Chapter 3: Braided Organization Design

We live in an era of digital Darwinism,” writes Brian Solis (2014), an award-winning futurist and digital analyst. “As customer expectations evolve and move toward personalized experiences and beyond transactions, companies in every industry must focus digital transformation on not only digital, but also people, purpose, and relevance.” The ability to adapt has never been so critical; and yet, the formal designs of many organizations constrain progress. We think about organization design as lines and boxes. Leaders who wish their organizations were more agile may daydream about doing away with the lines and boxes, but what then? Instead of neatly ordered cubicles, should we create open-space floor plans, install foosball tables, and throw away the organization chart? What happens then? We vacillate between traditional structures and no structure at all because we aren’t aware of other options that make sense. We still need to be able to create a vision, set goals, design processes and get people to work in an aligned fashion. How does that all happen spontaneously, and without direction from above? Is there something in between bureaucracy and chaos? Actually, there is; braided organization design.