The Intentional Organisation
By Sergio Caredda
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The Intentional Organisation - Issue #43 - On Accountability
A subtle line ties in large organisational transformation projects and the extensive discussions that are happening today about the return to work in physical offices. This line is about the role of accountability in an organisational setting.Many significant…
The Intentional Organisation - Issue #42 - The Answer to the Ultimate Question
When I first read Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, I felt the author was an absolute genius in describing the scene of the Deep Thought supercomputer spitting the number 42 as The Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and …
The Intentional Organisation - Issue #41 - Return on Imagination
I've been asked a fundamental question. How do you evaluate investing time in developing an Intentional Organisation?I thought for a long time around this. Unfortunately, it's very improbable that standard Return on Investment measures would work. Why?Return …
The Intentional Organisation - Issue #40 - Learning from Life
My working life started very early, like in many family-run businesses. My father owned a bar in the central square (Piazza Italia) in Nuoro, Sardinia. It was somehow an inherited art: my grandfather had opened the second cafè in Nuoro just before the Second …
The Intentional Organisation - Issue #39 - Intentional Self-Organisation
A lot of the discussion in recent years about organisations has been moving around a few dualities, particularly the following two:Hierarchy vs. Self-OrganizationDesigned vs. EmergentTo me, these are false dichotomies, as they often describe elements that can…
The Intentional Organisation - Issue #38 - Desire Paths of (un)intentional design
I'm sure you have all seen dozens of "Desire Paths" images. There's a great group on Reddit with hundreds of examples if you haven't. “Desire Path” does reflect the reality of design: one thing is designing something on paper, and one thing is matching the da…
The Intentional Organisation - Issue #37 - Who owns Performance?
A recent article by McKinsey, based on an interview of about 80 CHROs of US and European companies, affirms the need for a new "HR Operating Model". It’s never been more important for HR to be a true strategic partner and a bridge between the workforce and th…
The Intentional Organisation - Issue #36 - Organisational Performance
What is Organisational Performance?A very simple question, yet it is not easy to define, primarily as we focus on several elements introduced by the concept of Intentional Organisation.Wikipedia defines Organisational Performance as the actual output or resul…
The Intentional Organisation - Issue #35 - Again on Performance and Productivity
Last year, one of the issues of this newsletter was titled "Getting Things Done" and focused on the curious aspect of many of my mentoring efforts being focused on the question "how do I get more done at work?"I introduced an important distinction that we nee…
The Intentional Organisation - Issue #34 - Intentional Actions and the War
Already a month has passed since Russia initiated the invasion of Ukraine. As I have been busy working on the #HRForUkraine initiative, I have been struck by the amount of "corporate activism" that immediately started to show in streams of solidarity and dire…
The Intentional Organisation - Issue #33 - There's nothing Definitive in Organisation Design
This week Josh Bersin releases a report titled The Definitive Guide to Organizational Design: The Journey to Agile. My first reaction was, "great if even Josh Bersin acknowledges the importance of Organisation Design today, then we will see traction towards t…
The Intentional Organisation - Issue #32 - Rediscovering Tektology
When War erupted in Ukraine, I've asked myself: what is the role of HR in this?. I decided to collect resources and information channels into a shared collaborative workspace open for all. Have a look, and feel free to contribute by commenting on the site or …
The Intentional Organisation - Issue #31 - Intent vs. Intention
Looking at the concept of Intentional Organisation, I got recently asked if I had a position on the difference between Intent and Intention. The reason is that Intentional can refer to both words, and although these words are often used interchangeably, there…
The Intentional Organisation - Issue #30 - Managing Organisational Debt
One of the most interesting metaphors derived from Software Development into organisation design is Debt. The concept of Technical Debt was first introduced by Ward Cunningham in 1992 when he stated that shipping first time code is like going into debt. He es…
📈📊 The Intentional Organisation - Issue #29 - Building a Data-Informed Culture
I was deeply impressed by the results of the Harvard Business School research on Digital Transformation led by prof. Linda Hill. Ninety-seven per cent of respondents “agreed” or “strongly agreed” that organisations will not remain competitive unless they radi…
The Intentional Organisation - Issue #28 - Conway's Law and Intentional Design
Many years ago, Melvin Conway observed that the way organisations are structured impacts any system they create. In his article How Do Committees Invent, he wrote:Any organization that designs a system (defined more broadly here than just information systems)…
The Intentional Organisation - Issue #27 - Leading by Example
To lead by example means to guide others through your behaviour instead of your wordsAs such this is a key attribute to defining good leadership in many contexts, as people expect leaders to show the way not just in words, but in actions.Still, there are big …
The Intentional Organisation - Issue #26 - Let's Look Up!
Don’t Look Up is for sure one of the most widely debated movies of recent time. In terms of content, the movie has been defined as a “lousy allegory” of Climate Change by Eric Levitz in New York Magazine.A movie with such an A-list cast that includes Jennifer…
The Intentional Organisation - Issue #25 - The Dangerous Expert
I recently read an interesting opinion article by Tressie McMillan Cottom (@tressiemcphd) on The New York Times titled "We’re All ‘Experts’ Now. That’s Not a Good Thing". Based on the author's research on scams and how these are deeply rooted in a culture of …
The Intentional Organisation - Issue #24 - Scaling Transformations
In its 2021 Report, the Business Agility Institute examines the status of the journey of several companies towards Business Agility. The report has been assembled through the results of self-assessment of 254 organizations on their jounrey towards agility.The…