Week 2, 2019
Responsive Organizations: Challenge, Antidote, and Manifesto
Each week I share three ideas for how to make work better. And this week, those ideas serve to answer the question that capped off last week’s issue: “What do you call a Teal organization that is design-driven and works according to Agile principles?”
Concepts like Teal (see w42 2018), Strategic Design (see w51 2018), and Agile (see w52 2018) serve different purposes. While Teal is about engagement, Strategic Design and Agile most commonly serve to drive innovation and productivity, respectively.
But there are commonalities as well. And lots of them. So many, in fact, that one can’t help to think that there must be a common core of some sort — a universal truth that underpins and informs them all.
Which brings us to today’s topic:
1. The Challenge
VUCA is an acronym used to describe the environment in which decision making must increasingly take place. It stands for Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity — traits generally believed to be on the rise. First popularized by the US military in the late 1980s, the concept has since taken root within business as well, which explains how I first bumped into it. Most recently, this happened as I was working on w45 2018: Steven B. Johnson uses the concept in the introduction to Farsighted — How We Make the Decisions that Matter the Most to explain why a pendant for complex decision making is a future must-have. It’s a skill set needed not just to thrive but to survive in a VUCA world.
2. The Antidote
VUCA describes the environment in which today’s organizations find themselves and, indeed, will increasingly find themselves in the future. To succeed in this brave new world, organizations will have to shift their focus from efficiency of process to effectiveness of outcomes. They will have to become responsive. And to that end, they need to fundamentally change how they do what they do: Decision-making must be decentralized; employees must be empowered; and information must be allowed to flow freely throughout the organization. For more on this, see “The Responsive Organization” from Microsoft’s video series on the future of work:
3. The Manifesto
It was in light of the above that a few likeminded individuals started ResponsiveOrg — a network of “Responsive thinkers and practitioners” aiming to “develop a shared language…that promotes and enables a fundamental shift in our way of working and organizing”. To this end, they’ve written a Responsive Manifesto with principles meant to help organizations manage a number of VUCA-inspired tensions (see inset). Like its Agile counterpart, this manifesto does not provide a game plan or manual for how to make the shift. Instead, it provides a set of values meant to guide and direct that change. Where once we valued X, we should now optimize for Y:
The tools and techniques that organizations need to become responsive are readily available. They can be found in the literature on Teal, design-driven, and Agile organization and methods. And elsewhere, no doubt. But the information is distributed. And until not long ago, there didn’t exist a term to identify organizations that use them.
ResponsiveOrg wants to change all that. And the first step towards that goal is the introduction of the term “Responsive” into the organizational design lexicon. Because “Responsive” is what we should call a Teal organization that is design-driven and works according to Agile principles. At least for now. In the future, chances are they’ll be the only ones left standing.
Once that happens, we can just call then “organizations.”
That’s all for this week.
Until next time. Stay calm.
