Digital demands a dynamic organisational approach

In large organisations, much of the early 20^th Century thinking of luminaries like Frederick Winslow Taylor (Principles of Scientific Management, 1911) and Henry Ford (Mass Production, in the 13^th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, 1926) remains firmly in place. Tens of thousands of people locked in two-dimensional, hierarchical structures represented in cherished ‘box and wire’ organograms; every role with a box and everyone confined to the box they are assigned to.

These structures are neat and tidy. They give the appearance that everything is under control and enable clear delegation of authority. Importantly, they make senior leaders feel very important, clearly depicting their span of control and the enormous number of people who report to them. They encourage the funneling of carefully contrived communication, up and down this corporate catacomb.

You may have noticed a few problems with such structures. They don’t reflect how the world works, how people like to work with each other, or how customers like to interact with the organisations who serve them. They are fixed rather than flexible; changed only through episodic upheavals that distract from serving customers and destroy employee morale during the long, dark periods in which restructures are ‘rolled out’.

Yet 100 years on, the box and wire organogram remains a ubiquitous feature of ‘modern’ management. As you might guess, I’m not a fan. You might say I am disobedient, anti-disciplinary or perhaps a un-control freak. I see an urgent need for us to re-imagine organisation structures that can easily adapt to change, improve our ability to listen to stakeholders and enable collaboration with the broader ecosystem of partners and platforms our businesses are built on.

Our recent CGI Global 1000 report confirmed that 34% of senior executives we interviewed across the world see the need for restructuring of industry business models and 50% agreed the need to collaborate internally and partner/acquire externally are key business priorities.

We have seen many high profile attempts to pioneer more dynamic, organic structures in the corporate world. The first I recall being Ricardo Semler’s inspiring work at Semco, documented in his 1993 book Maverick . Over the past decade, corporate newcomers like Zappos, Atlassian and Spotify have tried more holarchical models, complete with a new lexicon (such as Squads, Chapters, Tribes and Guilds), that defy being depicted in neat and tidy organograms and in some cases, leave managers out altogether.

I am convinced there are promising elements of these models, but I am not suggesting that large existing organisations attempt to copy them. We can simply agree they show alternate organisational models are possible.

Here are some thoughts that may inspire your own organisational redesign:

• OKRs:

  More than structures, the way we measure and manage performance and productivity must be redesigned too. My favourite approach here is Google ‘OKRs’, originally implemented at Intel. You set an ambitious "Objective", then define a number of quantifiable "Key Results" that will help you achieve it. Google does this on an annual basis, broken down each quarter and evolving the OKRs as the year unfolds. The OKRs are nested from the strategic level to the team and personal levels, working together to keep the company on track. So while you might not observe a typical organisational hierarchy at Google, you can clearly see a structure for fulfilment of its business objectives.

• Dances with Wolves:

  The natural world offers ideas too. For example, research suggests a safe haven could be out of reach for up to 40% of the Western Hemisphere’s mammals, as they simply won’t move swiftly enough to outpace climate change. However, studies show that wolves and coyotes, used to wandering vast tracts of wilderness in search of food, water and safe shelter, are some of the few species that can keep pace with a changing climate and the relocation of natural resources. Are you willing to roam outside your traditional areas of skill and experience, perhaps for long and difficult periods of self-doubt and corporate danger, to find new ways to exploit your capability? Or are you more likely to stick with your existing role until it becomes extinct?

• Complex adaptive systems:

  A contemporary field of research into a wide range of evolving, complex systems that have four key attributes of self-organisation, non-linearity, dynamic order/chaos and emergence. This is a more realistic description of the world we live in, and the markets in which we operate, than the archaic economic ideal of supply and demand equilibrium. Imagine your business as a value network, where each role is in creative tension with every other role, requiring collaboration to simultaneously optimise the performance of each node and the whole. This model also demands that we stand for each other’s success, since if one node in the value network fails, we all fail.

• Morphology:

  One organisation metaphor is an amazing sculpture called ‘Diffusion Choir’ in the atrium of a realty company office in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It’s a kinetic sculpture made up of hundreds of small, origami forms that shrink/expand, appear/disappear, to produce large-scale shapes that are simultaneously spellbinding and transient. Just imagine if your organisation could dynamically respond to market forces, morphing quickly to mobilise what’s needed to serve a customer and getting everything else out of the way.

People perform best when they are vision-inspired by a big "why" rather than remote-controlled around the "how and what" we must do. Whatever organisation structure you choose, it must create an environment for building trust, giving people space and freedom to think and act, reinforcing fundamental values of integrity and respect, and acknowledging the value of both learning and delivering results. It needs to encourage more dancing with wolves than simply doing what you’re told.