A strange feature of Organisations is that they cast a massive shadow onto their own future.
The things that we do, the ways that we do them and the successes that we have are all held in the footprint that we land upon the earth. For Organisations, this footprint lies in assets, buildings, Reputation, Hierarchy, products and wealth. It is in the nature of Organisations to accrete both things and ways of doing things.
Some of these legacies are huge; hence, the shadows that they cast are long. But the thing about a shadow is that it should fall away from us. It should fall back into the past, whilst our future lies ahead where we are often blinded by the light.
Our challenge is to create a type of Organisation that respects this legacy but aims firmly towards the future, grounded in the brilliance of its people today. For a new type of world, we will need a new type of Organisation: one that is lightweight and rapidly adaptable, that thrives in times of constant change, that respects the old but embraces the new.
We need an Organisation that is deeply fair to its people and to the societies within which it operates. We need an Organisation that can change without becoming breathless, is innovative without massive effort and has a high level of engagement because it has earned it.
In other words, we need the impossible: the best of both worlds-an Organisation that is safe and old, yet dynamic and new. This book paints a picture charting a path from our old 'Domain'-based Organisation to a new type of 'Dynamic' one. In fact, to a 'Socially Dynamic' one.
My work is set within the context of the Social Age, our evolved ecosystem of operation with its rebalancing of power, emergent social communities,
democratisation of technology and interconnected, globally local tribes.
This work explores the intersection of the formal worlds of Hierarchy and the social worlds of Community, and how we can find a new type of Organisation at the boundary between the two.
It is an Organisation that will sit in tension: neither fully formal and visible nor entirely fluid and social. Not governed solely by system, process, rules and control but, nonetheless, governed. Creative with structure.
Diverse but united. Stronger, yet almost certainly smaller, although that may depend on what exactly you are measuring.
Our task is to understand it, then to build it.
