Exponential Organizations: Why new organizations are ten times better, faster, and cheaper than yours (and what to do about it)

by Salim Ismail

Another key reason that ExOs are implementing trust frameworks is that in an increasingly volatile world, predictable processes and steady, stable environments are now all but extinct. Anything predictable has been or will be automated by AI or robots, leaving the human worker to handle exceptional situations. As a result, the very nature of work is changing and requires more initiative and creativity from every team member. At the same time, team members often wish their organizations had more trust in them. According to a 2010 survey conducted for The Conference Board, a global business membership and research association, only 51 percent of Americans said they were satisfied with their bosses. It is important to understand that open trust frameworks cannot be implemented in isolation or simply by fiat. They are an important consequence of implementing Autonomy, Dashboards and/or Experimentation. One of the reasons Facebook has been so successful is the inherent trust that the company has placed in its people. At most software companies (and certainly the larger ones), a new software release goes through layers upon layers of unit testing, system testing and integration testing, usually administered by separate quality assurance departments. At Facebook, however, development teams enjoy the full trust of management. Any team can release new code onto the live site without oversight. As a management style, it seems counterintuitive, but with individual reputations at stak...