Structure is the deepest variable in organizational life. Most everything else here points back to it.
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.
Standardizing timing changes everything. Scheduling and resourcing used to be a complete mess at Undercurrent. Individuals and teams would be double- and triple-booked some weeks, while their colleagues had nothing to do. Building a team required hours of concerted effort: Who works well together? What’s the right team for
Basic premise: because technology (and other factors), firms were able to flatten, putting more managers under the direct control of a senior leader.
For every dollar spent on hardware, companies need to spend nine dollars in software, training, and business process redesign. (I think that's way low.)
Handelsbanken; Cross-subsidy; Regulatory capture; The origins of Venmo; Goldman Sachs.
Expensive communications loops; Edgerati; Leaders are awesome; The purpose of Gawker; Apple's operational effectiveness.
Laws for spacecraft design; Competing with Excel; The original iPhone prototype; Build boring features; Your app is making me fat; Rants on the future of interaction design; Why publishers hate iOS7; Big things start as toys
This development tool is designed to give strategists clarity into their path forward, help them define and deepen strengths, and give managers a way to guide their directs.
From the chronicles of “Easier Said Than Done, Airline Edition”: five lessons on innovation and the future of organizing.
Looking at connectedness is interesting. For a post on Undercurrent’s Theory blog, I’m looking at the emailing habits of colleagues as a proxy for the connectedness between people. Every pixel in line width represents 100 emails sent/received between two people. Darker nodes represent individuals that have been
High-quality strategies in ecosystems offer four things: loud feedback; flexibility in acceptable outcomes; shared indicators for failure and success; recognized connection points.
To spare you the extreme displeasure of going to the Lockheed Martin site to find the operating principles behind the O.G. Skunkworks, I’ve pasted them below. The bolding is mine. 1. The Skunk Works manager must be delegated practically complete control of his program in all aspects. He
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