This week’s curator, Lee Bryant, looks at how we can identify and solve some of the scaling problems that small-team-based organisational structures faec as they grow; he also shares some related guides from Shift*Base and picks 5 links for further reading on the topic.

Moving from Social Technology towards an Operating System for the Organisation

Earlier this week, I gave a keynote talk to the Stuttgart Social Forum at Bosch’s wonderful R&D campus near Renningen. The theme of the talk was the to think of the organisation, its structure, processes and practices as a kind of operating system to help us understand how to develop and improve it. I think there are some useful analogies and lessons to be drawn from the way that software has changed and developed over the past decade. The slides of my talk are available here, and you can read a blog post summarising the argument below.

> See Moving from Social Technology towards an Operating System for the Organisation

Shift*Groups Updates

Our (free) invitation-only community for change agents and internal practitioners of social business, collaboration and digital transformation remains open for new members, whilst we conduct a review of the site and look at how to improve its user experience and utility and consult on how we can better support the community.

Weekly Linklog

  • A trait shared by the fastest growing and most disruptive companies in history — Google, Amazon, Uber, Airbnb, and eBay—is that they aren’t focused on selling products, they are building platforms. The ability to leverage the network effects of a platform is something that the technology industry learned long ago — and perfected. It is what gives Silicon Valley an unfair advantage over competitors in every industry; something that is becoming increasingly important as all information becomes digitized. What Made These Amazing Companies So Disruptive? They All Built Platforms
  • “We’re on the brink of an entirely new approach to business, one built on shared principles of integrity, transparency, and sustainability. If we succeed, the world could become a far better place.” The Tech Story is Over – NewCo Shift
  • When organizations are in crisis, it’s usually because the business is broken … Organizations are complex systems with many ripple effects. Reworking fundamental practices will inevitably lead to some new values and behaviors. Culture is Not the Culpit
  • Forget about products for a moment, about which reasonable people can disagree. Leave aside the financial results, which certainly are unprecedented. And ignore the people you know so well: folks like Jony Ive or Jeff Williams or Phil Schiller, and the many talented workers underneath them. Rather, the very structure of Apple the organization — the way all those workers align to create those products that drive those exceptional results — is distinct from nearly all its large company peers. Apple’s Organisational Crossroads
  • We’re feeling incredibly proud with today’s announcement of EVRYTHNG’s partnership with Avery Dennison Retail Branding and Information Solutions (RBIS) that will see us bring at least 10 billion apparel and footwear products to market over the next 36 months as Web-ready physical products. The Big Switch-on:10 billion Apparel Products “Born Digital”

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The field of people and groups working at a practical level to transform organisations and build better business structures for the Twenty-First Century is small but growing fast. If you would like to work with us, for us (or against us!), please say hello 🙂

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