Why do companies so often fail to adapt? ... no shortage of ways ... But ... firms need to recognize the need for change ... organizations tend to operate ... blind momentum... why are they slow to change course? ...very difficult to study how companies adapt ... need both a large sample of firms and a reliable way of quantifying their choices....…

I don’t know what got you out of bed ... probably wasn’t your company’s mission statement... purpose ... was noble... provide employees with that clear purpose... become a purpose-driven organization... [which] have more motivated employees... easier recruiting top talent... great performance... less turnover... greater profitability... customers …

despite all the talk about culture, many business leaders remain confused... organizational culture is “the shared basic assumptions, values, and beliefs... taught to newcomers as the proper way to think and feel...think of culture as a management system... makes the idea much more concrete...staff... make all sorts of decisions every day ... in a…

CEOs and industry leaders all told me, “...Culture is the most important thing.” But when I asked “What exactly is culture, and how can I affect mine?” they became extremely vague.... I focused all my energy on “leading by example.”... did not scale as the company grew... became a hodgepodge of different cultures fostered under different managers.…

A brief summary of my experience in building company structures and supporting processes, role definitions, etc.

One of the most important things when working together is to be clear on who is helping who with what and why... I’m trying to make working together effortless by showing how easy it is to map what’s actually going on when people collaborate. You can normally draw it out on a page. It normally doesn’t take longer than an hour or two.... I call the…

You’re losing valuable growth opportunities and have extreme difficulty building and effectively marketing ..., it could be the result of organizational silos sabotaging your brand and business strategy... what’s the better alternative? The collective insights and experiences of the 50 CMOs in the study resulted in two headlines.

the future of work will rely on self-organization, enabled by collaborative software like Slack and Ethereum... Even in a self-organized, decentralized, collaborative, and high-trust future ... people will need to navigate their organization... Roles and projects will need to be created, filled, and disbanded with increasing frequency... we need …

In Ronald Coase's The Nature of the Firm ... the function of a firm was to reduce transaction costs, especially information costs, and that firms would grow until the increase in organizational costs canceled out efficiency gains... Today, however, we live in an information economy. Competitiveness is no longer determined by how efficiently we…

The number and diversity of communications skills needed to implement a communications strategy never stops growing. How are you organising them?

true digital transformation requires the courage to challenge entrenched beliefs within one’s organization. .. Digital transformation is probably about as big a deal as the invention of credit. It changes the way we do everything. - Digital Transformation: Becoming a ‘Forgetting Organization’ (Wharton)

Social Media had its place in marketing during the early days, but as platforms (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest) have evolved brands/businesses have lost their ability to stand out... social media is a channel to connect with and provide value to your existing users...should be the responsibility of a cross functional team member who wo…

second-generation gender biases are ‘work cultures and practices that appear neutral and natural on their face,’ yet they reflect masculine values and life situations of men... Does your organization exhibit second-generation bias? The following three factors signal that this may be the case. - Here’s Why You Can’t Attract, Develop and Retai…

The absence of hierarchy does not necessarily mean no structure. - Holacracy vs. Hierarchy vs. Flat Orgs — Holacracy — Medium

The Old Work organises labour as a factory model of work... focused on fixing the bad stuff and continuous improvement (of the old stuff)... the New Work looks to bring everyone together in a living Community to discover, reconfigure and make new combinations of strengths to innovate. They look to discover through stories the deepest level of e…

The framework probably needs some explanation, and I intend to both refine and provide more detailed explanations of the framework in the near future. In the meantime, here is our Beta v1 of The Future of Work framework. - Launching new framework: The Future of Work - Trends in the Living NetworksTrends in the Living Networks

"A large part of corporate economic activity today is still designed to accomplish what high market transaction costs prevented earlier. But the world has changed... coordination can be performed without intermediaries with the help of new technologies. Digital transparency makes responsive coordination possible... Apps can now do what manag…

"what people really want is to be treated like individuals and given the tools to help themselves.... Rigour is the cold, hard fact of insight. Magic is the creative talent ... Without great insight, creative may be ill-informed or poorly targeted.... Meanwhile, a data-based body of evidence that isn’t supported by creativity fails to creat…

"we have slipped into a new era in which volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity have grown dramatically, to the point that companies that are moving fast enough to thrive in our postnormal times must let go of the crutch of top-to-bottom situational analysis... The organization chart is shrinking because we are slowly recognizing wh…

Meetings can be the biggest waste of time. Combat that perception by encouraging brainstorming, removing chairs, and yes—offering treats. - 5 Ways To Make Your Staff Meetings More Engaging | Fast Company | Business + Innovation

"a great deal of recent research suggests that interpersonal intelligence may be as important in business ... social sensitivity, or being attuned to other’s moods, feelings, and psychological makeup." - How to make groups more productive? Add women. — Work Futures — Medium

"People bond. Barriers dissolve. Connections are made. Trust increases. Knowledge is transmitted. Wisdom is shared ... a deep sense of interdependence is felt... If you are part of an organization, no matter what it's shape or size, it's time for some meaning making ... by creating engaging opportunities for everyone, from mail room to board ro…

"in the cause of wider employee participation... there’s more to success than just investing heavily in the latest Enterprise 2.0 technology platforms. Large-scale engagement of the workforce requires, first and foremost, a firm grasp of organizational culture and its social dynamics, a psychological understanding of what triggers new behavior, …

"When you think about a company with no managers there’s a good chance your mind drifts to stories of chaotic “meritocracies”, bro-y cultures, and HR disasters. Whereas we value mentorship and coaching, continuous self-improvement, and strive to make sure everyone feels safe and supported. ... That said, we do think there are problems with tradit…

How industrial-era management structures hinder work today: "The industrial era approach to getting something done is to first create an organization ... metaphorically still a picture of walls defining who is inside and who is outside a particular box.... This way of thinking was acceptable in repetitive work ... As a result, organizational des…

"the basics of human resources management goals and practices have remained little changed, philosophically and practically.... The main metaphor today’s HR professionals live in is still a machine with its designed-and-fitted parts and cogs, as opposed to the ‘living’ system of social networks in which people participate and interact... Let’s …

"So, does engagement actually cause higher performance, or are high-performing employees just more engaged?... In one of the few robust studies to examine this issue, Ben Schneider and colleagues mined archival engagement and performance data for several Fortune 100 companies. " - To Motivate Employees, Help Them Do Their Jobs Better

"movements... seem to self-organize and spread virally, as if they were LOLCats or some other digital meme. So why can’t we get our organizations to act the same way? You would think that with command and incentive structures in place, it would be easier for leaders to set a direction and get things moving, but anyone who’s run an enterprise kno…

"recent scientific work is putting a much finer point on just how stories change our attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors... to motivate a desire to help others, a story must first ... develop tension during the narrative... it is likely that attentive viewers/listeners will come to share the emotions of the characters in it and continue mimicking t…

""There's no right structure for an engineering team," says Thrall. "It really depends on where you are in product development. We have things that are pods, that are product-focused or feature-focused. That's your first family." The second family engineers belong to are working groups—say, of developers familiar with Apple's iOS or Google's Andr…