Introducing the Intentional Organisation Newsletter

How do you build an Intentional Organisation?

Sep 11, 2020

How can you really apply the concept of Intentional Design to an existing organisation?

This has been a frequent question after my original post on Building Intentional Organisation. I genuinely believe it is possible to develop a genuinely Intentional Design mindset also in established organisations. Four steps are needed:

Develop organisational awareness. When everybody in the organisation, from executives to frontline workers, understands the impact of their work and the relationship between the different organisational components, you are setting the preconditions for the intentionality to bloom.
Start Experimenting. In all organisations, there are pockets of well crafted intentional organisations. These often take the shape of a project team, a small change initiative, a community of practice. Use these to start your experimentation processes, overcoming boundaries and thinking holistically. And demonstrate the Value of these experiments.
Break the silos. This is probably the most critical step: overcoming internal boundaries is essential to ensure the intentional design is possible at scale. Suppose the strategy department doesn't talk to HR or does not influence how processes are designed. If the listening capability to the eco-system is limited to frontline workers and few data experts, intentional actions are going to have minimal effect.
Apply the right Change Strategy. Moving to intentionality means leading the transformation from within. For sure, many existing change management models can provide the right toolset to execute. But remember the logic of consistency and intentionality, and the tension you want to achieve.

It might seem more straightforward to design a new organisation intentionally. However, it is possible to steer also an existing organisation in being more aware of itself, and more deliberate in the way it aligns its components to ensure results are achieved.

2. My Latest Posts

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Reinventing Work is a journey that needs to change current legal and accounting rules, and reframes Work into a new Value-Creating system.

Continue reading on Medium »

In this webinar held for the London Business School, Gary Hamel explains why a blend of military and production-line inspired hierarchies crush employee…

3. Reading Suggestions

Here a few of my readings suggestions for this week:

👋 An interesting article from The Atlantic on Work Friendships and why it often feels lonely to have a career and come to the top.

🏛 A review of Organisational metaphors by Nobl, that discusses the eight metaphors developed by Gareth Morgan, a concept that I feel is still very current today.

📈 A not so disruptive article about Innovation Strategy from Sloan Review by Accenture's Paul Nunes, Annette Rippert and Larry Downes. Five strategies that can help you buy some time, not certainly disrupt your market or product.

🦺 A great piece on How Work Became a Job by Aaron Jacob, which questions our post-modern perception of work, and of the usefulness of all the jobs we are doing today.

🐙 Donald Trump has banned Diversity Training claiming it's divisive and Anti-American. A good moment to re-examine the business case for diversity, but also its force for good.