produced for iPhone so far.”

The controls for the helicopter version differ slightly, with the collective control being the only one to manually change. The throttle adjusts automatically, altering the engine power to maintain the desired rotor RPM as you increase the load on the rotor. As with the airliner version, tilting the iPhone controls the direction and pitch of the helicopter.

There’s no doubt that the helicopter edition offers a more challenging gameplay style, relying more on the iPhone tilt controls than the airliners. This arguably adds more depth and realism to the game and makes it my personal favorite of the two.

Future Possibilities

Laminar seem committed to improving and enhancing these miniature iPhone apps, stating:

As we update the graphics, flight, and interface technology, we will be periodically updating the various little ‘flavors’ of X-Plane for iPhone with that new technology. For example, we optimized the RAM and frame-rate for the airliner version, and those changes have been released in a standard X-Plane free-update as well. We may also import the advanced EFIS instrumentation from the airliner version to the regular version, and 2 more planes are planned for the regular version as well.

This horizontal system of innovation and change seems set to ensure that each of the small iPhone applications stay regularly updated with new features. Whichever you choose to purchase, you can be sure that you’ll benefit from the improvements to the other applications as well.

Comparable Apps

There are a number of other flight simulator applications for the iPhone which compete with X-Plane. Some examples of others to consider are:

• Armageddon Squadron – Fighter plane style missions
• Wings 2 – A flight simulator experience with slightly less realism than X-Plane
• Paper Airplane – Simple and cheesy, but fun

Please do let me know your thoughts on the new version of X-Plane. Do you feel that it provides enough entertainment for use on the iPhone, or would you prefer a flight application with more action and adventure?

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Who and what to watch in the new era of the living room
• CES 2012: a recap and analysis
• Mobile Q2: Smartphone growth surges; iPad’s rule continues