The Adaptive Manifesto
There is a need for a fundamental redesign of our organizations
We live in a world of increasing complexity and fast paced change. The business graveyard is filled with once seemingly rock solid names. A sustainable competitive advantage seems to have all but disappeared. Competition comes from unexpected places.
The design of our organizations is over one hundred years old. Where principles of bureaucracy and hierarchy once had its function, they now have become a major hindrance to adaptiveness.
We should ban the word ‘resources’ when we are talking about human beings. We should start to realize that our current organizations are not machines, and our employees are not cogs. Our organizations are complex systems of human networks.
Our organizations need a fundamental update to become adaptive: Use instead of fear complexity; embrace change rather than status quo; and unleash the creativity of our workers. That’s why we created the Adaptive Organization Manifesto.
An alarming 70% of our employees is not engaged!
Digital is the big equalizer dramatically reducing barriers of entry!
A sustainable competitive advantage no longer exists!
Our organization’s design is over one hundred years old without a fundamental change!
From childhood to adulthood – from 98% to just 2% creative geniuses!
Organizations are optimized to predict an unpredictable world
In a complex world you cannot predict the future in a reliable way. There are simply too many variables in play. Still our organizations are designed to create and then execute plans that control the outcome. Of course we still need to plan, but we cannot simply expect plans to come true. Instead of static plans and forecasting we need a strategy of discovery and learning by disciplined experiments and short feedback loops.
it understands that complexity requires exploration and experimentation over planning and forecasting.
It embraces a state of constant change as the normal state, rather than a state of stability and painful A to B transformations.
It is an organization designed for speed by radical decentralization, physiological ownership by those that do the work, and a network structure rather than a hierarchal and silo structure.
It is an organization based on the concept of transient competitive advantage over sustainable competitive advantage that is demonstrated by a fluid organizational structure where small highly autonomous units rally around new value propositions.
Equally important, the organization knows when to withdraw from a proposition in time in favor of new more promising or profitable ones.
It has an integrated process of continuous innovation driven by everyone, rather than a externalized process of once-in-a-while leapfrog innovation.
It’s an environment where unleashing creativity takes precedence over coloring within the lines. True engagement, fueled by fulfilling human’s universal needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness, is valued more than compliance.
In all, the Adaptive Organization has the ability, rooted in its DNA, to continuously reinvent itself.
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Explore the Principles
An Adaptive Organization can have many forms. Practices are context-aware. But the underlying principles are not. They are immutable.
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