Organizing Even Over Org Design

A lot of what we do these days at Undercurrent falls under the “Organizational Design” banner.

But that banner falls short by failing to align with one of my most strongly held beliefs: that nobody can design an organization that’s good enough, that fulfills on enough of our success factors, that accounts completely enough for the complex world we inhabit.

We might be able to design things – websites, tables, aircraft engines. We cannot design organizations.

Instead, we must continually organize. So instead of “Organizational Design”, I’d offer that the right approach for this era is “Organizing.”

Organizing prioritizes the following strategies:

Legitimacy over perfection

Learning over clarity

Starting with work over starting with people

Teams over roles over souls

Disposability over permanence