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.
Org Design
The core topic of this site: how organizations are put together, why it matters, and what to do when it stops working.
23 posts
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
Organizing Even Over Org Design
A lot of what we do these days at Undercurrent falls under the “Organizational Design” banner. But that banner falls short by failing to align with one of my most strongly held beliefs: that nobody can design an organization that’s good enough, that fulfills on enough of our success
Designing for Autonomy
Purposeful autonomy has been, and always will be, the main goal of organizing.
Four Holacracy Misses
Four things to reconsider about Holacracy: confusing word choices, a legalistic constitution; heavy dogma; a closed-source codebase.
Four Holacracy Keepers
Four key things to keep from years practicing Holacracy: Rule of Law; Continuous Participatory Reorganization; Structured Decisions; Defined Output Formats.
Principles for Pattern Implementation
The following seven principles are from a book called A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander et al., and they describe the method by which builders should implement the “patterns” laid out in subsequent chapters of the book. The patterns used by the book are essentially design guidelines, and they range