A small summery and description of network organization that can be used for large out-scaled agile organizations. Some way to manage the decentralization.

1. Product Management
© 2013 Johan Oskarsson

2. Big is hard. Big ends with
complicated bureaucracy and
added administration, and
somewhere people feel they are
loosing control and ads strict
governance procedures. Soon you
end up with objectives and goals
that are about cutting cost and
increased speed to market. Can
you endure the rules and still
motivate yourself to be creative?
The
Business
Team

3. The year is 2014 and all over the world
large incumbents and small growing
companies are struggling with one common
thing. How to be able to manage change,
complexity, stay innovative, be fast and
agile. Achieve business agility.
If you are a large company, chances are that you have heard
about Lean and/or Agile initiatives within your company. There
might be official programs, guerilla practices, local achievements,
something that promises that you will be faster and cheaper by
adopting to Lean and Agile practices. And in some cases you
might have seen some benefits.
If you are a smaller company that have grown the last 10 years
and are now struggling with tighter requirement form the investors
and the products are set in their business models. You need to
scale and broaden your product portfolio with new innovations, in
a cost efficient and responsible way. You look at large scale
practices. While in your growth era the last years you have
achieved business agility without knowing it, you had to, if you
were able to adapt your initial idea and produce a viable product.
You seeking ways to stay small in a large company suite. You are
not alone.
Large companies are trying to transform from stiff bureaucratic
organizations into fast and agile, while small companies are trying
to stay agile.
Somewhere they are facing the fact that todays, most common
practices for large corporations are not made to be adaptable
complex processes, but rather anticipating ordered complicated
processes.
To be a thriving organization today you need to be, not only,
adaptable but also exploratory. Exploring means seek new ways,
change the game, play, try things that you don’t know if they will
succeed. These are all things that is hard to find in a large
organization. Most organizations seek anticipation only.
I see many organizations that are looking at Agile practices and
wants to know in advance how much better, faster, more ROI it will
generate. But you cannot know. Transforming into something new
need to be done in a creative process. Idea, fast prototype, test,
re-design, test again, adapt, remove old stuff, add new,
continuous change. Business Agility is not an end, it is a mean.
“To create an organization that’s adaptable
and innovative, people need the freedom to
challenge precedent, to waste time, to go
outside of channels to experiment, to take
risks and to follow the their passions. ”
Gary Hamel
Agile
Large
Small

4. You, the reader, might be anyone in the
organization, and anyone can make a
change. But until that change reaches the
top-of-the-top, chances are that your
organization will not be able to transform
or stay agile. There are two sides of the
agility coin, and both requires a different
way of thinking and a special design of the
organization structure.
Imagine that you are big, really big, and you need to move. You
need to decide where to move and then you body should follow.
What if you had multiple options where to go? If you are one body
there is not so many places to go, is there. So you need to make
good decisions about the next step. This is the kernel of large
organizations. They need to know the next best possible move
because all of you body will need to work with the same objective
and any change in direction is a large and exhausting pivot.
Now imagine that you exist in two smaller bodies. In this case you
can chose to move in the same direction or in separate direction
depending on options available. In this case you can decide to
movie one body in a safe but with less possible profit, and the
other in a more risky position but with more possible profit. The
smaller bodies, not only can move in different directions but also
much faster.
Most practices are developed for large bodies. 5-10 year plan for
vision with 2-3 year goals, quantitative & qualitative market
analysis for accurate market demand and competitor movements,
project portfolio management, annual planning and budgeting, and
more.
Large organizations usually have one, and one only, governance
process so that everyone will move in the same directions. Some
organizations even execute every little thing according to the
same process. Limitable adaptability. Similar to the metaphor of a
large body.
Smaller companies sometimes don’t even have a explicit
governance process. They act on market changes and are trying
to understand what is going on, usually with little control. They do
what needs to get done, undisciplined but effective, at least to a
certain point.
When organizations grow to a certain size it becomes hard to do
things jointly, aligned, and this is where added hierarchical levels
are added to support the organization with alignment. To be able
to do things in a similar fashion. Such roles are project managers,
process owners, administrators, human resources, system
architects, any role that ends with manager. They all are roles that
should help people work together. When you become even larger
you need managers to manage the managers. This is a sign that
your organization will have problem executing changes.

5. Optimizing processes, and minor changes
in current organizational structure will help
a little but usually only make things worse
in the long run. How many organizational
changes have you seen that is about
creating less and simpler?
Just because a process, a tool, or something, is complicated, it
isn’t good. In my experience it is the opposite. It creates to much
unnecessary work which in hindsight is hard to prove that it was
worth the work. Complicated creates specialist, specialist that are
hard to replace. Complicated creates stiff administration. For
example take a CRM system that claims it support everything. The
system probably supports everything. But the organization does
not support the process the system requires. Any tool that is large
and is designed for large organizations comes with a unknown
price, extra staff just to manage the new process needed. And
when you are large, you have many large tools and processes.
They all require extra staff to manage the complicated.
Small tools and processes are sometimes not taken seriously by
large companies. How can such a simple tool work for a large
company like us, we need a more sophisticated solution. A more
complicated solution. Right? For example in the Lean and Agile
movement there are new tools specialist for supporting the simple
practices and there are old tools that have been modified that
claims they support. With one solution you get simple support with
the other you get complicated. What do you chose, a complicated
tool for a simple process, or a simple tool for a simple process?
Another usually complicated process is decision making. It can
take forever to get a decision or a simple matter. For example how
long does it take to get a decision to contract a consultant for a
temporary effort? How long does it take to get a decision weather
to move forward in a project or to kill it? Decision making in large
organizations are complicated and takes long time. A lot of
organizational change initiatives have the objective to shorten
decision making times, but finds that it is hard to do so. I believe it
is because most organizational changes avoid changing
organizational structure. The structure is that same, process
different. Decision making should be different but it is not, it is the
same. It is complex, but it does not have to be complicated.
Small organizations have to try new things in order to survive and
move beyond its initial users. Large organizational are terrified of
trying new things. There is the old joke that you first have to
provide evidence and prof that a new product idea or
organizational change will be profitable, before you can get a
decision to go ahead and try your idea. And as we all know, ideas
are based on uncertain assumptions. How can you prove them in
advance? Improving something means doing something different,
trying something new. Something that you haven’t done before.
The imbalance

6. For an organization to be fast, creative,
adaptive, continuously exploring, as well as
being cost efficient, it needs to be small.
Small in that sense that there is not a
barrier between front line people (doing
most of the job) and upper management.
Nothing between the market (real
customers) and the people who are
supposed to figure out what they need. No
barriers between different disciplines.
The agile organization is an organization that has got all the
benefit from being small. If you haven’t worked in a small
company, imagine that you are and that the company is around 50
people in total. In this organization everyone will know everyone.
You will probably talk to everyone on daily basis. You will have to
work close together to be able to achieve anything that affects the
market. In such an organization there is not long between idea
and decision, between decision and execution, between execution
and feedback from market. The key is to get the feedback loop
going, and have it work as fast as possible.
In the small company most people are talking to and meeting
customers on regular basis, multiple times a week. They all know
what is the customers problems, and what they need to do. There
is little need for a grand strategic plan.
In the small company you don’t need to go to meetings to find out
what is going on in the organization. You just talk to the people
working next to you, or drink coffee with.
In the small company everyone has got a saying and is involved in
the planning. Some peoples were there form the start and
remembers how it was when they didn’t get a pay check some
months because of low cash flow. They all know that they have to
perform their best if the company will make money, and they have
to help each other to do that. Engineering have to help out selling
products, sales have to help out testing products, CEO must meet
with customers and understand the technical lingo. The support
organization is much involved in the design phase to give input to
avoid future failure demand. Marketing and Product Management
is basically the same thing, if it even exists as a separate
disciplines.
This is what’s needed also for a large cooperation. It does not
happen spontaneous, it have to be designed. Too many managers
just want this to happen and sees no barriers, but there are. Too
few managers understand how to design organizations, and keep
struggling with doing things better but does not change any
fundamental structures. In the end they need to be changed if real
benefits are to be seen.
The balance

7. How can you design an organizational
structure, that can also work in a large
scale. Enter the agile Business Teams, not
that it is a new phenomena. An agile
Business Team is a larger team that
contains all necessary people to be able to
manage a product or a portfolio of
products. From idea to design to
maintenance. The whole life cycle.
Isn’t this the same thing as the old Strategic Business Units? Yes
and no. Even an SBU can be to large. An agile Business Team,
should not be more than about 150 people. Why? That is the
number that organizational scientist believe is the biggest number
of people that a person can have a professional relationship with.
Meaning be able to have in you network and work closely with. If it
is bigger you will lose the closeness and start to add hierarchies
that will slow you down.
Old SBU are known to work too autonyms and had problem to
utilize common competencies. The Business Team organization
need to balance the autonomy with lateral links between the
Business Teams so that knowledge is shared. This is nowadays
called Business Guilds. Places where knowledge is grown and
maintained. A guild consists of people form different Business
Teams with the same core competence, for example The Supply
Chain Guild.
The Business Team organization also have Business Teams that
are internal suppliers. For example a company can have
combustion engines as a core product. The base engine can be
developed by one Business Unit and then “sold” to other Business
Units which in turn specialize for their specific need.
An other feature of the agile Business Team organization is that
there can be an internal free market. Meaning that there can exist
different Business Teams that have similar specialization that they
offer to the organization. For example, two Business Teams might
both specialize in IS-IT services and the other Business Team are
able to chose who to collaborate with. The best one will win more
business internally and the other have to be better or fade away.
This feature will offer fast and supportive internal services,
services that otherwise are known to be slow, stiff and something
you are stuck with.
What is also necessary is volatile X-Business teams that have the
specialization of generalization. Meaning that can to almost
anything and can support the organization where it have the
biggest current needs, they balance the fluctuation of dynamic
market needs.
This type of organizational structure is known as network
structure, but as far as what I have read there is little that describe
such a bureaucracy. What I have found are separate authors who
have figured out parts of it but not the whole thing. I don’t think I
have figured out it all either but I hope to put more dots together
and keep looking for more bits and pieces. This is what I’ve got so
far.
The solution

8. “Anarchism… stands for liberation of the human
mind and the domination of religion; the liberation
of the human body from the dominion of property;
liberation from shackles and restraint of
government. It stands for social order based on the
free grouping of individuals.” – Jackson “Jax” Teller
Anarchy

9. There are four kinds of government
“Law and freedom without force, anarchy.”
“Law and force without freedom, despotism.”
“Force without freedom and law, barbarism.”
“Force with freedom and law, republic.”
Immanuel Kant on
anarchy

10. Key patterns
What I propose are some general patterns for
building a large scale agile network-organization
that should be taken into consideration when
designing your organization.
What is a pattern anyway. In my case it is design templates,
regularities, that I’ll hope will provide somewhat positive, re-
enforcing and repeatable generic manner, or behavior, to
organizations. They are from different theories that I’ve picked up
during the years and my experience of what seams to be working
from what I’ve seen and others have shared with me.
1. Complex Adaptive System. An organization is a Complex
Adaptive System and needs some general preconditions and
constrains to function properly. Self-organizing is happening
and it is our job to make it work in our favor. Neglect it and
unwanted phenomena will present it self sooner or later.
2. Essential parts. Each Business Team need to contain
essential parts for it to function. An essential part is some
function that together with an other function, or more, must
exist in order to provide the full life cycle support to a product.
To many organizations are separated in silos of specialization
that are not working together, rather after its own interest and
provide only parts of the full support a product need.
3. Social system. The Organization as a whole and each
Business Team is a social system where both the Business
Teams and central functions have its own and shared purpose,
including the peoples. The old thinking where the board or the
CEO is the head and the rest of the organization is the body
that moves after the mind is, with the best word I could come
up with, … old. A social system recognizes all the people within
it, who have their own purposes in life and at work.
4. Networked organizations. An organization based on
Business Teams, nodes in the network, are not bound to follow
central rules and control but follows values and principles that
forms laws that are followed by free will. Like a constitution but
not always codified by written documents. The network
organization changes and transforms where it goes. The
network organization have boundaries with freedom instead of
prescriptions.
5. Viable Systems. A Business Team must be able to stand on its
on feet's, meaning that should not be life-supported by an
external part. Each Business Team must have the capability to
be sustainable on its own. That means have all the competes
that a small company needs to be sustainable.
6. Internal Market Economy. If Business Teams are to be self-
sustainable they need to trade product and services between
other internal as well as external parts. That means produce
something and sell something. Also each unit must be affected
by competition, internally or externally. Keeping a department
safe from competition makes them, as a friend told me, “fat
and lazy”. Other departments that are dependent on them will
not get the superb support and deliveries that a self-sustaining
company would offer.
7. Scaling up by scaling out. We know how to scale up an
organization. Making it bigger to handle more. Usually that
means more people and more levels of management. More
admin and bureaucracy. Scaling out means growing but
without the extra layers and other waste-like roles and
processes.
8. Manage de-centralization. When the organization spreads out
into more units it gets harder to keep the purpose straight and
shared visions. A Business Team needs to be empowered to
manage both means and ends for their business, but also
share the greater purpose and visions.

11. 9. Core competences. When growing large, a Business Team
might not have the strength to keep all expertise and
specialization, or leverage from economy of scale. Here core
competences might be what you are looking for. A core
competence is Business Team that specializes in producing a
product that one or more other Business Teams can use or re-
factor in order to provide a custom product for their niche.
10. Lateral links. When de-centralizing the organization you
increase the ability to handle a more complexi environment,
but at the same time makes it harder to mange the internal
complexity. A later link is a bond internally that keeps the whole
organization together. You need many bonds in a large de-
centralized organization to mange the full context of the
complexity. Manage the purpose. Manage the visions. Manage
the shared group interests. Lateral links links needs to be
designed carefully and smart, and be nurtured to keep from
evaporating.
11. Governance and strategy. Even the most self-managed and
self-organized organization needs a central hub that works
with strategic issues and controlling functionality. Are you doing
what you supposed to be doing? Do you know what you
should be doing? How do you know that you are doing what
you are supposed to be doing? How do you manage changes?
The governance functionality needs to secure that all these
strategic issues are managed, governance manage change.
Therefore a strategic board needs to exist to provide the
service to the Business Teams, the aligning service.
12. People care and benefits. A network organization lets the
units manage themself to a large extent, but there are some
things that need to be managed as a whole for all parts. Some
of those things are taking care of the people and benefits that
are common for all the units. When an an organization is small
it is sensitive to financial fluctuation. For example in Sweden,
we have a pretty good parental leave benefit, but the money
we get from the government isn’t always enough to live on
compared to our salary. Large companies often have an extra
benefit and covering up to 90% of the salary while you are on
parental leave. This benefit is quite costly for a small company
with low margin, while a large one it is less. The large one
sees the benefit of keeping people in age of 30-40 (most
common age for parents) who seek financial stability during
the years with younger kids. Small companies see the benefit
but are unable to provide the benefit and risks loosing people
to the companies that provide these benefits.
13. Cross organizational investments. Where in matrix
organizations all (most) investments are done through projects,
in network organizations investments are managed by the
most appropriate Business Team. This makes large
investments, that require joint forces, less usual, but not less
important. Many investments might require many Business
Teams to cooperate. These investments are managed from the
executive board and these project should be few, so few that
all employees knows about them and what they require. These
projects serve also as strategic alignment tools, when
Business Teams can be short sighted and narrow minded.

12. 14. Transparent finances. “I show you mine, if you show yours!”.
Nothing build trust as showing what you got. Remove the
secrecy by letting everyone see the Business Teams financial
figures. Not only does it build trust by also insight and perhaps
makes people collaborate better.

13. [1] Complex Adaptive Systems
When most organizations draw their organization,
they use power point to display the hierarchical
structure from the CEO and executives and units,
to middle management down to departments.
When you ask for project organizations and who
work best with whom, and the different networks
that exist, very few have this drawn, few can
explain it to you. The informal networks are scary
to talk about, almost like we don’t want them to
exist. The informal networks hide some of the real
power in the organization, and we don’t like to talk
about them, in some organizations you are not
even aloud to acknowledge them. Why…?, they
challenge the official hierarchy.
Even if we like it or not an organization is a system of people. You
can put them in drawn boxes in power point, you can have them
report to a specific manager who hires them and fires them, gives
them more or less salary, tells them what to do and what not to do.
When you look at the management behavior it sometimes feels
like a super power dividing up someone else's land by straight
lines with no respect to tribes and social structures. “You should
work with these people, doing these projects.” How often, in the
past, have you cared about who wants to work with who? Who is
the leader that people follow?
When you read complexity theory you quickly realize that we have
missed something huge. You realize that most of our behavior is
based on theory that is, well, old. Complexity theory is quite new.
[wikipedia.com]
“Any intelligent fool can make
things bigger and more
complex… It takes a touch of
genius - and a lot of courage to
move in the opposite direction.”
Albert Einstein
An organization is a complex adaptive system, which is a special
state of a complex system. The organization is complex because
of the dynamic networks of interactions. The organization is
adaptive because the individual employee and the collective
behavior changes and self-organizes. There is a lot to say about
complexity applied to organizations, to much to describe in one
page. But the pattern that should be noted is that when designing
an organization it should be based on the theory of complex
adaptive systems. Neglect it and you are basically not following
natural laws. Laws that likely will work against your effort to create
something good. For example people follow leaders freely, make
them follow someone else and you will loose energy. You need to
set the boundaries that the organization can self-organize within,
they need to be wide enough and be fair. You need diversified
teams and groups that can develop creativity, resilience, direction,
means, and be sustainable over time. Each system(read team)
needs to develop purpose, direction, values and identity, and all
systems needs to be aligned, freely, with any greater purpose and
agendas.
The following pages about patterns will describe things to think
about that are somewhat aligned with complexity and systems
theory.

14. [2] Essential Parts
A combustion engine does not function without
fuel injection, or the piston rods or the
crankshaft. The body does not function without
the heart, or the lungs. These are essential parts
that the engine and body cannot function
without. We cannot take the essential parts away
and give them back when they are needed. Who
would want to wait for the pistons to be installed
when all you want is to pick up your fast food?
What would happen to the body if you removed a
lung because you lying down? We know why for
these things, but we don’t when it comes to
organizations.
What does resource allocation mean to you? For many managers
it means keeping track of and lending your employees to different
projects. “You get John for 20% but only on Wednesdays and
Fridays, but only until 14:00 on every other Friday”. This is what
we do, all the time. We know that the body would stop if we
removed some essential parts, and we know that we have to call
the wrecking truck if for some reason the engine went missing on
the highway. But for some reason we pull the most essential part
out of the teams and replaces them with new ones. Most of the
time without much thought if they will fit the whole. Imagine that
you lost your transmission box to your Volvo and you get a new
one from BMW. What is the odds of that transmission will fit?
What is the odds of the new team member will fit the team. To
make a team complete and capable they have to be balanced and
put together with great care to be able to learn to become a great
team.
Now let’s scale up one level. To the Business Team, an essential
part is not one team member, but a full team, or multiple teams to
fill the function of one essential part. Many organizations today are
matrix organizations where business investments are executed by
projects. Projects are staffed with people from various department
for a definite time and scope. Most organizations run many, many
projects making the people split up between project and become
part timers. I believe this is wrong for the most part. I believe that
people should work together for a long time, with the same products
from idea to phase-out. The full lifecycle. I also believe that a
portfolio of products should be managed by one Business Team
with all people necessary to manage the full lifecycle; development,
marketing, support, after-market, logistics, etc. These are the
essential parts needed to manage a product over time. Building
knowledge takes time. Time that are denied to project organizations
where people are pulled and replaced depending on the most
urgent project. People should be treated as essential parts and not
be pulled and replaced. The essential business functions like R&D,
sales, marketing, logistics, support are the same. They should be
structured like an agile cross functional team. A cross functional
business team. The reason behind the agile success it mainly two
things: they work together for a long period of time, not just one
project, and they are built with competences that stretches over
multiple disciplines (development, test, product management). They
learn to work together and can manage a larger part of the value-
chain. Let’s take that one step further.
[ithistory.org]
“A system is a whole that cannot be
divided into independent parts
without loss of its essential properties
or functions.”
Russell Ackoff, Re-creating
the corporation

15. Developers
Micro level - Agile Teams (smallest entity)
Testers
System
analysts
Agile teams

16. Systems theory in agile words for
an entity is “cross-functional”.
All essential parts in one entity in
order to be able to carry out the
defining function: “deliver a
working product”.

17. Corporation
Macro level – Business Teams
Split up into the smallest
possible parts (entities)

18. Cross-functional full-feathered teams
(small company within the company)
Business
R&D Marketing
Support
Supply
Chain
Logistics
Agile team
Fractal scaling

19. The defining function of a
Business Team: “manage a
portfolio of products over a long
period of time”.

20. [3] Social System
Many times I have heard that people are missing
clear goal form up-stairs. The executives don’t
understand. For them the goal are super clear. What
is not clear is why the organization is not racing
against them in full speed. What is the problem? I
think the main problem is the way we look at the
organization. I’m not the only one, thank …
Professor Ralph Stacey, a great complexity researcher, writes
“There is a dominant discourse in which it is assumed, without
much questioning, that small groups of powerful executives are
able to choose the direction of their organization will move in,
realize a vision for it, create the conditions in which its members
will be innovative and entrepreneurial, and select the structures
and conditions which will enable them to be in control and so
ensure success”.
Gary Hamel the famous strategy expert talks about the
concentration of decision-making power is in the hands of a few
top executives and that compromises business effectiveness
because that, given the complex environment and the time it takes
before top management understand what need to be changed it is
to late. I could not agree more. These two, who are some of my
favorite authors, point to the same thing as I bring up here. The
metaphor of a body (animalistic system) where the top
management is the brain and the rest of the organization is the
body, where the brain decides and the body follows, is quite
opposite of what the researchers tell us. I also think that most
employees would agree, and would love to be more involved in
decision-making and strategic planning.
In a social system there is not only one brain but many. All
employees are recognized. Their individual goals and visions are
respected as long as they are not contradictory to the
organizations shared and understood purposes and goals.
The problem is not to get upper management to understand this,
because most already do and really wants to reinforce this. The
problem is the organizational structures and management models
available. How many managers knows and are capable to build
organizations where both executives and front line people jointly
work with strategy. How can you possibly do this? How can upper
management find the time? It has never been easy. Alexander
Osterwalder, the inventor and author of Business Model
Generation, which is both a model and a method for creating a
business model, says that “Co-creation is much more work than
writing somewhere hidden in a corner and then publishing your
content. However, the benefits outweigh the costs.” This method of
working with strategy is just one of many good ones that lets
management work with the front lines.
The pattern for building a social-system organizational structure is
based on the mix of management and front line people. Manager
don’t work only other managers, equals. Whenever you work with
any kind of means and ends planning, management questions,
people from different layers of the organization should be forming
the working group. One other reason agile teams manage so well is
the mix of management and team whenever: planning, decisions,
means of execution, goals, deliveries, are managed. They all work
together with this questions. What needs to scale tothe corporate
level is same philosophy.
[jurgenappelo.com]
“Management is to important to
be left to the managers”
Jurgen Appelo,
“Management 3.0”

21. [4] Network organization
An organization based on small and agile self-
directed teams, that leverage information and
exchange of products and services, can be called to
have a network-centric configuration. This type of
structure supports many different types of forms
within the same organization. It needs a network
governance.
A network organization is also called a liquid organization, cellular
organization. It changes when it needs to, it shows different forms
in different environments and contexts. Liquid is the complex
system of matter, like a social system of people, unlike the solid
state that most traditional organizations are more similar to.
The network is a socioeconomic business of likeminded people
who create business opportunities. The social network’s purpose
is business, where each team have special idea of a general
purpose, shared among the teams. Networked businesses are
more open, random and collaborative than the traditional
hierarchical that are more closed, deterministic and controlling.
A precondition for a network organization to work, are the peoples
in it. They are not to be controlled and told what to do, but inspired
and supported. The average worker is knowledgeable and
passionate about her work, and aware and involved in its
business. Much of the knowledge is tacit and embedded in the
culture of the network.
The network organization is sensible to a complex environment
and fast to response due to the low bureaucratic decision-making.
The teams are self-directed and share a common sense from
means to ends, as well as the common shared visions and
purposes. The network needs fast feedback loops and data
collection to understand and make sense of its course.
There is a power shift in network organizations. The ego-centric
thinking versus the network-centric thinking. Decisions are allowed
to be moved out of the HQ to the Business Teams where power is
distributed among and over the teams to be more self-managed.
The HQ is not lost and gone forever, but holds a strong influential
and supporting role, pushing the power out to the Business Teams
that prove to be knowledgeable, capable, and responsible for its
business.
A network governance is defined by autonomous and
interdependent actors, “Business Teams”, who interact by trading,
competition, within boundaries and shared purpose. The network
governance function need a board of elected participants who
represents the Business Teams and works for the Business Team
on a corporate level. The development and maintenance of the
strategy needs are never-ending and a foundation to the shared
causes.
The patterns for designing an agile organization is the
acknowledgement of the network-centric organization theory and
understanding of the community-like structure, shift in power and
governance. When building an agile organization you will have
many small agile teams that are expected to work given the
constrains and expectations we have on a business network. It will
not emerge spontaneous.
[jwikipedia.org]
“The thing that we are trying to
do at facebook, is just help
people connect and
communicate more efficiently.”
- Mark Zuckerberg

22. [5] Viable Systems
A small business, like a man working as a plumber,
needs to be able to handle all sides of a business.
The plumber needs to get new customers, finish the
current work he is doing right now, make sure he
stands for the quality that he have been doing and
fix the things that wasn’t reflecting his best work, he
needs to calculate and pay tax, take out salary and
many, many more things. This is one of the reason
some complain about plumbers ability to plan, stay
in contact, fix problems and estimate cost properly.
It is hard to be good at everything if you are a one-
man show, but you have to be at least good enough.
You have to be viable.
Viable, or viability means that a living organism, or artificial, or a
good idea, have to be able to maintain itself. Grass that in a dry
summer recovers when the rain finally comes is viable. Ant farms
that persist when moved are viable. The human body that
recovers from major injury is variable. Trees that survive seasons
a viable. A corporation that re-invents its business model and
manage to stay in business past their due time is viable.
In organization theory a viable system is part of regulation theory
or Cybernetics. A viable systems means any system (read
organization) that is organized is such a way as to meet demands
and surviving in a changing environment. Stafford Beer developed
the VSM, Viable System Model and many more have elaborated
on the model. Patrick Hoverstadt is one of them and my favorite
author on the subject.
Why does some agile teams manage to perform so good? Why do
we think that they are performing good? As with a good plumber
you as a stakeholder or external observer, can somehow measure
and compare one plumber from another and decide which one is
the better. The good agile team performs better because, if done
successfully, the agile team can deliver a larger part of the value
chain. Not only coding, or testing or customer service/support. They
do a little bit of everything and more of something. The operate like
a small business within your large business. The learn what the
environment is like outside their team, which makes them equipped
for meeting the changes better. The best agile teams I have seen
an herd about are the ones that work in small business, they are
then forced to handle more things, like finance. A truly successful
agile team can read an income statement and take action to
improve the financial situation. They find ways to measure
themselves, track changes and reflect on consequences. They
come to understand and gain wisdom of their business.
But an agile team in a large organization have one problem, they
need to be multiple agile teams working together. Managed as
autonomous small teams but also as one larger team. This is fractal
scaling. Both the large system has to be viable as well as the small
agile team. This is not something that happens spontaneously. It is
designed.
[Transformationforum.org]
“People think and says a lot
about systems but they rarely
practice them.”
Patrick Hoverstadt The
Fractal Organization

23. [6] Internal (free) market economy
Can you choose which development team you want
to work with, or are you stuck with one? Can you
choose to buy product internally or externally, or do
you have to buy it internally because it is the
strategic decision? If you have ever worked as a
product manager you will recognize these questions.
You have probably argued that you, as the P&L
responsible should be able to buy from who ever you
feel like buying from. After all, you are the one who
have to shoulder the responsibility in the end.
How can someone be responsible if that someone cannot chose
the means he or she needs to reach the wanted end? Imagine a
product management department that consists only of product
managers, support people, key account sales people and a
director. Not an unusual group. They have a bunch of products or
services in their portfolio that they have the responsibility to
maintain and grow. Show profitability. When they show great profit
they are regarded as kings, when they have a dry season they are
under discussion of dismissing. Yet they have little control or
influence of their own fate. They probably have a R&D department
to order new products and changes from. A logistic and supply
chain department to manage their channels and deliveries. Can
they decide how they want it. Not likely. They can only tell what
the market need and put in requests. What if the director, head of
product management doesn’t get a long with the logistics
manager. Good luck trying to innovate the current channel
strategy for their products! They are stuck in structure.
Now imaging instead that they, the product management
department, could chose to work with either of two logistics units.
How about that! Does it sound stupid to have two logistics
departments? Isn’t that wasteful? Maybe on a micro level, but is it
on a macro level? One logistic department might have all the
general logistics capabilities but are specialist in fast and custom
deliveries, the other one might be specialist in cheep and
standardized delivers. They have a general process that both follow
but also a special capability that the offer the organization. In this
case you can chose who you want to work with. You can chose who
you want to pay for their services. The two logistics departments
have to compete for their customers. The facts that it seams
wasteful to have two, can be compensated by the fact that they will
compete and seek to improve to stay in “business”. If no one want
to work with them, they are clearly not providing enough value.
Somehow internal competition is sometimes thought of as bad. I
say it is only bad when constrains, rewards and punishments are
bad, system-wise. Adam Smith wrote about this in his “Wealth of
nations”. The totally free market have some pitfalls when applied to
organizations, but if you have seen the movie “A beautiful mind”
where Russel Crowe plays John Nash, the mathematician explains
that to win bigger you have to make sure that everyone wins. That
is the constrain that needs to be applied also for organizations
when use of internal market economy. Not only survival of the
fittest!
[rugusavay.com]

24. [7] Scaling out
Scaling out is like copying yourself into two smaller
self’s, versus scaling up is like keep growing even
when the roof is too low and you have to rebuild the
house to fit. Scaling out means two parts with two
will and two moving parts that will only move in the
same direction if both wants to, compared to very a
large body that still follow only one mind.
The large body is slower than the two small ones. The large one
will have a harder time managing a changing environment. Picture
a soccer game with two small players in one team and a large one
in the other (two Lionel Messi against one Zlatan Ibrahimovic).
Where the large one will be stronger where huge force is
necessary and need only one mind to understand what action is
required, the two minded needs collaboration and joint forces.
There are limits to growth. We see it nature and we see it in social
organizations. When organizations grow they naturally split up
when they feel the need. How many one-on-one meeting can you
do in one month, yearly personal development plans, etc. After a
while the manager can only handle a certain amount of people
where a new layer of team leaders or lower level managers are
appointed to manage smaller teams under one super manager.
When an organization splits today, it is usually dived into parts of
similarity. Core competences, such as development, logistics,
sales, etc. Enter matrix and project organization. All investments
require a project where each department are contributing to.
Now, imagine it differently. Enter Business Teams. Structured with
all essential parts needed to be self sustainable. Once the
organization is mature you have a bunch of Messis or Zlatans, or
a mix for that matter. The importance is to divide into smaller
bodies.
The problem is not to get Messi or Zlatan to be creative or driven,
but to get them to work for both their own purpose and goals as well
as the shared soccer team’s.
The pattern of scaling out is to build leaders and competencies of
the people so that you are able to scale out. You will need to raise
and recruit a number of people who can be CEOs. You need to
understand the nature of your environment to understand into what
Business Team you should divide into. The question is also, when
to scale out. Most researchers, scientists and leaders is such
organizations seams to says around 150-200 people is the number
when you should try to break into smaller parts. It is hard to say, but
around that number people tend to loose the possibility to know
everyone and have a relation with everyone, and hence the broad
communication bandwidth. Here is probably where you start
questioning this theory, “what about our factory with 1000
employees, should we build 8 new smaller factories?”. This is also
where this gets complicated. I think here is where we need a hybrid
of network and core competence organizations. At certain points
and contexts we need some units to be specialized at internal
deliveries. That said, a lot of production sites are breaking up into
smaller lines of production that serves different business flows. The
essence of scaling out is to enhance the easy of working together,
manage complexity and remove wasteful middle layers.
[jfotballspeak.com]
“First I went left, he did too.
Then I went right, and he did
too. Then I went left again, and
he went to buy a hot dog.”
Zlatan Ibrahimovic

25. [8] Manage de-centralization
How do you win a soccer game? Or how do you win
NHL? How do you get the payers to work together,
game after game? They are clearly individuals with
their own goals. Being an elite in any team sport is
as much about beating the other teams as it is to
earn your place? How do you make sure that
autonomous business units plays together to win,
not only their own game but the common game of
the organization? How do you manage someone or
something that has a mind of its own?
Baking chocolate chip cookies and putting them fresh on a table in
a room filled with kinds is one way of getting kids to move from
one position to another. I sometimes wish I had a fence to keep
my one and half year old daughter from running of, a boundary
that she couldn’t move out of to keep her safe and make me feel
like I have her under control. When she gets older I hope I can let
her take on more responsibility and make tougher decisions, and
that we can have a dialogue about how to increase it even more,
once she have more experience and understanding (I really hope
so, I can be done, I think..). If I stay true to my values and that the
important values are also hers, I’ll trust her until proven otherwise.
When I was I a kid, six or seven I stole a small silver robot from
the local store where I lived. My dad found out and told me that I
had to go back and return it and say that I sorry for what I did the
next day. I still remember the agony I had going to bed. I know I
had done wrong and even worse I had to confess it. Playing in
groups kids (and adults) experience the influence of others. The
peer-pressure. It can make you do something stupid, and it can
make you do something good. We have all felt it, and know what
peer-pressure can do. Yet we are quite bad at using it tactically to
do good.
Now, the people in your organization are not kids, but the approach
is not that different. Compared to the strictly top-down structure, all
power is distributed to the top. In the de-centralized it is
continuously being moved out as far as possible in the organization.
Just as with raising kids, autonomous units need alignment so that
they and the executive know that they are on the same page about
what needs to happen. We need clear boundaries, so that we know
the area of freedom. We need to be clear on what decision areas
we delegate and which we don’t, and how and when we take
decisions together. We all need to understand the implications of
decisions. We need to plan how to increase the decision-making
power, it is not simply just handled out. We need shared values, not
the one wrote down on paper as the standard values but we truly
need to believe in the same ones that is core to the organization as
a whole. We need to know the rewards and punishments, because
even if we maybe don’t want to talk about them (specially the
punishments) they are there but usually hidden. And last but not
least we need to get peer-pressure working between the Business
Teams. It is a strong force that requires some thinking before it can
be designed, and it should be handled with care.
I personally think that management of de-centralization gets way to
little attention and seriousness. What is missing is the knowledge of
how to, tools and practices how to do it good.
[wikipedia.org]
“Making good decisions is a
crucial skill at all levels. ”
Peter Drucker,
Management

26. [9] Core competences 2.0
What is the core competence of the plumber?
Plumbing! Duh! Gary Hamel & C. K. Prahalad wrote
1990 an article about core competence. It is the
specific factors that a business sees as central to the
company. The core competence cannot easily be
imitated. It gives a competitive advantage. Or so it is
thought. I believe it is outmoded. Driven by the need
for rapid change of business model. It needs a
redesign.
2005 Google bought Android. Why? They needed an operating
system to attack the mobile market. 2010 apple bought Siri for
search competence. Nike wasn’t known for its digital competence,
why they worked with Apple for its first Nike+ products. Apple
didn’t have MP3 players are their core competence at first. Core
competences are not something that you build and have for ever,
and ever. It is the competence you need to make your business
model come true.
A core competence is not something you build fast. And things
that you don’t build fast are not so prone to change. Yet some
things require deep, deep knowledge and specialization. I think
that the sickness is a combination of big, slow, constipated
specialized department (core competences) combined with matrix
organizations. The result is that all department see themselves
are core competences. Take the IT support at your organization.
Do they see themselves as a service unit for your company’s core
competences or as a core competence themselves? How do they
behave? A change in business model usually requires changes in
many, or most, products and organization. Most strategic pivots
require a new organization structure.
Sun Tzu writes in “The art of war” that “A military force has no
constant formation, water has no constant shape. The ability to gain
victory by changing and adapting according to the opponent is
called genius”. Like that an organization that is swift, adaptive and
able to reinvent itself must be like water. I think that core
competences are still needed but the organizational structure
should not be built around them, rather see them as smaller units
that can support the Business Teams. I also think that each
Business Team needs to have part of the capability of the core
competences, though smaller and not as deep knowledge to be
able to move fast and to be able to customize when needed.
Looking at the organization as a whole, seeing the core
competences as smaller Business Teams that can be moved,
dismissed, changed when and where needed, will add relief and
resilience. Core competence Business Teams could also be
external, like consultants or supplier that act like partners to fulfill a
core competence. The core competence can be supporting a
certain Business Team during a certain period of time when the
company need to focus on a specific area or a range of products.
They can be move elsewhere when needed. They can sell their
own services outside of the company to friendly competitors to
stabilize their sustainability. They should be expert at retrieving new
knowledge and capability and at providing that competence to the
Business Teams. You need to constantly evolve though
partnerships, new talents and, or, acquisitions.
[wikipedia.org]
“We shape our buildings;
thereafter they shape us.”
Winston Churchill

27. [10] Lateral links
When you scale your organization out, splitting
competences, or acquire a new competence you face
the problem of managing control. The easiest or
most common way to mange control is through
hierarchies. But as we know, hierarchies are slow
and the middle management is trapped in no-
knowledge land. They don’t know what is going on
in the teams and they don’t know what is going on at
the C-level. So they spend all of their time chasing
control and sending it upwards. When managing an
organization built on value streams, networks, and
partnerships you need different types of control
mechanisms.
How do you control the quality of a piece of software, recruiting a
Quality Assurance Manager to inspect or stimulate the intrinsic
behavior of the developers to produce quality code and
craftsmanship? How do you enforce collaboration between
managers, with targets on their balances score card or merging of
their departments into shared teams? How do you manage
learning and knowledge when you have outsourced or off-shore
teams, again targets and rewards system or establishing business
guilds (competency groups)?
There are huge amounts of control mechanisms that needs to be
working to regulate an organization. The more de-centralized and
flat the organization is, the harder it is to control top-down. The
contracts, and reporting system gets very complicated. A lateral
link is not only a car suspension part, even though it explain the
concept pretty good. It is a link between two or more parts that
needs to be connected in order to provide control of an important
function.
A lateral link applied to organizations is a control mechanism
between two or more important parts, Business Teams,
competence groups or departments. Not top-down but side-to-side.
For example having the managers of the Business Teams meet and
review each others P&L statement, in detail. It would not only bring
out peer-pressure, but also (if the relationship is good) induce
learning and feedback. Or, have the team members discuss when
and for how long they can be on vacation during summer holiday.
How is the manager going to know what works? Or, teams scoring
other teams on their performance. Or, distributing architects into
teams to have them teach architecture to the teams instead of
writing guidelines and principles. Incentivize travel to and from India
when you decide to partner up with an off-shore supplier. Build an
internal bar where everyone can meet after hours enjoying a cold
one.
The lateral links provide the controls you need. They are not only
very effective, but usually also quite popular. The only problem is
that they also need to be immersed with from senior management
to work. Because if the seniors don’t inspect and review them, they
are prone to add hierarchical control in vain or feel like they lost
control. Knowing yourself is key to strategic planning after all.
“I have a very strict gun control
policy: if there is a gun around, I
want to be in control of it.”
Clint Estwood

28. [11] Strategy and governance
The traditional approach to both the governance
and strategy function is based on that the future can
be described and reaching that destination is linear.
Some, a special few, set the vision, the gap and the
high flying plan to close the gap. What is wrong with
this? One, the cycle time is usually to long before it
is updated and the yearly plan is soon outdated.
Two, the measurement of the strategy is also based
on linearity, the output of the strategy, without the
feedback mechanism to make it circular. Three, the
strategy and decision-making are done by only a few
people, ignoring the complexity because of the over-
simplification.
Business strategy is as you well know a legacy form the military.
But reading about warfare written by for example Sun Tzu and
Claus Von Clausewitz it seams that some parts are ignored. For
example the generals cannot micro manage the battles, simple
because the is no direct feedback. If the commands where based
on the feedback to the general it would be to late. The officers with
lower rank have to be trained to make decision on their own. That
is a little conflict to the traditional strategy model. Reading about
Julius Cesar you get another view on the commanding officer,
where Cesar seamed to have been fighting himself very close the
soldiers. Seeing the battle first hand. Another thing that seams to
be in conflict are the change of tactics and formation, which the
governance function should manage. It seams to me that many
changes are being executed much later compared to when the
need arose, and not caring for the special context. A change is
done in described way, neglecting the circumstances and what
tactic way each change need.
A very ironic approach to agile transformation and initiatives is that
organizations tries to implement agile in a linear way. Totally
missing the whole philosophy of agile, and sending a totally wrong
and quite incompetent message to the organization. “We want this
new agile (flexible, fast, circular, adaptive and explorative) thing.
Please implement it using these sequenced steps and provide us
with these efficiency numbers”.
The strategy and governance processes needs an overhaul when
searching for business agility. The yearly plan have to be replaced
with quarterly (at least), that goes for both budget, plan and
feedback-loop (performance measurement) and all the data and
information needed to to make and changes. Small batches are
faster than large ones. That means that the work needed to
produce a strategy, manage change (governance) and review
feedback will go faster if you do it more often. Not the opposite
which many people fear who gets this message. The strategy and
governance function also needs to be integrated with the front line
people to get first hand information, true and fast insight to what is
really happening. Involving more people from all levels in the
decision-making process. The final thing is the measurement. Don’t
just measure and compare to plan, make sure that what you
measure provides input to decisions. Richening the knowledge and
understanding.
[jwikipedia.org]
“You have to be fast on your
feet and adaptive or else a
strategy is useless.”
Charles Du Gaulle

29. [12] People care and benefits
What you earn is a combination of your salary and
the extra. Let’s say that you have transformed your
organization into smaller Business Team which are
empowered to manage P&L. You can then chose
how to structure your own earnings, or? What
happens when different unit and teams can chose
their own rewards system.
How do you handle the situation where one Business Team is very
successful and the others are not? It is quite obvious that different
Business Team cannot offer totally different salaries to their
employees and that there needs to be some kind of structure to
stabilize the salaries. If not, people would want to change teams in
bad years and promote extremely high salary the good years. The
Business Teams belong to the same organization and I think it
would be stupid to offer very different salaries depending on what
team you work in. On the other hand if your team is very
successful and that success is very much dependent on the
people working there, perhaps a little extra would make the effort
people put in seam fair. The extra I consider is the bonus which
should reflect the financial return that the Business Team
generates. The other extra should also be something that the
whole organization stands for. A minimum benefit program that all
employees have as benefits. These are things that each Business
Team pay its share for. These are also things that an individual
teams have a hard time negotiating with supplier alone and would
probably end up with very different solutions if managed
individually. Then again each team might be a bit different and
want to chose some special benefits that other might not prioritize.
So their needs to be some context dependent freedom for each
team.
People come and people go, and their life situation changes. Some
Business Teams might come up with very good benefits. Therefore
it is important to have lateral links set up for managing benefits and
reward system between the Teams.
I believe that many employees have to little insight in salary system,
bonuses, reward and benefit system. Therefore I believe that this
should be open information, available for everyone. Daniel Pink
writes in his book “Drive” that money needs to come off the table.
So that it is not an issue. From my experience the closed system,
where only the managers understand a part of it and the salary is
only managed boss-to-employee, doesn’t take the money off the
table. People are suspicious and have little understanding of the
structure. Make it open and involve everyone in the process of
setting each others salary and extras. We want people to trust each
other after all.
[ted.com]
“Especially for fostering
creative, conceptual work, the
best way of to use money as a
motivator is to take it off the
table so people concentrate on
the work.”
Daniel Pink, “Drive’”

30. [13] Cross organizational
investments
When you remove the project organization and
replaces it with continuous deliveries form Business
Teams you remove one important thing. The
maneuverability for the CEO and his, or her, posse,
which still may be necessary to make the grand
pivots and adaptions. In the project organization the
CEO could always go in and start, or change
priorities of important projects. I think that it
should still be possible
Some investments are huge and will cover from one end of the
organization to the other. Sometimes these changes are needed.
These types of large investments, projects and adaptations can
also be the thing that an organization need. If the organization
consists of small interdependent but autonomous entities, it can
be hard to maneuver for a small group of people. What I’m saying
is a little contradictory form what I’ve said before but it is the
balance I think is needed. Sometimes I think that a small amount
of very enlightened people like the CEO or perhaps the founders
know that things have to change radically. Here the small-step
explore, learn and adapt approach might not be powerful enough.
For example. Steve Jobs classic comeback to Apple. Major
changes. One man. Quite successful.
I think that the CEO should be able to have five project that he or
she drives. These are the cross organizational investments that
can and probably will unite and align the Business Teams. If there
are too many projects, then they will be be regarded as less
important and unknown to many. With the “big five” the CEO
should be able to communicate the large strategic moves.
At some point, the organization may need a great force to shake it
and move it out of comfort zone. I believe that a continuous delivery
organization will end up being complacent at some time. Always
adapting until it fits the organization. I’ve seen agile initiatives being
very mature, but also heavy in its practices. Agile teams tends to
improve, a lot, and that means sometimes adding a lot of practices
that have led them to produce fast, with quality and the right
features. But that is maybe not what the organization need.
Some investments might not be strategic changes or visions, but
internal improvements that are concerning everyone. If there are
many units/entities that share resources, chances are that you are
paying for things that are of benefit for everyone and sometimes
more to others than you. There needs to be a governance for these
investments looking at the whole and each individual entity’s needs.
Resources are always scarce and needs be managed. I think
everyone in a larger organization recognizes this. How many CRM
system do you have in you organization and how many do you
need? I believe that each Business Team should in the end be the
one choosing, but if they don’t know what to chose from its likely to
be a choice in the dark.

31. [14] Transparent finances
How do you build trust in an organization? What do
people fear the most? The answer to the second
question is money. Few things can create so much
problem as thinking that you are being screwed by
someone else money-wise. That you are paying for
things that you don’t know the reason for. That you
are paying more than others. That others might owe
you money, that you are unaware of. It is showdown.
There will be times when you need to invest money in shared
assets. There will also be times when you pay for something that
you don’t see as very important or relevant to your Business
Team. The best way to stop the intrigues and cover stories is to
make the financials available for the other teams. Show each
other what you are making in revenue. Show what your cost of
sales are. Show them your expenses. Show them your return on
investments. Show who is paying for what, and how much. Bring
forth the major contributors and the parasites.
If a Business Team are making great profit, chances are that they
will hide parts of it and spend it on things that might not be ethical
to the organization. Let’s say a trip to the Maldives. On the other
hand why shouldn’t they, if they have made a great profit and want
to celebrate. How they spend it is maybe not the most important
part, but the secrecy about it. Secrecy creates, suspicion and
jealousy. It’s building trust.
If a Business Team are in for loss, they are probably a bit
ashamed and want to cover it up somehow. Even though that is a
bit harder than to hide. No one want to be the loser in the
organization.
But showing the numbers and doing it to show the reality, the truth,
then the peer-pressure will engage and with a set of good values it
might increase trust and cooperation. If there is a killer manager in
one Business Team, his or her skill is definitely something to show
the others. How exactly are you doing what you do? Can we (the
others) do it to? Are there bright spot that you can study and learn
from?
[axiomgroup.com]
“The forecast shall revel issues
on the radar screen early
enough for us to take the
necessary actions.”
Bjarte Bogsnes, “Implementing
Beyond Budgeting”

32. The Design
Few organizations that I have met are designed
as a whole. I think most are they way they are
because of individual managers initiative,
historic urgency, downsizing needs, efficiency
programs, M&A:s, etc. Managers that I meet that
are facing an Agile initiative responds to the
design question with a defensive behavior, “the
organization will have to emerge”. If you hear it,
be aware, it is likely that the manager has no idea
how to build an agile organization.
Many agile initiatives, large ones, are responses to a strategic
needs. The business is not meeting the targets and goals fast
enough. Efficiency targets are displayed and programs are started
with one goal. “Faster, cheaper”. The board of directors do not
care if it is Agile, lean or what ever management fad that will
provide those targets, as long as they are met. The organization
answers with Agile and Lean practices in order to provide the
means necessary to achieve faster and cheaper. Little do they
know, both of them, the strategic board and the organization that
they are miles from speaking the same language. The
expectations from the organization is not anywhere close to what
the strategic board is capable of providing.
Some Agile experts and consultants explains that a large scale
Agile organization is build from below, form team level. I disagree.
It is designed from all levels at once. Perhaps that transformation
is incremental, starting small and expanding. But the design is still
covering the whole organization. To be able to design the
organization one must know and understand the full organization.
This is my best clue why organizations are not designed as a
whole.
No one knows the full organization. Sometimes when I do
something for a large organization, such as an investigation or
assessment, I met people who are involved with the products and
the problems but they have never heard of each other, and these
are organizations of only a few hundred people. Well, you cannot
solve the organizational problems using the same thinking that
created the problem in the first place. That is, changing here and
there because of a burning need and strong individuals. You always
need a full design to fall back on, to understand what a small
change will affect in the large design. Any designer or architect
knows this, but managers don’t. Don’t let the organization emerge.
Always take a step back, view the grand design and the interactions
between parts, before you decide how to respond to a local
problem. So when you hear a manager say “organization” and
“emerge” in the same sentence, ask for the grand design. If there is
none, sound the alarm. It means you have no idea where you are
going. Some might say this doesn’t sound like agile. Emerge is a
strong word in the agile community, but also totally misunderstood.
To just do something, without understanding if impacts, and see
what happens is a shot into the dark, hoping that you will hit
something (good). To build a truly agile organization you need to
explore with small shots, adapt when needed but also anticipate.
The next pages are steps to take to start designing and
transforming your organization.

33. Johan Oskarsson
@johanoskarsson
Johan.d.oskarsson@gmail.com
www.captaintrouble.com
Inspirational book sources
Management 3.0 – Jurgen Appelo
What matters now – Gary Hamel
Re-creating the organization – Rusell L.Ackoff
Business Model Generation – Alexander Osterwalder
Diagnosing the system – Stafford Beer
The fractal organization – Patrick Hoverstadt
Complexity and organizational reality – Ralph Stacey
Organizational Systems – Raul Espejo, Alfonso Reyens
The wealth of nations – Adam Smith
Management – Peter Drucker
The art of War – Sun Tzu
On war – Claus Von Cluasewitz
Drive – Daniel Pink
Implementing beyond budgeting – Bjarte Bogsnes
Inspirational articles
BetaCodex-CellStructureDesign2
Valve – handbook for new employees
The Agile organization – Simon Atkinson
Scaling Agile @ Spotify – Henrik Kniberg & Anders Ivarsson