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“ Frankly astounding ”
Hock began developing his theory in the late-1960s . He had been charged with improving interbank connections following Bank of America ’ s move to license its credit card network to other lenders .
He discovered huge fraud losses and other inefficiencies resulting from each bank having negotiated its own contract , and clashing dispute resolution systems . There was chaos , but not of the ordered kind .
Hock pursued a strategy whereby each bank retained its independence while also agreeing to put in place operating procedures based on a common set of principles .
“ The fact that Dee Hock was able to bring together over 200 independent competing institutions to sign up , not only to a set of principles but also to the future evolution [ of what would become the Visa payments network ], was frankly astounding ,” Robinson says .
“ Complex rules and regulations give rise to simple and stupid behaviour .” The chaordic model can now be seen at play in some of the world ’ s most successful organisations . Robinson cites Amazon , a company Baillie Gifford first invested in back in 2004 . He points towards its ‘ two-pizza rule ’: Jeff Bezos ’ call for project teams to be limited in size to the number of people that can be fed by a pair of large pizzas . Each team manager still needs to observe the company ’ s Leadership Principles . But they are then given a high degree of autonomy to deliver , without the need to waste time and effort communicating their choices to a wider group . “[ It ] has enabled Amazon to maintain its pace of innovation and stay nimble , even at the huge scale it ’ s at today ,” says Robinson . “ Amazon talks about the difference between speed and velocity ,” he explains . “ You can have lots of speed , but it isn ’ t productive because there ’ s no direction . Velocity is about both speed and direction .” Robinson says the cloud communications platform Twilio ,
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