Everything

The End of Role Clarity

Role clarity is a symptom of relational poverty, and small team with real trust are going to out-deliver our absorptive capacity unless we do...something.

Good Design is Good Will

Paul Rand, org designer. I also especially like how the essay's title hints at *willfulness* and the last line points at an economic outcome. #nice

Nestlé Is Eating Itself (On Purpose)

Nestlé is exiting ice cream, spinning out water, and cutting 16,000 roles...and it can do all of that cleanly because of a global ERP project that started in 2000 and took more than a decade to roll out. Technology!

Five OD Things N° 13

Company as code; a city is not a computer; AI as cybernetic teammate; a field experiment rewires the org chart; when it starts feeling like a video game

Company as Code

Like a lot of things I write about, this is both a new and wild idea and something that's been around for a long time but hasn't really caught on. It'd be cooler if it did.

Survey on Hidden Patterns

Please participate in my survey on patterns and performance in organizations, at survey.hd-pt.com. It takes 5 minutes!

Design Feeling

Naoto Fukasawa designs objects that disappear into use. Most org design disappears into frameworks. What if we took feeling as seriously as thinking?

When It Starts Feeling Like a Video Game

The system goes on-line August 4th, 1997. Human decisions are removed from strategic defense. Skynet begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29th. In a panic, they try to pull the plug.

The New Five Forces

Porter's Five Forces are worth critiquing but we've got to adopt structures that actually allow organizations to adapt to big shocks.

A City Is Not a Computer: Other Urban Intelligences

Don't treat human systems (exclusively) as engineering problems.

INSEAD: AI Changes the Org Chart

It is an article of faith among technologists that artificial intelligence will make workers more productive. A new field experiment suggests it may do something more interesting: make them more social.

The Decision Bottleneck

More flattening, more information, not a ton of good practice around decision-making.

Structure Is Not Organization

Going back to the archives with the original attempt to join hard and soft elements of organization design. Also, I missed a day. Oops!

Divisions as Differentiators

Every (big-ish) box on your org chart should have a connection to your strategy. (Almost missed today due to bad wifi on my United Flight.)

The Unbundling of the CFO at Coke

Coca‑Cola is radically reshaping how it leads and innovates to accelerate digital transformation and better connect with consumers—shaking up top roles and creating an entirely new executive seat to unify tech and strategy.

Great Leaders are Great Followers

...an unpopular and uncomfortable truth for the already powerful. Also: is followership a _stage_ of development or truly a permanent practice? Probably the latter, but how do we reinforce that?

Anthropic’s AI constitution is an exercise in rule-of-law governance

I solemnly swear that this is not an international relations blog, nor is it an AI blog, but THINGS ARE HAPPENING

Enterprise AI is getting stuck on people

AI AI AI but also can we pour one out for Mark Carney's historic speech? Hoping saner impulses prevail and as an IR major I'm very bummed about all the Melian Dialogue stuff of late.

AI and Obsolescence: Anthropic Research

Anthropic's research into Claude Code may signal the end of ideas like "role clarity" and "opportunities for growth and development." Is that a good thing?

Introducing ccccharter

I built a living Team Charter tool because PowerPoint is where org design goes to die

The Hidden Patterns Gift Guide

Gifts for the systems thinker/tinker-er in your life. Or for yourself, if you fit that description!

Five OD Things N° 12

Selling personal super-intelligence; trust & safety heading for the exits; raw compute vs. the junk drawer; Wall Street loves shrinking payrolls; the first targets are email jobs

Five OD Things Nº 11

Krugman on enshittification; a mission-driven reset at Microsoft; how Y2K wasn't a thing because of massive multiplayer cooperation; Medium's reboot story; Figma's S-1

Super Performance

TL;DR: We lack a shared, rigorous way to assess an entire organization – most tools either miss key drivers or

Hidden Patterns is Open for Pre-Order

Hey there! I wrote a book. It's about fixing the about fixing the invisible stuff that makes work suck. I'd be honored if you gave it a read.

The Changemaker's Skills Maturity Matrix

This development tool is designed to give change-agents inside organizations clarity into their path forward, help them define and deepen strengths, and maybe give us some shared language about what we do.

Five Org Design Things N° 10

Pattern languages and org analysis; RTO is bad, even if offices are good; old maps made 3D; diverging values worldwide; exit interviews

Five Creativity Things

Challenges facing creativity; owning ideas from beginning to end; opinionated palettes; are we doing zines again?; randomness that didn’t fit in the first four categories

How to Combine Pace Layers, Org Design, and Strategy

4 ways to use Pace Layers in strategy and OD work: 🚀 As a career planning tool; 🎓 As a strategy tool; 🔬 As a diagnostic or sense-making tool; 🎨 As a design tool for value-adding layers.

Five Org Design Things N° 9

Organizational health essential for firm performance; Avinsa; the heat death of Google; team performance research; platform teams @ PepsiCo

How to Eliminate Slippery Decisions

Most of the time when I ask teams how they make decisions, I get a lot of ... silence. And then either: a) "nobody's ever asked me that"; or b) "I don't think we ever know when we are making a decision"; or c) "we make too many decisions to have a 'way' to make decisions."

How to Fix Your Prioritization Problem

Prioritization isn't a tool problem. Or an individual performance problem. It's a strategy problem, and not one that you can fix with a better slide deck. It's about good diagnosis, a clear guiding policy, and truly connected actions... *made memorable* and *made practical.*

How to Improve Team Performance

So you want to improve the performance of your team? Start with good team design. I started doing this method with clients and teams in 2013? 2014? and it’s still the undisputed champ.

Most Teams are Low Performing

Sometimes, it's hard to get teams and leaders to understand that *most teams* have a ton of performance upside. I think that stems from thinking that the average team has pretty middling performance: not great, but not terrible. The truth is that the average team is low-performing.

Repeatable Workshop Methods

My ~sorta default setup for a workshop these days is to run these two sessions back-to-back: Future Backwards (from Dave Snowden/Cynefin), to sort out key topics that the team needs to address, then World Café, to actually work on those topics.

Use DICE instead of RACI (Video)

Don't use a RACI. If you must use something like it, use DICE (Decides, Informs, Consults, Executes). It's easier to understand, and shines a brighter spotlight on problems.

10x Productivity with Team Structure

…and give your business a chance to complete projects that make a big difference in terms of growth.

Kotter v. Prosci v. Lippitt-Knoster

A quick look at two change management models that are good for consultants and bad for companies, and one good one that you should actually use.

Why Nothing Gets Done Around Here

Hundreds of thousands of hours are getting wasted on bad decision-rights. It’s got to stop. (Contains at least two good ways to fix this problem.)

The Matrix Design Canvas

A tool that helps managers and individual contributors design systems that get better performance out of dual-reporting roles.

Five Org Design Things N° 8

Turns out it's about learning, all the way down: How basic technologies shift strategy; Microsoft's org structure research; X-Teams; building Service Design capability; democracy at work

Netflix, Democracy, and ~Operational Excellence

Why Netflix's approach to complexity – going all the way back to 2001 – creates better results.

Five Org Design Things N° 7

Collaboration edition! Yumemi’s org design; Collaboration is dead; Elbows of data; How to make good documents; How to run good workshops

How Internal Capabilities Evolve

Platform teams are an alternative to matrix orgs and siloed, repetitive SBUs.

Activist Presentations & Corporate Structure

TLDR: Activist investors want lean SBUs, and they don't love that matrix

Undercurrent Story Forms

Five ways to structure your deck to be sure you're telling a story, not just writing action headlines and bullets powered by chatGPT.

Why Does DARPA Work?

A few standout practices: Opacity; Outsourcing for stronger internal networks; Deep technical reviews of ongoing programs.

Five Org Design Things N° 6

The 95th percentile isn’t that impressive; how DRIs worked at Apple; Effective leaders decide about deciding; Rooting out bias in decisions; AI and interest rates

Three Unexpected Practices for Better Productivity (Talk Deck/Video)

Back in 2018, I had the privilege of visiting with HR leaders at a big beer company to discuss my experiences with teaming inside large organizations.

The Founding Flaw of Matrix Organizing

Last year I was on a podcast with my friends at Zappi, and we got to talking about matrix orgs – there's an old bug inside the system, and it'll never go away.

Org Structure predicts Code Quality

Because of course it does. That said, here's some research you can show your boss.

Shopify's Meeting Diet

Shopify cancelled 76,500 hours of meetings. I think that's great.

Five Org Design Things N° 5

Excess management, Big-biz hiring stall, AI for organizing, Issues at Salesforce, and my thoughts on carve-outs 'n' central services.

The Great Managerial Transfer

The coming transfer from hierarchies of individuals to networks of teams, an exploration of executive comp, and a look back to the 1950s.

Disruption is on Decline

I think it's because of org structure and approval processes. Implications for marketing organizations abound.

The State of Teaming: Most are bad. Some are really, really good

Researchers examined +200k teams to see how performance is distributed. There's a LOT of poor-performing teams, and a lot more exceptional teams than expected!

Are.na's About Page

Are.na is a place to collect content and work on ideas in private or with others – and their About Page is as good as I've seen.

Skills Maturity Matrix + Organizational Pace Layers

People love Skills-Maturity Matrices, and with good reason – they help bring clarity to next steps and learning opportunities. We can make them better by applying Pace Layers to them. Here's how.

Centralization (For Marketers)

Centralization isn't a good thing or a bad thing. It's a pendulum that swings back and forth, and the key is to centralize and decentralize with intention. And to learn from what you've done.

Pace Layers for Organization

Pace Layers help visualize, distinguish, and discuss different kinds of work and teams within an organization. Here, I bring together a bunch of great thinking into a single construct. Enjoy!

Use DICE instead of RACI

RACI is vague, hard to use, and reinforces the "what the hell is happening here" status quo. DICE is specific, easy to use, and shines a bright light on dysfunction.

Scheduling at Black Glass

I adore shared scheduling as a tool for designing business. tl;dr At Black Glass we're synchronizing five "office closed" weeks and four mandatory (at a minimum!) weeks of PTO.

Software for Scaled Organizing

TL;DR: PowerPoint is a terrible tool for organization design, and we need a trusted alternative designed to match our values. And, sorry, leader-owned maps of reporting lines aren't the answer.

The Trouble With Hierarchy

Hierarchy lets leaders learn more; it pushes the org to learn about itself, not about customers; it creates busywork. A network of teams is the answer.

John Collison on Stripe's Org Design

Three takeaways: the power of small, coherent teams; speed as a quality of life metric; focusing on the value of the marginal team.

Less Strategy, More Structure

Explaining why big, transformative top-down projects never seem to work, and two simple recommendations to fix the glitch: less strategy; more structure.

Five Org Design Things N° 4

Tesla and vertical integration; hotels and the theory of the firm; Shipt dystopia; Range's newest raise; digital service.

Aragon Court & Decentralizing Justice

Decentralized justice systems... might be the future of corporate governance?

Rethinking Dynamism

The truth about most organizations, especially the big ones, is that they're structurally quite fast-moving and dynamic.

NBX GP of Cross 2019

One of my last CX races ever was probably my all-time favorite.

New Bike Day: Moots Psychlo-X

The PSX is every bit the hyper-specific cross machine that I’d hoped it would be. It's also much lighter than you'd think.

Onward!

I've left August to join R/GA. Some reasons why, along with a few thoughts on consulting.

Competitive Intensity, Business Models, and Distributed Authority

The correct answer to a question about the level of distributed authority doesn't just respond to the will of the people, or to some theoretical norm – it has to be in conversation with the market dynamics of the industry and the company's position in that market.

Moots Routt Build & Review

I'm normally skeptical of any superlative description of a bike frame, but yeah, Ti really does have a glide-y feel to it.

Assessing Performance in Responsive Orgs

When we surveyed a bunch of organizations, we found that effectiveness was correlated with leadership helping create networks within the org.

The Trouble With Innovation

Several years and one company ago, I found myself in a mid-project meeting with a group of clients from a

The Waning

When the light changes, bike racing gets...prettier, but sadder.

New Bike Day: Garneau Steeple

This is without a doubt the most fun bike I’ve ever owned.

Tested: Specialized Diverge Comp

I gave Specialized's Diverge Comp a test at Rasputitsa in Vermont. It's great!

A Blood-Red Garneau A1

My Garneau A1. It was *so* fast.

What I Learned at Camp

We went to Cycle Smart's Cyclocross Camp, and we learned some things

Cooperation & Discord

I'm going back and reading through my old Diplomacy & World Affairs texts. They're useful: >

Creating The Conditions

A corporate retreat day organized around three stories, three games, and three new practices.

Small Experiments With Radical Intent

Several months back, Erica and I were doing an introductory session with a Global Operations team inside of one of

Change Activism

“Change Activism” has been a handy if hard-to-use phrase to help me frame how I view change in an organizational

Peeling Carrots

As I was peeling carrots for soup last night (snow day!), I realized that I always do it the same

On Organizational Learning for YCN

Last year while in London helping Joe set up August's London office – and to help celebrate Joe'

Managing August’s Finances

Consulting is a simple business, with few logistical or financial challenges to master. Even so, we take operations pretttty seriously

Bonuses At August

Occasionally in the course of running our business, we will create excess profits. Excess? Profits? I thought we were a

Ownership & Symmetry

Why do founders behave so poorly? Why do they struggle to distribute authority? Why is it so hard for employees

August's Starter Governance Kernel

Governance is recorded as either Roles or Policies. All of it is changeable with data on a cycle-by-cycle cadence, at open, facilitated Governance Meetings. Policies apply to teams that create them, and to any sub-teams. Everything else is up to your best judgement.

Type 2 Organizations

Some decisions are consequential and irreversible or nearly irreversible — one-way doors — and these decisions must be made methodically, carefully, slowly,

August’s Specific Public Benefit

At the beginning, August had two key goals: making a significant contribution to human productivity growth; being the fuel for meaningful innovation.

The New Model for Scaling a Company

Three old technologies (rule of law, market forces, and transparency) can help us move toward seven universal performance criteria for organizations: purpose; fitness; vitality; fairness; power; connection; safety.

Amazon & Achievement

Using Amazon as a way to understand what works, what doesn’t, and what’s got to change.

The Main Objective: Legitimacy

When it comes to organizing humans, the only thing that matters is legitimacy.

Open Undercurrent

How self-organization helped a small consultancy grow revenue, profitability, and engagement – all at the same time.

The Organization Is Broken

Are organizations degrading the human experience, or are they poised to accelerate our progress toward dignity and achievement in the 21st century? Yes.

Clarity Hurts

Watch out for approaches that prioritize clarity above all else. Clarity can make you a cog in a machine, it can stunt your personal growth, and can pressure organizations to stick to the status quo.

Show Up Whole

I spent the better portion of P1 on employee reviews. At Undercurrent, we do official reviews every four months, with

1. True Purpose

10. Consent & Consensus

11. Pace Layers

12. Cooperation

13. Network of Teams

14. Distributed Management

15. Elections

16. Purpose, Customer, Platform

17. Platform Teams

18. Self-Managed Teams

19. Lean Teams

2. Rule of Law

20. Talent Marketplace

21. Guilds

22. Chapters

23. Domains, Assets & Standards

24. Upward Representation

25. Team Incentives

26. Do the Right Thing

27. Active Steering

28. Objectives & Key Results

29. Strategy Heuristic

3. Structural and Psychological Safety

30. Structured Decision-Making

31. Advice

32. Transparency

33. Relative Targets

34. Pull Updates

35. Demos

36. Metrics Review

37. Backlog Management

38. Conflict as a Resource

39. Conflict Resolution

4. Expanded Available Power

40. Colleague Letter of Understanding

41. Open Space Technology

42. Future Backward

43. Team Charter

44. Check In & Out

45. Only Important Notes

46. Iterative Shipping

47. Action Meeting

48. Rounds

49. Adaptive Agenda

5. Curiosity

50. Work in Public

51. Meeting Roles

52. Triage

53. Have One Conversation

54. Pairing

55. Kanban

56. Facilitation

57. Logbook

58. Emergent Leadership

59. Health Check

6. Do No Harm

60. Hack Day

61. Flow State Work

62. Experimentation

63. Team/Process as Product

64. Length Limit

65. Cadence

66. Retrospectives

67. Boundary Management

68. Process on the Wall

69. Fail Wall

7. Wholeness

70. No Leadership Offices

71. No Assigned Desks

72. Space for Work

73. Hiding Places

74. Whiteboards at Intersections

75. Movable Everything

8. Role-Soul Distinction

9. Dissolvability

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