#2 Blue organisations

With the same intention as for the first article, this one also aims at sharing my aha-moments from my Business Transformation Master @ HWZ Hochschule für Wirtschaft Zürich .

This article is about "blue organisations". If you are transforming your business, they might be the answer.

First of all, how to define them? Let's put them into perspective with two other organisation types.

RED organisations: standardisation, quality assurance, pyramidal organisations, top down, command and control, coordination, information, isolation        

GREEN organisations: optimisation, growth, matrix organisation, agreements, cooperation, co-creation, voting        

BLUE organisations: renewal, vision, new business, agility, selforganisation, transversality, responsability, creation, together        

(Sources: D. E. Beck and C. Cowan - F. Laloux)

Each organisation reflects a type and one is not better than the other. Organisations can also be a mix of different types. Key is to determine which is best adapted to the (evolution) needs of the organisation in question.

In blue organisations transversality - circular organisations vs pyramidal or matrix organisations - is key. Here's where new visions are created and adjusted, and plans are made jointly. They are about prototyping, testing and learning. People are responsible, self-motivated and self-organised.

Dan Snowden's Cynefin (decision) framework is very helpful in determining what effort to apply when solving a problem.

Improvement efforts can be assimilated with solving "simple" or "complicated" problems. However, if you are in a transformation effort it's likely your problems need to be tackled beyond the complicated quadrant.

Workshops well-designed

How often have you organised workshops without designing the process and the outcome surprised you, in an unpleasant way? For blue organisations, workshops are very effective working tools.

Observe the following steps and you'll be able to better predict the outcome.

1. Problem definition: align on what problem to solve is, and if it is considered a problem
2. Problem solving: work towards a solution in group
3. Action planning: a solution without an implementation plan isn't worth much
4. Dialogue space: exchange and reflect on a meta-level

Multiple techniques exist for each of the process stages. Leading workshops is actually a lot of fun and has happy customers if well designed.

Just give it a try! :)