Designing future organisations
Rigid paradigms don’t last long when everything around them is changing. We need to view our organisations as the living systems they are — which are impacted by their environment and continually reform themselves.
Lately I have been thinking about cars and organisations.
Amongst many other thoughts of course! My brain doesn’t stop.
Both are complex; one is pure machine — perhaps our purist expression of the machine-age, the other is a complex organism, but often managed as a machine! With cars, we are potentially seeing an inflection point with the switch over from old paradigms (gas powered, person driven, metal and welded, mechanical-centric, owned by a person, spaces dedicated to it, etc) to a new set of paradigms (electric, autonomous, new manufacturing techniques and computer-brain centric, owned by many).
This paradigm shift in cars and their production is obvious. It’s also part of a broader set of change that will impact on work, cities, manufacturing, mobility, health and more. It’s exciting and a lot is changing (hopefully). A major change in technology will enable us to reimagine a huge part of the environments and systems that surround and support us.
But not everything in a complex system changes at the same rate. What I have noticed is slightly slower to change is the way in which cars are compared or reviewed and the services that exist that support our ownership experience. Insurance companies, for example, are commonly holding onto old service models, and are therefore being challenged by the car-makers themselves.
How we design our regions and cities for the long term as the influence of new forms of mobility take shape is another example. This new breed of mobility needs a new breed of analysis, new business models and new ‘grand designs’. We can no longer look for horsepower, feature list, or even value for money in the old way.
The new paradigm requires us to review differently, reimagine how cars evolve over their model lifespan and account for broader ‘ecosystem influence’. For example, we will need to reimagine city curbs to support easy pick-up and not long term parking. Analysts estimate America will have 61 billion extra square feet of parking space made available, partly because autonomous vehichles will park consistently and closer together or not at all. Governments will also need to re-think the shape and size of freeways and their relative positioning to arterials as we fundamentally change ‘fluid dynamics’ due to smart convoys and self managing traffic.
Some things will stay the same though, as the technology difference across brands evens out, the competition will return focus to what differentiates them — be it emotional or rational.
We’re seeing great change brought about by new products and technology — but our organisational constructs are essentially staying the same.
Just like we need a new type of analysis and structures for electric and autonomous cars — we need a new type of model for imagining and wiring future organisations. Why? Because the nature of work is changing, the market is changing, skills fluidity is changing — yet we insist on just tweaking the design of our organisations or modifying parts and not re-imagining the whole. We need to rebuild from the ground up the way we design organisations.
This involves leveraging the principles of ecosystem design, living systems, platform and network dynamics and accepting a more complex and dynamic model. We need to view our organisations as the living systems they are — which are impacted by their environment and continually reform themselves.
Most organisational design approaches simplify the person to a complicated system of interacting parts or a transactional role and ignore the emergent relationship between the person, the work and the environment. On the other side of this, an organisation cannot be left to just evolve, unfold and adapt to the market. Both extremes ignore the nature of organisations.
We can’t apply 20th century models to 21st century organisations.
We continue to try and manage complexity the same way, reduce anxiety with meetings or process, finance projects in large chunks, move talent based on a rigid role and structure and attack problems by seeking approval.
The new organisations will have much less boundaries and be more fluid. They might not even be recognisable as the traditional ‘organisational entity’. They will more likely represent a network, community of tribes and a loose coupling of value(s). People may barter and trade their knowledge when they see value (this happens today amongst start-up communities and within coworking spaces). When a group of people see value in collaborating and swarming around a problem space, they can. They call on the resources available to them and experiment to find an opportunity. This is more likely to happen in diverse, coworking spaces or large campuses sponsored by the giants.
Space will open up, connections and boundaries will be reimagined, some things will be automated, new forms of ‘mobility’ will be supported.
Our great organisations will finally become organisms
This behaviour adopts some mimicry from how successful ecosystems (natural and unnatural) find sustainability. They adapt to their environment, developing unique abilities based on what is available, create symbiotic exchanges of value and information while also pursuing what sustains each element. This occurs in the environment that is most nurturing to their needs as they have evolved.
Currently, in many of our ‘previously designed’ organisations, we are constrained by a number of factors from exhibiting this behaviour. Information flows in a more linear manner and adaptability is reduced due to hierarchy, financing and resourcing models. The organisations that hold onto these paradigms too long will fade and die out eventually. The ones that adapt, adopt living systems elements and use resources in a more sustainable way will survive.
To achieve this, I believe we need to reimagine some fundamentals, such as;
- People need a defined role
- Management makes decisions
- We need large systems or spaces to be ‘large’
- People work for an organisation and have a ‘career’
- We own information or resources
- We make things and then market them
- ‘Horsepower’ matters
- We can create organisations and then restructure them as a complicated set of functions
- That we know what the hell we are doing! (with any certainty)
We are already seeing some of these paradigms and fundamentals questioned. There is a rise in the power of marketplaces, platforms, networks, hubs, and swarms — displacing some old mental models of organisations. We are also seeing the first major impacts in a shift in how people work and create ‘resources for their life’. Studying the impact of these early dynamics allows us to more fully appreciate how we need to reimagine future organisations and future work. Some of these changes are by brought about through choice, others are through necessity.
Look for where the (creative) energy is coming from
The phenomena of organisations (products, policy and procedures) emerge from the dynamics of organising (identity, information flows and relationships). These dynamic forces take place at a deeper level and represents the arenas where real change is made. Most of what we see and attempt to modify are traditionally at a ‘surface level’ and are visible as events or outputs.
Creating sustainable ‘living’ dynamic requires some insight into what is traditionally ‘unseen’ but may be observable through patterns of behaviour, stories and critical analysis of what can be seen on the surface.
Nurturing a more sustainable and living organisations requires a ‘design thinking ‘ and a ‘systems thinking’ approach. Critically, what makes a system a system — rather than just a collection of parts — is that the components are interconnected and interdependent. Their interconnectedness creates feedback loops, which change the behaviour of the system — it’s impossible to observe this emergence unless we consider the whole. It’s also impossible to design a single, perfect solution or action that we can take. What is required is a process of analysis or probing of the organisation to find the right leverage points and look for incremental change, a small nudge for the biggest effect.
There is no model to follow, but we can observe some successful ‘living systems’ to get an idea on where to start and direct our experiments.
For example, an organisation may choose to adopt some elements of the decentralised, adaptive, organic nature of ‘Innovation Hubs’ and ‘Creative Cities’ as its metaphor for transforming. Using these, or similar examples of successful systems, we can undertake a few activities that allow us to more fully visualise the dynamics at play, for example;
- Looking for where the energy is and how it flows, identify how people connect and create value as well as find comfort. Spending time slowing down and observing.
- Identifying patterns and broad principles that you can design from.
- Sending out some probes and scouts and identify what in your organisation is most averse to this way of working and interacting.
- Looking for opportunities to dampen some of the old and un-useful mental models and paradigms and experiment with new and more useful ones. This will take some courage (Instinct!)
- Documenting and recording your experience as you go — this will be useful when you need to convince some people to come on the journey (tapping into their ‘Purpose’).
Diagnose, connect, grow
With some insight and appropriate mental models, an important early step involves undertaking a form of diagnostics around various elements that may be part of an adaptive and sustainable organisational system. This is often an effective balance of personality/purpose, creativity/craft, instinct and relationships or ecosystem relevance. Understanding where there is imbalance in each element allows us to target specific actions and experiments.
From here, the next step involves synchronising the elements (so they aren’t working against each other), and wire in connections and feedback loops between them. Personality and brand needs to inform craft, instinctual action is best served when linked to feedback from relationships with customers or partners. Creating a common identity through shared significance should be followed by actions that are congruent with that identity — a test of creation, craft and instincts within the organisation.
Another activity at this point might involve observing how an organisation fights back against internal or external change in order to protect its identity or personality. Both of these examples of organisational dynamics are useful for our continual process of nurturing our new organisations. In complex systems, the approach usually involves doing something (a probe) and observing (sensing) the reaction to gain better insight into the dynamics at play and inform the next action (response). This process is how we build our roadmaps and use design to lead strategy.
Finally, mature organisations, who are able to observe and synchronise some of the elements outlined above, will be able to start to amplify each element and look for ways to continually adapt to current conditions and capability. Growing and amplifying can only sustainable occur when the elements are coherent (not necessarily equal) and connected.
In recent years, the discipline of design has been positioned as strategic within many organisations. We have seen greater attention and success, focused on advancing innovation in products, platforms and services. However, organisational design is a different type of design with different typology, participation and outcomes. We can’t be laser focused on a single task to achieve quality, in this complex system and its interplay, the outputs may be far from an ideal proposed design. Designing in the real world means dealing with the practical constraints of reality and trying to make refinements as outcomes emerge.
No one size fits all — just like no organism is exactly the same as another. Each of us have adapted and grown based on our own unique heritage and environments. Look at the new ecosystems and adapt — that’s the best and most certain advice I can offer.
Leigh Whittaker
Transformational Strategist / Experience Designer / Ambassador for seeing new possibilities / Explorer of the world
