🌿🧭🌳 OD34: OD Goodies ∙ Launching #orgtalks ∙ Octopus-like organizations 🐙
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1. OD Goodies
Curated starters for this week’s edition:
HBR: New London Business School study about knowledge workers' productivity during the pandemic shares new insights about the evolving world of work:
”We do 50% more activities through personal choice — because we see them as important — and half as many because someone else asked us to.”
”However, lockdown doesn’t seem to have helped with hierarchy-spanning activities (managing up and down), presumably because it’s impossible to have the short, spontaneous meetings that used to be possible.”
GetKickbox: Interested in encouraging intrapreneurship in your organization? The Swisscom innovation team has created Kickbook - The Handbook for Intrapreneurs (free) - based on the Kickbox Innovation Program that was piloted in Adobe in 2012 by Mark Randall. Bülent was one of the participants back then and wholeheartedly recommends these ideas to intrapreneurs.
SVPG: Marty Cagan writes about how the learning done by product teams is the means, not the ends:
“For many years I’ve seen the same issue play out with many different techniques. Teams get so excited about their personas that they obsess over the technique, and don’t turn the technique into successful products. Or they get so excited about design thinking. Or jobs-to-be-done. Or their use of Agile. The list goes on. All of these techniques can provide real value, but only if you stay focused on solving the problem you’ve been asked to solve.”
YouExec: You can get some nice Scenario Planning templates that might come in handy for org. design work (e.g. scenarios for the ratio between working from anywhere and working from the office). Our favorite template from their slides:
Launching #orgtalks
Core idea
What if we could have some insightful conversations focused on collaborative problem solving of pressing organizational challenges?
Proposed format
Limited seats: 8 participants + 1 facilitator. Duration: 1.5 hours. Free
Pre-work: each participant comes prepared with an organizational challenge they are currently facing (in their organization or in the organizations they support)
Flow of #orgtalks sessions: 1. sharing all challenges 2. picking a challenge 3. clarifying context of the challenge 4. coming up with ideas for the challenge 5. sharing ideas with the whole group 6. closing
Background
Did a series of similar online gatherings with good results (informally measured by key takeaways of all participants), by using an adapted co-development facilitation method
We’ve heard a recurring theme during several conversations with our readers: having the option to actively participate in sharing knowledge and connecting with peers and not just consuming content passively
Interested?
We’re planning to host 1-2 pilot gatherings at the end of September, date & time to be decided with the participants
If this idea resonates with you, complete the form linked below by 10 SEP eod
Seats available on a first come, first served basis ⏱
Octopus-like organizations 🐙
The Zeus Jones team proposes an interesting model for organizations, which was created as a solution for helping companies operate more fluidly:
“The octopus thrives in all kinds of environments, responds to new challenges with ease and learns from every experience. If business adopted more of its traits, we’d be much stronger for it.”
Here are some core ideas:
Sensing
The octopus senses the environment and then adapts their response (…) They can also have instant coordinated responses in reaction to threats or changes in their environment.
Key shifts for business:
Always-on insights
Fast, structured communication
Built-in redundancy & flexibility
Practices Zeus Jones has adopted:
Specialty Marketplace
Vertical and horizontal skills
Distributed leadership and responsibility
Working out loud and creating a metabolism
Decentralized intelligence
What makes the octopus so extraordinary is its nervous system. Most of its neurons are in the tentacles.
Key shifts for business:
Independent intelligence at the edges
Centralized coordination
Visibility across the entire organization
Practices Zeus Jones has adopted:
Innovation on every project
Athena - platform for thinking and experimentation
Ops model built around IP
Pallas - body of work with all IP, research and thinking
Adaptability
Octopuses are well known for their impressive survival skills - from their ability to fit into impossibly small spaces and regrow lost limbs, to their quick camouflage capabilities and ink that clouds predators senses of sight and smell.
Key shifts for business:
Optimize against progress, not efficiency
Prioritize connection over communication
Speed up the organizational metabolism
Practices Zeus Jones has adopted:
New ways of working
Jobs to be done
Values as a decision-making framework
Discomfort with stability
Future-focused
Octopuses have a unique set of biological traits - such as rapid growth and short lifespans - that allow them to adapt quickly to changing conditions.
Key shifts for business:
Adopt a long-term mindset
Create the future
Think cooperation over competition
Practices Zeus Jones has adopted:
Trajectory planning
Investing in and practicing imagination
Fixed values, fluid process
Nostos - referral community of complementary indie agencies
If any of these octopus-related ideas triggered a spark of curiosity in you, here’s the dedicated page for the model, along with a free workbook:
Thanks for reading
We hope you found something useful in this edition.
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This newsletter is curated by Raluca and Bülent Duagi, the Sense & Change team.
We're using systems thinking, behavioral science and mental models to advise organizations to become more effective.
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Changelog
OD Goodies: repurposed the section as the edition’s starters
Monthly theme: dropped the idea due to the lack of new theme suggestions
Writing style: using more bullet points for easier skimming
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