Lately I have been watching the new Netflix show Narcos which is about Pablo Escobar and Colombia's Medellin Cartel. It is a great show so I will do my best not to include any spoilers. While at first glance it seems like Cartels can be unorganized and mindless, the show offers an inside look on the operations controlled by drug king pin Pablo Escobar in the 1970s and 1980s. I am only half way through the series so I still have a lot to learn, but it has really amazed me how smart these criminals could be, which explains why Escobar lasted as long as he did and why the Cartel was so powerful and remains in tact.
One of the structural assumptions that stood out to me as I was reading Bolman and Deal was "Troubles arise and performance suffers from structural deficits, remedied through problem solving and restructuring". While the Medellin Cartel has a different method of problem solving than most organizations, they managed to solve their problems pretty efficiently. They basically had no limits, which allowed them to get what they wanted almost all the time. Whether it be paying off corrupt government officials and police or killing somebody who gave information to the people hunting them down, their purpose was to retain balance in the organization.
One of Katzenbach and Smith's six characteristics of high quality teams reads "High performing teams develop the right mix of expertise". This is very evident in Narcos. As a vertically coordinated organization, the entire cartel is led by Escobar who, through authority and a mostly unspoken set of rules and policies, controls the work of his employees. He divides certain duties to certain people who specialize in that sector, who then divide further, similar to the structure of the graph we saw in class a couple weeks ago on the structure of University of Illinois staff. One man controls production of the drugs, one man routes shipments and works on smuggling into the United States, one plans assassinations, and so on, all under the commands of Escobar. This exemplifies the characteristic that teams have complementary skill sets because they all specialize in an area to help contribute to the cartel's mission.
The only characteristic of a high quality team that I found hard to relate to the Medellin Cartel in Narcos is "Members of high performing teams hold themselves collectively accountable". More times than not a mistake within the organization is credited to one person, who then undoubtedly receives punishment in the form of death. I do believe that in most cases Katzenbach and Smith are correct in considering that a distinguishing characteristic, but in this case I consider the cartel high quality even though that characteristic is not evident.
Lastly, Bolman and Deal has a very interesting quote in the Chapter 3 when focusing on Challenges of Global Organizations. It reads "No company can operate effectively on a global scale by centralizing all key decisions and then farming them out for implementation". The story of Pablo Escobar proves this theory to be true in the end considering the eventual death of Escobar in the 1990s and diminishing power of the Medellin Cartel.
I haven't watched the show and in this case worrying about a spoiler alert was probably not necessary. I doubt I will watch it in the future. But I have seen other shows about organized crime, notably The Godfather and sequels. That was fiction but was based on real life stories about organized crime in the U.S. So based on that, here are a few questions for you.
ReplyDeleteAre there "innocent mistakes" and do those get punished? Or are there acts of betrayal only? In the Godfather their were rival criminal organizations. They tried to recruit insiders from the Godfather's organization. Successful recruitment was an act of betrayal and when it was discovered the person would be killed. Innocent mistakes do happen in reality but are less likely to be depicted in the movies among the rank and file. Strategic mistakes by leadership are sometimes made. The godfather's adult son speaks at a meeting when he should have held his tongue. He is reprimanded by his father, but that is it, no additional punishment.
Another question for you is whether there were other bonds that held the group together and made it high functioning. For example, the U.S. gave a lot of military aid to the Columbian government as part of the War on Drugs. That sort of aid looks a lot like American imperialism (and maybe it was.) It would be natural for native Columbians to be antagonistic to such an effort. Their common antagonism could then serve as a bond. It would be interesting to consider what other things bound the group and in particular whether it was only violence and money or if other things mattered too.
I am sure that in real organized crime there are innocent mistakes, but from what I have seen from the show so far they have not included any. I am sure that innocent mistakes would still be taken very seriously, as someone like Escobar has no problem killing somebody based off their stupidity to get in trouble.
ReplyDeleteThe Medellin Cartel held a bond with Colombian officials, mostly because they were paying them large sums of money. It allowed for the organization to thrive because of the lack of hurdles in their way. Sometimes bribing would go further than the usual "look the other way" and turn into helping the cartel with something rather than letting things slide. I am sure there were some individual bonds that held members of the group together more than the violence and money did, but I get the impression that the whole cartel is bound together by money.