Podcast: Creativity thrives on explicit contracts
Simone Cicero and I sat down to talk networked organizations and experiences from the field
Org Design
The core topic of this site: how organizations are put together, why it matters, and what to do when it stops working.
37 posts
Five OD Things N° 15
An unreasonable amount of meetings; balconies; imaginary time savings; the office spreadsheet person; dinner, approximately 1905.
Reducing micro-teams at Uber
Uber's layoff announcement reveals a *very natural* structural problem: teams of one or two.
UPS reorganizes...around a network?
UPS thinks the trucks, aircraft and hubs should be managed as one system, even when the businesses using them have separate owners.
Make room for maintenance
Eskom fixed more of the grid by taking more of it offline.
Project OT: Okay, Transformation?
Suddenly everyone is thinking about how organizations will be designed in the future. Almost nobody seems to be thinking about how to get from here to there.
Divisions Are Companies in Waiting
Unilever made its businesses easier to run. It also made them easier to leave.
Target reallocates from center to edge
A new beat for Radar: "Did it work?" where we cover org changes a few quarters after they've been announced, and look at the numbers.
Openness drives profitability
A hot one from the "I'm right and you're wrong" beat (sorry for the clickbait headline, but please click
Two Camps
“Org design” has largely come to mean “execs work with consultants to restructure the firm and people get laid off.” What this essay presupposes is: maybe it doesn’t have to be that way?
Five OD Things N° 14
Code as proposal; Gusto deletes a surprising amount of product development; the coordination problem hiding inside AI productivity; social intelligence; systems thinking remembers its parents.
When Everyone Delayers at Once
Volkswagen gave a headhunter an unusual brief: find jobs, somewhere else, for 400 to 500 of its own managers. The headhunter turned it down. "I told them we cannot do it...we do not have 400 executive roles that need filling."