The Ambidextrous Organisation
Manage the present and design the future
The most interesting part of spending a couple of days at the Lean Startup Summit in London, is that the majority of the content it is applicable and come from startups, its main focus was towards big and traditional organisations. Those companies that are indeed very good at what they do, what that encounter themselves struggling with innovation and the possibility of imminent disruption.
Basically, almost any organisation that we know and that is not one of the usual suspects normally cited as example, such as Amazon, Facebook and even GE.
That’s why Alex Osterwalder’s (Creator of the Business Canvas and co-founder of Strategyzer) concept of a new organisational chart and hierarchy, was not only interesting and refreshing, it made sense. He called it the “Ambidextrous Organisation”
What does it mean?
First things first, what are big companies good at? Execution. They are good at repetitive processes that they have perfected over the years, reducing risk and uncertainty, while generating revenue. The present.
On the other hand, what are startups good at? Idea generation, research, testing and validation of assumption that might or might not, lead to a new and better way to do things; which also means risk and extreme uncertainty. The future.
Another way to put it would be, companies struggle with innovation, startups struggle with scale.
But, what if you could have both? What if you could have the best of both worlds, coexisting under the same roof? The Ambidextrous Organisation.
In theory sounds beautiful, in practice requires a lot of work (but is not impossible), mostly because of the way companies are structured and how differently startups operate, additionally to this, are the fundamental differences in roles, skills and mindset that these two require to thrive. Not meaning that one is better than the other, just that they are not compatible by nature.
What if you if could reshape your company in a way that will allow innovators bring ideas to live, without compromising your existent model?
That’s Osterwalder’s proposal, basically dividing a company in two, in a way where one side takes care of current businesses and revenue, and the second looks into the future searching for new growth engines.
