There are so many organization and management fads out there that you can virtually drown in a sea of verbiage, or even get a case of mild indigestion from overdosing on slogans.

The goal of this post is to provide 5 organizational principles which apply to most types of organizations and cut through all the fashion-based repackaging of the basics.

1. You cannot define away complexity. If your organization is complex, as most organizations are, the complexity will not disappear by only defining roles, responsibilities and processes. Definitions help, but only up to point.
2. Distance breeds mistrust. One can use Whatsapp, Snap chat, Skype or the most sophisticated of tools. But distance breeds anxiety, lack of trust and deep control based issues. Mistrust occurs at close range as well, but it always appears in a fiercer form when you factor in distance.
3. Staffing is strategic. Bad hires cause phenomenal pain which cannot be mitigated by coaching, management development or change management plans.
4. Business processes do not replace common sense.
5. Over reliance on IT systems dumbs. The dumbness does not appear immediately, but develops over time. If one does not deal with this dumbing, you end up with great IT systems and a bunch of stupid behaviours, like no accountability, and 120 emails on every issue.