Culture

01 17 23 Structure Governance Culture

Why Does DARPA Work?

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

01 15 23 Roles Decision Making Culture

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

01 09 23 Meetings Culture

Shopify's Meeting Diet

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

01 06 23 Management Economics Culture

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.

01 04 23 Teams Culture Roles

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!

01 03 23 Brand Strategy Culture

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.

12 06 22 Roles Structure Culture

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.

01 14 22 Culture Meetings

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.

01 02 20 Structure Culture Transformation

Rethinking Dynamism

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

08 29 19 Culture Values

Onward!

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

02 21 19 Org Design Structure Culture

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.

11 27 18 Transformation Culture Structure

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 large hospitality company. We were sat in an innovation room that could have been plucked directly from the d.School – every single furnishing came from their catalog. Sitting at the