Beyond structure

A special edition on designing adaptive organizations for an era of time collapse.

May 02, 2025

(Note: these special editions are deep dives into an idea. If you’re pressed for time, I’ve provided a quick summary here.)

Rising above the machine

Tech giant Andromeda faced a crisis.

Their latest reorganization had taken 14 months to implement. By launch day, market conditions had shifted so dramatically that the new structure was obsolete before it officially began. Teams still aligned to yesterday's priorities. Reporting relationships optimized for problems no longer relevant. Decision processes designed for a world that had already disappeared.

"We spent millions redesigning an organization for a market that no longer exists," the CEO confessed from their Mountain View headquarters. "And now we need to start over."

This story repeats across industries. Organizations trapped in yesterday's approach to structure can't keep pace with today's rate of change. The traditional organization design playbook has reached its limit.

The mechanistic approach to designing organizations—with its neat boxes, reporting lines, and static processes—fails in an era of time collapse and AI-driven transformation. The very concept of "organization design" as a periodic, consultant-led exercise now belongs to a vanishing era.

For a century, we operated within the machine metaphor of organization. We built structures assumed to run with predictable consistency once properly engineered. We now face a profound shift: humans must rise above the mechanical systems to guide them, not operate as cogs within them.

The emerging reality demands a more comprehensive approach to organization design—one that integrates both structural elements and advanced leadership patterns. The most effective organization designs now incorporate leadership as a central design element rather than treating it as a separate consideration.

Why traditional organization design fails: the theoretical foundation

To understand why traditional approaches falter in our current environment, we must first examine the intellectual foundations of organization design. This gives us both context for the challenge and a bridge to what comes next.

Classical organization theory, from Frederick Taylor's scientific management to Max Weber's bureaucratic model, aimed to create stability and efficiency through structure. Later refinements like Galbraith's Star Model and Nadler and Tushman's Congruence Model added sophistication but maintained the core assumption: organizations succeed through carefully engineered alignment of structure, processes, and people.

Elliott Jaques' Requisite Organization theory, though controversial, offers a provocative bridge between traditional and emerging approaches. Jaques emphasized cognitive complexity and "time-span of discretion"—the longest timeframe a person can work without supervision. His insight that different organizational levels operate at different time horizons becomes particularly relevant in an era of time collapse, when AI compression forces all levels to operate at accelerated tempos that traditional hierarchies cannot accommodate.

Organizational theorist Henry Mintzberg captured this approach in his influential book "Structure in Fives," where he mapped organizational archetypes—each optimized for specific environments. Yet even Mintzberg acknowledged limitations: "The world of organizations would be a neat and tidy place if all worked as the machine bureaucracy is supposed to. Unfortunately, human organizations are considerably more complex than the neat boxes and straight lines that make up the organogram suggest."

The traditional design approach assumes:

Stability is normal, change is episodic
Cause-effect relationships can be mapped in advance
Expert-driven design trumps emergent adaptation
Structure determines behavior
Efficiency matters more than adaptability

Three accelerating forces now render these assumptions obsolete, creating a fundamentally different organizational landscape where next-generation design must integrate structural and leadership elements in entirely new ways.

1. Time collapse: when change outpaces redesign

As described in "The Great Compression," AI collapses processes that once took months into days or even minutes. This acceleration extends beyond operations to the entire organizational learning cycle.

Consider these compressed timeframes now common in leading organizations:

A consumer electronics company that once planned products 18 months ahead now finds market preferences shift monthly
A financial firm that required 3 weeks for loan approvals now competes against fintechs delivering decisions in hours
A retailer whose inventory planning worked quarterly now needs daily responsiveness

These aren't abstract projections. McKinsey research shows decision speed directly correlates with performance, with top-quartile organizations making important decisions 2.5x faster than their peers.

The typical organization redesign takes 12-18 months to implement. By completion, the environment that sparked the redesign no longer exists. Organizations optimized for stability falter when stability itself becomes fiction.

This time collapse challenges both organizational structures and leadership patterns. When change happens too quickly for traditional decision hierarchies, both must evolve together rather than separately.

2. Capability concentration: AI-empowered individuals replace departments

The second force transforms how work happens. What I term "capability concentration" allows individuals with AI tools to perform work previously requiring entire teams.

Graphic designers with generative AI now produce in hours what once required weeks and multiple specialists. Financial analysts with AI tools process and interpret data volumes that once required teams of professionals. Product managers use AI to simultaneously gather customer insights, generate specifications, and create implementation plans.

This concentration fundamentally challenges traditional organization design:

Adding headcount no longer correlates directly with increased output
Specialized roles become less distinct as AI tools blur boundaries
Traditional coordination mechanisms create costly delays without commensurate value
Workforce scaling becomes dramatically more volatile, requiring rapid expansion or contraction

These changes mean organization design must incorporate not just structural elements but also how leadership enables capability amplification across the organization.

3. Human systems primacy: from components to relationships

As machines handle algorithmic work, human value creation shifts toward elements that resist mechanistic approaches:

Innovation through creative connection
Ethical judgment in complex situations
Emotional and relational intelligence
Purpose alignment and meaning creation

These elements depend more on organizational culture, relationship quality, and psychological safety than formal structure. They operate according to principles of complex adaptive systems rather than mechanical causality.

As management scholar Dave Snowden observes in his Cynefin framework, complex environments require approaches that emphasize "probe-sense-respond" rather than "analyze-plan-implement." Traditional design methodologies built for complicated rather than complex environments increasingly miss the mark.

Together, these three forces create a perfect storm that renders traditional organization design not just suboptimal but actively harmful to performance. The question becomes: how must organization design evolve to address these new realities?

Reimagining organizations: beyond the machine metaphor

Before exploring new approaches to organization design, we must reconsider what organizations fundamentally are. The machine metaphor served the industrial age well but now constrains our imagination and capabilities.

From machines to living systems

In a post-mechanistic world, organizations function less like engineered structures and more like living ecosystems. They exhibit properties of complex adaptive systems:

Emergent behavior that cannot be predicted from constituent parts
Non-linear relationships between inputs and outputs
Self-organization without central control
Adaptation through environmental feedback
Nested levels of complexity

This living systems perspective aligns with biologist Francisco Varela's concept of "autopoiesis"—self-creating systems that maintain identity while continuously regenerating their components. Organizations similarly maintain coherence while constantly reconfiguring their internal structures.

If organizations are living systems rather than machines, then organization design must account for organic growth patterns rather than mechanical assembly. This shifts both structural and leadership dimensions.

From static entities to dynamic networks

Traditional organizational boundaries—clear delineations between departments and between the organization and its environment—become constraints in a complex, fast-moving world. Dynamic networks better characterize today's reality:

Value emerges from the pattern of connections rather than controlled components
Boundaries serve as permeable membranes rather than fixed barriers
Identity comes from purpose rather than structure
Success depends on relationship health rather than structural optimization

As organizational theorist Karl Weick noted, "Organizations are simultaneously a structure and a process." The adaptive organization brings this paradox to life—maintaining enough structure for coherence while enabling continuous evolution.

This network perspective transforms how we design both organizational structure and the leadership patterns that animate it.

From specialized roles to adaptive contributors

Our traditional concept of specialization—developing deep expertise in narrow domains—increasingly gives way to what David Epstein terms "range"—the ability to integrate across domains and adapt to changing conditions.

In his book Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, Epstein shows how organizations facing "wicked" problems benefit more from people with broad knowledge bases who can make novel connections than from narrowly focused specialists. The future belongs not to the specialist or the generalist alone, but to what Adam Grant calls the "versatilist"—someone with deep expertise in one or more domains plus the ability to learn and contribute across boundaries.

The result: next-generation organization design must structure both roles and leadership approaches to develop adaptive capacity rather than specialized expertise alone.

These reconceptualizations help us break free from limitations imposed by industrial-era thinking. By seeing organizations as living networks of adaptive contributors rather than mechanical collections of specialized parts, we open space for dramatically different design approaches.

Emerging approaches: building on organizational pioneers

We aren't starting from zero. Pioneers have already begun developing organizational approaches that respond to these forces. Their work provides both inspiration and practical lessons for our path forward.

The emerging landscape

Several nascent approaches offer promising alternatives to traditional organization design:

Holacracy and Sociocracy introduced self-governing circles and consent-based decision making. While too rigid in their pure form, they demonstrate how authority systems can be distributed throughout organizational structures. Organizations like Zappos experimented with these approaches, yielding valuable lessons about both their promise and limitations.

Team Topologies developed by Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais offers a dynamic approach to organizing software teams based on cognitive load and team interaction patterns rather than functional specialization. Their focus on team boundaries and interaction modes provides a framework for structure that enables flow rather than imposing control.

Responsive Organizations promoted by early digital companies emphasize purpose, transparency, and continuous adaptation over command and control. Firms like Spotify with their "squad" model created integrated approaches that maintain coherence while enabling responsiveness.

Teal Organizations described by Frederic Laloux in "Reinventing Organizations" operate with self-management, wholeness, and evolutionary purpose. Companies like Buurtzorg in healthcare demonstrate how integrated structural and leadership approaches enable both human flourishing and financial success.

What these approaches share: they reject the machine metaphor for organization design, emphasizing relationships over components, adaptability over efficiency, and emergence over top-down design. They integrate leadership patterns directly into their structural design rather than treating leadership as a separate consideration.

Their limitations: few offer practical transition paths for established organizations, and many underestimate the capabilities required for success. Most importantly, they emerged before the full force of time collapse and AI-enabled capability concentration manifested.

While these approaches weren't developed for today's compressed timeframes, they provide critical foundation stones. Our task now is to evolve beyond these pioneering models to address our unique challenges.

From design to cultivation: a new paradigm for organizations

Traditional organization design asks: "What structure will optimize efficiency?" The new paradigm asks: "What conditions allow adaptation at the speed of change?"

This represents a fundamental shift from designing static structures to cultivating dynamic systems. This cultivation approach requires new mental models, practices, and capabilities for both structural and leadership dimensions.

Three mental models for adaptive organizations

1. Living systems, not machines

Organizations function as complex adaptive systems with emergent properties closer to ecosystems than engineered structures. Biologist Francisco Varela's concept of "autopoiesis"—self-creating systems—better describes organizational dynamics than mechanical models.

Organizational designers who embrace this perspective:

Design for emergence rather than attempting to control outcomes
Treat organizational patterns as temporary adaptations rather than permanent solutions
Observe the system's natural tendencies before intervening
Create conditions for self-organization rather than imposing structure

2. Networks over hierarchies

Value emerges from the pattern of connections rather than the arrangement of boxes. Social network theorist Karen Stephenson demonstrates how "the hierarchy we observe is actually the shadow of the network."

This network perspective transforms organization design:

Influence flows through relationship quality rather than positional authority
Innovation happens at boundaries where diverse perspectives meet
Organizational roles become context-dependent rather than fixed positions
Success depends on connection patterns rather than control mechanisms

3. Continuous evolution over episodic change

Nature doesn't reorganize in dramatic restructuring events. Living systems continuously adapt through constant small adjustments. Similarly, adaptive organizations evolve through ongoing small shifts rather than disruptive reorganizations.

This evolutionary approach requires designing:

Distributed sensing to detect needed changes
Permission structures for spontaneous reorganizing
Feedback mechanisms that amplify successful adaptations
Learning systems that integrate insights across the organization

These mental models create the foundation for implementing organizational approaches that work in today's compressed environment. By shifting from designing fixed structures to cultivating adaptive systems, we create organizations capable of evolving at the speed of change.

Practical approaches: five strategies for adaptive organizations

How do these principles translate to action? Here are five organization design strategies that integrate both structural and leadership elements:

1. Design fluid role systems instead of fixed positions

Static job descriptions with rigid boundaries can't accommodate rapid change or capability concentration. Fluid role systems allow organizations to reconfigure around emerging needs without formal reorganization.

Key design elements:

Separate roles from people (individuals may engage in multiple roles)
Create clear accountability without prescribing methods
Enable dynamic role allocation based on capability and context
Maintain transparency about who's responsible for what

Real-world implementation: Global technology firm Valve designed an organizational approach without traditional managers or fixed positions. Employees choose which projects to join based on their capabilities and interests. Leadership emerges based on expertise and context rather than position. Their employee handbook states: "We don't have any management, and nobody 'reports to' anybody else... We do have a founder/president, but even he isn't your manager."

This approach particularly shines during rapid scaling or contraction. When Twilio needed to quickly reduce headcount in 2023, teams with fluid role systems adapted more effectively than those with rigid structures, maintaining performance despite significant workforce changes.

2. Design distributed authority systems instead of approval chains

Traditional hierarchies send all significant decisions upward through approval chains, creating deadly delays in fast-changing environments. Distributed authority systems direct decisions to where information and capability reside.

Essential design elements:

Map decision types and appropriate authority patterns
Create clear agreements about consultation requirements
Track decision effectiveness to refine the system
Design technology to support distributed decision-making

Real-world implementation: Morning Star, the world's largest tomato processor, designed an organization without managerial hierarchies, using "colleague letters of understanding"—peer-to-peer agreements that clarify responsibilities and authorities. Decisions happen where the knowledge exists rather than following a predetermined chain. The company consistently outperforms competitors in both efficiency and innovation metrics despite operating in a traditional manufacturing industry.

3. Design sensing networks instead of reporting structures

Organizations can't adapt to what they can't sense. Traditional sensing mechanisms (quarterly reports, annual customer surveys) operate too slowly for compressed timeframes. Effective design must include robust sensing networks that detect change as it emerges.

Key design elements:

Distributed sensing capabilities throughout the organization
Real-time information flows to those who can take action
Regular meaning-making rituals to interpret signals
Authority to respond without extensive approval chains

Real-world implementation: Financial technology firm Stripe designed "adaptive interface teams" positioned at key customer and market boundaries. These small, cross-functional teams continuously gather signals about emerging needs and competitive moves, with authority to initiate responses without headquarters approval. They attribute their ability to launch products 3-5x faster than competitors to this distributed sensing and response capability.

4. Design workforce fluidity instead of static structures

Traditional approaches to workforce planning assume stability—slow, deliberate hiring during growth and painful layoffs during contraction. Adaptive organizations need workforce fluidity that allows rapid scaling up and down without organizational trauma.

Essential design elements:

Blended workforce models combining core staff with flexible talent
Capability mapping separate from headcount planning
Talent platforms that enable rapid access to needed skills
Onboarding designed for speed without sacrificing quality

Real-world implementation: Video game studio Supercell designed for a small core team (under 400 employees) while generating billions in revenue through an "ecosystem workforce." They accessed specialized talent through studios, contractors, and partners, allowing them to scale capabilities up and down rapidly without disruptive hiring and firing cycles. This fluidity enabled them to enter new markets and exit unsuccessful ventures with minimal organizational pain.

5. Design permeable boundaries instead of silos

Traditional organizations maintain rigid boundaries between departments and between the organization and its environment. These boundaries become bottlenecks in compressed timeframes. Effective design must create permeability that enables flow.

Key design elements:

Internal boundaries designed for flow rather than control
External boundaries that allow environmental sensing
Boundary-spanning roles with enhanced connectivity
Technology that reduces coordination costs across boundaries

Real-world implementation: Consumer goods company Procter & Gamble designed "Connect + Develop," creating permeable boundaries between internal R&D and external innovators. This network-based approach delivered over 35% of new products and billions in revenue from innovations that originated outside traditional boundaries. The key design element: technology platforms that reduced the transaction costs of collaboration across organizational boundaries. stability — slow, deliberate hiring during growth and painful layoffs during contraction. Adaptive organizations need workforce fluidity that allows rapid scaling up and down without organizational trauma.

Essential design elements:

Blended workforce models combining core staff with flexible talent
Capability mapping separate from headcount planning
Talent platforms that enable rapid access to needed skills
Onboarding designed for speed without sacrificing quality

5. Design permeable boundaries instead of silos

Key design elements:

Internal boundaries designed for flow rather than control
External boundaries that allow environmental sensing
Boundary-spanning roles with enhanced connectivity
Technology that reduces coordination costs across boundaries

Beyond matrix challenges: meeting complexity with organizational capability

The strategies outlined above may trigger concern from those familiar with matrix organizations and their notorious challenges. Matrix structures—with their dual reporting lines and complex decision rights—often created confusion, political conflict, and decision paralysis.

Won't these more fluid approaches magnify those problems?

The concern is valid but misses a critical distinction: matrix organizations attempted to address complexity with more complicated structures. Adaptive organizations meet complexity with enhanced capability.

The matrix trap: complication without capacity

Traditional matrix organizations failed primarily because:

Unclear decision rights: People rarely knew who had final authority, leading to decision gridlock or backdoor politics
Competing loyalties: Dual reporting created irreconcilable conflicts between functional and product/project priorities
Poor conflict resolution: Few organizations developed adequate mechanisms to resolve the inevitable tensions
Overwhelming cognitive load: The sheer complexity exceeded most people's capacity to navigate effectively

As Jay Galbraith, who pioneered matrix concepts, later acknowledged: "The matrix is not a panacea. In fact, it can be a disaster if not managed properly."

The adaptive advantage: clarity within complexity

Adaptive organizations avoid these pitfalls through integrated design approaches:

Explicit decision protocols: Clear agreements about who decides what and how, with transparent processes for evolution
Purpose alignment over structural loyalty: Shared commitment to purpose that reduces the "competing masters" problem
Skilled conflict engagement: Building capabilities to navigate tensions productively rather than avoiding them
Technology amplification: Digital tools that make complexity visible and manageable
Capability development: Deliberately building the individual and collective capacity to navigate complex systems

The difference becomes clear when examining a typical cross-functional challenge. In a matrix organization, competing priorities between functions create gridlock that requires executive intervention. In an adaptive organization, robust agreements about decision rights and clear purpose alignment enable teams to resolve tensions themselves without escalation.

This isn't just theoretical. Research by Deloitte shows that organizations with dynamic governance processes that clarify decision rights and build conflict capacity outperform those with static structures by 2.4x on measures of adaptability and resilience.

Rethinking performance: designing for adaptive capacity

How do we assess organizational performance in this new paradigm? Traditional approaches focused on efficiency metrics and optimization against predetermined targets—perfectly logical in a stable, predictable environment.

In compressed timeframes with rapidly shifting conditions, different performance dimensions become critical:

Beyond static optimization

Adaptive organizations require performance measures that capture dynamic capabilities:

Learning velocity: How quickly the organization identifies patterns, draws insights, and implements changes
Network health: The quality and pattern of relationships that enable or inhibit information flow
Response diversity: The range of potential responses available when conditions change
Adaptive range: The organization's ability to function effectively across varying environments
Regenerative capacity: The ability to maintain performance while continuously evolving

These dimensions require different measurement approaches than traditional KPIs:

Sensing instruments that capture real-time signals rather than lagging indicators
Pattern recognition that identifies systemic trends rather than point-in-time snapshots
Feedback loops that create immediate learning rather than retrospective evaluation
Qualitative assessment alongside quantitative metrics to capture emergent phenomena

Real-world implementation: Global pharmaceutical company Roche replaced traditional performance reviews with an "agile performance approach." Instead of annual targets, teams establish shorter-term objectives that evolve as conditions change. Performance conversations focus as much on learning and adaptation as on goal achievement. The result: faster innovation cycles and greater organizational resilience during market disruptions.

The leader as system architect: essential capabilities for organization design

Implementing these new approaches requires leaders with specific capabilities rarely emphasized in traditional development. As described in "The Great Compression," today's leaders must transcend managerial roles to become architects of adaptive systems.

Somatic awareness: bringing full-spectrum intelligence to organization design

Leaders designing adaptive organizations need intelligence beyond cognitive analytics. They require somatic awareness—the ability to sense and interpret physical responses to emerging situations before conscious analysis catches up.

Key capabilities to develop:

Regular embodiment practices to enhance awareness
Recognizing physical manifestations of resistance and flow
Using body intelligence to detect environmental signals
Creating space between stimulus and response

Leadership researcher Richard Strozzi-Heckler found that leaders with developed somatic awareness make better decisions under pressure and create greater psychological safety for their teams. This embodied leadership becomes particularly crucial when designing approaches that can navigate rapid change.

Paradox navigation: designing for both/and rather than either/or

Industrial-era organization design emphasized binary choices—centralized or decentralized, standardized or customized, efficient or innovative. Adaptive design requires navigating paradoxes—seemingly contradictory polarities that must be continually balanced.

Essential polarities to design for:

Direction and emergence
Structure and flexibility
Speed and thoroughness
Individual autonomy and collective coherence

Management scholar Wendy Smith's research on "both/and" leadership demonstrates that top-performing organizations maintain comfort with conflicting demands rather than prematurely resolving tension. They design "dynamic equilibrium" that allows adaptation to changing conditions.

Systems orchestration: designing conditions rather than controlling components

Perhaps most critically, leaders must shift from designing control mechanisms to designing conditions where positive adaptation naturally emerges—what complexity scientist Margaret Wheatley calls "hosting" rather than "heroics."

This requires:

Understanding organizational systems dynamics
Identifying leverage points for intervention
Designing with emergence in mind
Maintaining humble curiosity about unintended consequences

Examples of systems orchestration in action include:

Designing feedback mechanisms that make system behavior visible
Creating boundaries and constraints that channel energy
Connecting disconnected parts of the organization
Maintaining focus on purpose and guiding principles

In their study of adaptive leadership during crisis, Harvard researchers found top-performing leaders maintained 70% of their focus on system-level design rather than tactical problem-solving, resulting in 3x faster recovery times.

Case study: designing an adaptive organization at Andromeda

Let's return to Andromeda to see how the transformation from traditional to adaptive organization unfolds in practice.

The starting point: organizational barriers to adaptation

When Jean Martinez became CEO of Andromeda, she inherited a classic problem. The Mountain View-based company's organization design—created for stability in a more predictable era—had become its biggest liability.

Key challenges included:

A six-layer management hierarchy that slowed decision-making
Functional silos that inhibited cross-discipline collaboration
Rigid job descriptions that constrained people's contributions
Quarterly planning cycles that couldn't keep pace with market changes
A workforce model requiring months to hire but weeks to lose talent

"Our competitors made decisions in days that took us months," Martinez recalled. "By the time we reorganized to address a market shift, the market had already moved again."

The journey: implementing a new organizational approach

Rather than launching another reorganization, Martinez initiated a fundamentally different approach to organization design:

Month 1-3: Creating adaptive spaces

Instead of wholesale change, the leadership team created bounded "adaptive spaces" to experiment with new organizational approaches:

A customer experience team freed from traditional reporting structures
A product innovation group working with fluid roles
A market response unit with distributed decision authority

These spaces allowed people to experience new organizational patterns while the core business maintained stability.

Month 3-6: Developing new capabilities

As adaptive spaces demonstrated early success, focus shifted to developing specific capabilities:

Developing both traditional and adaptive leadership approaches
Decision mapping to clarify who made which decisions and how
Role fluidity practices that allowed people to contribute beyond job descriptions
Rapid learning cycles that compressed traditional quarterly reviews into weekly patterns

"We didn't ask people to abandon what made them successful," explained the Chief People Officer. "We helped them develop new capabilities alongside existing ones."

Month 6-12: Designing boundary-spanning mechanisms

The leadership team identified key boundaries that created bottlenecks and designed specific boundary-spanning mechanisms:

Technology tools that connected previously siloed information systems
Cross-functional roles explicitly designed to translate across contexts
Integration practices that allowed adaptive and traditional approaches to coexist
Metrics that captured both short-term performance and adaptive capacity

Month 12-18: Evolving core organizational systems

With proof points established, the company began redesigning core organizational systems:

Talent processes shifted from static requirements to capability development
Resource allocation moved from annual budgeting to quarterly adjustments with monthly experiments
Planning horizons shortened while increasing focus on clear outcomes
Authority distribution became more context-dependent rather than position-based

The results: performance through organizational evolution

Eighteen months into the journey, Andromeda demonstrated remarkable transformation:

Product development cycles compressed from 9 months to 6 weeks
Decision speed increased 4x while maintaining quality
Market responsiveness allowed rapid entry into emerging opportunities
Employee engagement scores rose 32% despite significant change

Most importantly, the organization developed genuine adaptive capacity. During an unexpected market disruption, the new organization design enabled teams to reorganize around the new reality in days rather than months—without formal restructuring.

"We never completed 'the transformation,'" Martinez observed. "Instead, we designed an organization that continually transforms itself based on what's needed. The adaptation never stops."

Getting started: designing your adaptive organization

How do you begin this journey toward creating more adaptive organizations? Here are practical first steps:

1. Map your current adaptive capacity

Before implementing changes, understand your organization's readiness:

Identify time bottlenecks: Where do delays currently constrain performance?
Map decision flows: How do decisions currently move through your organization?
Assess boundary permeability: How effectively does information cross functional, hierarchical, and external boundaries?
Evaluate leadership capabilities: What capacity exists for sensing, responding, and navigating complexity?

This assessment creates a baseline for targeted interventions in your organization design.

2. Create your first adaptive space

Don't try to transform everything at once. Start with a bounded "adaptive space" where different approaches apply:

Choose an area facing rapid change or requiring innovation
Establish clear boundaries for experimentation
Provide explicit permission to organize differently
Document and share learning from these experiments

These spaces allow people to experience new organizational patterns without threatening the entire system.

3. Develop boundary-spanning capabilities

Build the connective tissue that allows adaptive approaches to thrive alongside traditional structures:

Identify key boundaries where organizational friction currently exists
Create roles specifically designed to translate across contexts
Implement tools that facilitate information flow across boundaries
Establish coordination mechanisms that don't require hierarchical control

These capabilities allow the organization to evolve without disruption.

4. Begin your leadership development journey

Perhaps most importantly, start developing the leadership capabilities required for adaptive organizations:

Practice present-moment awareness
Learn to navigate ambiguity and paradox
Develop system perception skills
Build comfort with emergence rather than control

These capabilities don't develop overnight. Start the journey now to be ready for what lies ahead.

A note about my work

I’ve spent years implementing organization design that goes beyond the boxes and lines. I’ve helped organizations navigate this transformation. My approach integrates deep experience in traditional organization design with pioneering work in adaptive systems—creating practical pathways for organizational evolution without disruption.

Through assessment, strategic guidance, and leadership development, I help organizations build genuine adaptive capacity while maintaining the stability needed for current performance. Whether you're facing specific organizational challenges or seeking to build broader adaptive capability, I offer both targeted solutions and comprehensive transformation approaches.

Let's talk about how these concepts might apply to your organization. Together, we can design approaches that create not just today's performance but continuous adaptability as the future unfolds.

The time for reimagining organization design isn't coming—it's already here. Will you be among the pioneers defining the future, or among those struggling to catch up after the world has already moved on?

TL;DR Summary

The Challenge: Traditional organization design—with its static boxes, reporting lines, and periodic restructuring—can't keep pace with today's accelerated rate of change. By the time a reorganization is implemented (typically 12-18 months), market conditions have already shifted, rendering the new structure obsolete before it begins.

Three Key Forces Disrupting Organizations:

Time Collapse: AI compresses processes that once took months into days or minutes, outpacing traditional organizational change cycles.
Capability Concentration: AI tools allow individuals to perform work that previously required entire teams.
Human Systems Primacy: As machines handle algorithmic work, human value shifts toward creativity, ethical judgment, and relationship-building.

The New Paradigm: Organizations must shift from machine-like structures to living systems that continuously adapt. This means:

Moving from static designs to continuous evolution
Viewing organizations as networks rather than hierarchies
Focusing on relationships and connections over rigid components

Five Practical Strategies for Adaptive Organizations:

Design fluid role systems instead of fixed positions
Implement distributed authority instead of approval chains
Create sensing networks instead of reporting structures
Enable workforce fluidity instead of static staffing models
Establish permeable boundaries instead of silos

Getting Started:

Map your current adaptive capacity
Create bounded "adaptive spaces" to experiment with new approaches
Develop boundary-spanning capabilities
Build leadership skills for navigating complexity

The most successful organizations now integrate both structural elements and leadership approaches—designing not just for current performance but for continuous adaptation to an ever-changing future.

The Expansion Effect

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