Liquid organizations: from structures to individuals

After many years in Consulting I thought I knew something about changing the way organizations work. These years gave me the theory, the frameworks and a good toolkit. But it was not until I really had to lead these transformations when I broke the surface of what a deep change is about and really understand what is needed to compete in the current accelerated context. Let me share some thoughts from this learning process I’m living first hand...

Structures have an important role in managing and changing large organizations. Structures are essential for budgeting and controlling purposes, they play an important part in terms of people management and they work as the primary governance and accountability model in the organization. The fact is that when structure is the “one and only” governance model, the organization becomes rigid: a “solid” organization built out of silos.

“Solid” organizations were probably very valid in the past, in a static competitive context, but what we are living nowadays, is anything but static. In the current competitive context, I firmly believe in “liquid” organizations as the key to success, based on four main pillars:

Vision and purpose are the main drivers for change. As in team sports, you can be the best scorer in your league, but never in the winning team. Similarly, liquid organizations win because they are driven by a shared vision and purpose, not by individual objectives. When the purpose is clearly there, many defects in organizational structures are resolved through people relationships, instead of “escalations”.

Organizational structure is just one of the governance mechanisms. In a context where, even the nature of sectors is changing, “the right structure” does not exist. Instead, on top of a basic structure, other dynamic governance models are defined to: achieve synergies, deliver the best proposal for a client or leverage all the company assets to launch new alliances. Changes in structure are needed to adapt the company to new needs but, if every challenge requires an organizational change, the company will always be late.

People belong to different communities. Every professional is assigned to a “box”, but works every day with a “knowledge practice” community, delivers projects with different people from different units and rotates between units periodically. The professional is not “owned” by anybody, he/she is a believer and contributor to the overall purpose of the company, who chooses his/her professional path and who is evaluated and promoted, considering all his/her contributions.

Extended and flexible ecosystem. Liquid organizations are also flexible in their frontiers. They build proactively an ecosystem, are open to partners and look for win-win situations, managing "coopetition" with flexibility. Not just with large organizations, but also with small companies, start-ups and with the immense talent available in the freelance community. Ecosystems are essential to accelerate innovation and adapt flexibly to changing demands.

As one last thought, of course leadership is essential to drive the change, but liquid organizations are built upon distributed leadership. Each member of the company has a role in changing the business starting from small behaviours (sharing knowledge, involving a colleague, asking for help, sharing successes...) that make a difference and create a different collaboration environment.

Sounds familiar? Let me know your thoughts...