Brave New Work: Are You Ready to Reinvent Your Organization?

by Aaron Dignan

Craft a clear and compelling purpose for the organization. Craft a clear and compelling purpose for every team and every role. Ask teams to share their essential intent for the next six to twenty-four months. Clarify the metrics that matter and use them to steer. Recognize and celebrate noble failure. Replace “Is it perfect?” with “Is it safe to try?” Give everyone the freedom to choose when, where, and how they work. Clarify the decision rights held by teams and roles. Use the concept of a waterline to create guardrails around team and individual autonomy. Start distributing authority to the edge of the organization. Crowdsource and eliminate policies and processes that no longer make sense. Start by stopping a meeting, process, or habit that is holding us back. Leverage decision science to reduce bias and make objectively better choices. Use Integrative Decision Making for important collective decisions. Distinguish between reversible and irreversible decisions and treat them differently. Define spending thresholds below which no approval or advice is necessary. Replace the permission process with a robust advice process. Trade autocracy and consensus for governance by consent. Form SLAM teams—self-managing, lean, audacious, multidisciplinary—around critical initiatives. Decentralize some of the work of central functions to teams at the edge for greater context and speed. Abandon singular job titles and descriptions for modular roles and role mixes. Develop and define th...