The Main Objective: Legitimacy
When it comes to organizing humans, the only thing that matters is legitimacy.
Transformation
Large-scale organizational change: what it really takes, and why so much of what gets called "transformation" isn't transformational.
35 posts
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.
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
21 Rules for Lab Development
Innovation Labs need rules. Here are 21 that I documented in 2014 during my work inside and alongside four different such labs. They work!
Nine to One
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.)
Join the Revolution
When every business becomes a consumer, and every consumer becomes a business, we’ll be forced to confront the fact that 50% of our waking hours just don't make sense anymore.
Five Org Design Things N° 1
Nine barriers to change; Nudges; Scalable learning; Learning at scale; McDonald's & Walmart are software.
Aviation: Not Easy
From the chronicles of “Easier Said Than Done, Airline Edition”: five lessons on innovation and the future of organizing.
Skunkworks
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
Krakatoa and Institutional Anxiety
I got back to reading Krakatoa this week – I’ve been about halfway through the book for a couple years now – and I’ve stumbled across a rather interesting passage. Bold emphases are mine, but you prolly knew that already; can’t think of the last time I saw bold
On doing digital
It starts with a question. Last Friday, Scamp asked a question [emphasis is mine]: do you actually want to My guess is that you can probably ask the same question to entire agencies. And the answer: "No, now that you mention it, not really." Agencies are built around