Being wrong might hurt you a bit... But being slow will kill you.

The time has come for organisations to embrace small, autonomous teams.

A recent McKinsey report, Unleashing the power of small, independent teams, summarises my thoughts on the matter eloquently:

“senior executives must move the company—and themselves—away from outmoded command-and-control behaviours and structures that are ill-suited to today’s rapid digital world.”

But how? This “command-and-control’ behaviour is embedded in to the DNA of many organisations and in the UK, I believe the problem is further exacerbated by our excessive use of consultants and agencies. It’s pretty difficult not to beat the drum to a big money strategic initiative (maybe from McKinsey, sorry!)

The Big Challenge

Let's put this in context. In a professional sports team you spend the majority of your time training, building skills, you have coaching staff etc. In fact, you only spend a fraction of your time competing.

In contrast, attitudes to professional development for office workers couldn't be more different. To their credit, most businesses set aside training budget however, this is typically spent at the discretion of the individual and must be squeezed in between the real business of answering emails and attending meetings.

To add further misery, this is against a backdrop of a widening digital skills deficit (soon to be crisis thanks to Brexit) which, according to the Open University, is going to cost UK companies an extra ￡2.2 billion a year.

Moving Forward (Fast)

The time has come to up-skill yourself/team/organisation.

The lean and agile process and frameworks you heard are for programmers have now developed to such an extent that complex departments and organisations of all sizes can benefit.

Unfortunately, this cannot be implemented by a monthly subscription to the latest project management software. It’s time to invest in the mindset, skills, tools and processes necessary for change. Here's a short video about how we did precisely this at Moonpig:

If you’d like to hear more about how we teach the mindset, process, skills and tools of rapid experimentation let’s start a conversation!

Thanks for reading.

P.S. Let me know in the comments who the title quote came from?

P.P.S. If you’d like to read more about the power of education and reorganisation, check out "Self Disrupt for Growth” by Rebecca Moore, Growth Director, EMEA at Skyscanner.