More and more often I find myself realising the true meaning of something said by a fellow innovator or thought leader only months after first hearing it. This is probably no less a recognition of their foresight than one of my shortage of thinking but it remains the case and lately, it happened to me with what Stelio Verzera often says – quoting and adapting McLuhan -
we shape our organizations and our organizations shape us.
Organizational design is a key topic these days in many of the contexts we work in as innovators: from rethinking industries to 'shaping' social innovation ventures. All projects can receive an incredible amount of momentum and the ‘right’ energy from having a proper organizational design to back the most ambitious missions. That's why, this year, OuiShare will be partnering with the EODF - the annual conference on organization design - that will take place in the vibrant city of Milan, October 2nd and 3rd during the 2015 “Expo” Universal Exhibition.
In comparison to working with OuiShare and to highlight the complexity of the subject, I must confess, when it comes to institutional and organizational design, I often live a parallel experience. In my frequent encounters with the corporate world, I see both the growing irrelevance of traditional management practices as well as an established willingness to experiment with new models. Most of the companies I meet, though, are – in the optimistic case - just at the beginning of a long, and complex evolutionary path, that often depends on the curiosity and talent of single individuals and, therefore, is largely fragile.
Advances in digital technology over the last few decades have impacted the economy more than ever before, and moving forward, as the digital marketplace matures, transforming work, user experience and social awareness, we already foresee a potential new phase: that of democratic financial transactions driven by developments such as blockchain, smart contracts and Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs), see.
In this landscape, our institutions face ruthless disruption and crisis. Private and public institutions born in the 20th century can no longer keep up with the revolutionary force of “pull” systems: large, fast and collaborative ecosystems that create an insane amount of personalized value.
As John Hagel puts it:
at times the question has seemed to be not how to change specific practices or institutional arrangements, but whether the “institution” is still a viable form of organization at all. We find that we must reassess the rationale for the institution itself.
As revolutionary as it seems, this statement needs to be taken very seriously.
Exponential innovation has a particular characteristic that makes our time different from – say – the Renaissance: it’s harder and harder to predict the future. The whole institutional architecture that survived the 20th century was designed around planning: planning supply to cope with demand, planning work to cope with dates. The industrial mindset organized production in an age of high transaction costs. At some point, the internet reduced transaction costs and started the transition that we – eventually – recognize today as a powerful transformational force.
When you can’t predict the future you realize you can approach it in two different ways: either by responding fast and adapting, or by creating an alternative future. Neither are the specialty of large, industrial, corporate organizations.
For these and other reasons, the average business lifetime of public traded companies is shrinking to 10 years and the question – for incumbents – is often about the real possibility to transform themselves. Sometimes you realize that advances in technology and design have made you obsolete when it is already too late.
When we look at public institutions the situation is no better: our governments fail to cope with the third digital age, that of data, information and service personalization.
In safeguarding the environment for local (in global) innovation and economic development, it is key for policymakers to overcome the industrial “permission based” approach to regulate the economy and to dive deep into the age of information, by implementing agile and “data driven” policymaking towards objectives that are co-created with citizens and communities, thanks to enabling features and permeable government boundaries.
The crisis of the digital age is not one of personal identity, but institutional purpose- Greg Satell
Traditional institutions will go through a monumental effort to redesign themselves and the process is far from an easy one: even a company that had such a strong corporate culture as Zappos is now having hard times navigating the way through the platonic ideals of horizontal management of Holacracy.
But what if we look at the new emergent models models at the fringe of society? Those at the “edge” that bring and anticipate what will soon move to the core of the economy? How are the pioneers doing? Not as well as it would seem.
Our personal experience at OuiShare is that of a love-and-hate relationship with organizational design. In terms of organizational form we could probably define OuiShare as a community of entrepreneurs that coalesces in teams and takes over endeavours, sharing a common mission.
We had hard times in the last three years in building our institution from scratch: such an institutional form – looser and more diverse than a cooperative, not ready to be a corporate or at least to be incorporated as such – didn’t really exist in law and, more importantly, in practice.
We had to build it from scratch: a decision making framework, a budgeting approach, a calendar of culture nurturing gatherings coded in a tradition of practice, and many other things. Lacking the algorithmic trustability of the blockchain, or even that of any other gets-the-job-done software, OuiShare had to trust people.
When we tried to hard-code our practice of (un)management into a management book we suddenly understood that the road was bumpier than expected: the freshly made code was not only too idealistic, but in fact, was already obsolete, and it nurtured a clearly undesired trait among connectors: that of behaving like bureaucrats.
As a result of these unforeseen difficulties, for many months we left the responsibility of holding things together more to the passion and dedication to a group of leaders than to the accessibility of a set of shared rules and practices: now as our community grows and we face the evolution of our own culture, we are probably experiencing the limits of such a choice.
To discuss these and other challenges, we will be partnering with EODF, to meet fellow explorers of the boundaries of the institutions of the 21st century. Returning to Stelio Verzera’s insight:
we shape our organizations and our organizations shape us-
I have come to realize that herein lies the core issue: designing the institutions we live in is ultimately the duty of shaping ourselves.
About the EODF
The EODF - European Organisation Design Forum builds and advances the community, practice, and leadership of the field of Organisation Design.
The EODF members are challenged to advance the principles of organisation design, share and synthesise best practice, and create new knowledge about how people and systems are organised to achieve results and create meaningful experiences.
The EODF guiding principles are: representing European diversity with extensive connections to other communities with similar interests; highly inclusive of a variety of backgrounds, perspectives, values, methods and levels of experience; a safe space to teach, learn, challenge, inspire and have fun.
The people who follow the EODF belong to a professional community to be informed/inspired about latest thinkers, articles, events (content). The value that they can find in it, the value proposition, is a diverse connected community practicing and advancing organisation design solutions in inspiring and challenging ways.
Every year the EODF organises the annual Conference, every year in a different Country.
This year forum will be hosted by IED in Milan, the international design and industry cradle, on Oct 2nd and 3rd. There will also be Masterclasses on Sep 30th and Oct 1st that will be hosted in the innovative space of Copernico.