Brave New Work: Are You Ready to Reinvent Your Organization?

The alternate approach to traditional bureaucratic, hierarchy driven, rules bound, centrally controlled organization is purpose driven, and collective intelligence empowered, self-managing-teams based organizations. The central theme of this book is that the latter form of organizations, which it refers as Evolutionary Organizations, are more effective in delivering sustained results and better equipped to meet the challenges that are essentially complex in nature. Several theories from time to time have emerged that espouse the importance of basing organizations working in Theory-Y assumptions, and also recognize the diminishing effectiveness of Fredrerick Taylorism in designing modern day workplace practices. What makes this book a valuable addition to this ongoing mission to make organizations more purpose-driven, adaptive, transparent, engaging and with healthier workplace, is its structured evaluation of twelve dimensions that form the operating system of the organization. The Operating System Canvas covers broad aspects like Purpose and Strategy to specifics like Meetings & information sharing within the organization- describing how each of these dimensions needs to be relooked at, supported by Thought Starters and alternate practices derived from Evolutionary Organizations. The key questions at the end of each dimension are intended to help self-diagnose own organization status and opportunity for redesign. The questions, however, could have been lot more provocative and challenging! Given the pervasive role technology is playing in all aspects of organizations functioning, it would be good to consider technology as another dimension in the OS canvas. Evolutionary Organizations may be leveraging technology to liberate and empower nor to control and monitor workforce as against traditional organizations. The expected emphasis on managing change well, is reflected in whole section being devoted to change – but does contain interesting additions to mostly programmatic and mechanical traditional approach to managing change using kotter model or its variants: The importance of prioritizing tensions (limiting to 7), proposing alternatives to address tensions, conducting experiments and scaling the successful ones. Dignan underlines the importance of experiments in learning, which works well provided the purpose of experiments are made explicit and we do not associate the outcome of experiments with the effectiveness or smartness of the leader guiding the experiment, as often seen in traditional organizations. This is where leaders ability to promote enabling culture and provide psychological safety to teams play pivotal role. Isolated adoption of practices from Evolutionary Organizations to traditional organizations seldom work- the change agenda needs to cover the whole OS canvas. Book is rich in resources, be it references to original works, list of evolutionary organizations and practical ideas using games that comes handy to any evangelist that would like to provoke his organization to take the evolutionary path, starting with relooking at the existing operating system. Mr DIGNAN has done lot more than enough to stoke disenchantment among readers that our organisations are capable of more! And the NEW BRAVE WORK means progress over perfection and courage over caution.

Brave New Work, by Aaron Dignan, is that wonderful mix of aspiration and “down in the trenches” practicality which gives a sense of both what can be achieved how to get there. His approach is compelling. He talks of the death by a thousand (paper) cuts of bureaucracy, and how this virus that pervades our organisations came about through an inability to accept that people can decide for themselves, and a pernicious belief in the organisation as a machine. Complicated, but predictable nonetheless. This metaphor is demonstrably false. Organisations are complex, not complicated. They cannot be predicted and their workings cannot be controlled. The advent of bureaucracy is an attempt to control that which should not be controlled, the make it predictable. Where this is achieved, it comes at the substantial cost of the organisation itself becoming paralysed. Instead of these rule-bound organisations, top heavy and lumbering through the world, Dignan proposes the creation of organisations that are nimble, fulfilling, able to respond and indeed shape the fast moving world around them. The organisations Dignan describes would be anti-fragile and highly profitable. To get there requires an understanding of systems, and specifically complex adaptive systems. It also requires a huge dose of humility from those at the top of the organisational chart, as they must cede absolute authority. It means that our organisations become “People Positive” and “Complexity Conscious”, and we pay attention to the organisations’ Operating System (OS) Dignan develops these notions further throughout the book, first describing their influence across 12 domains of the “OS Canvas” that have been demonstrated to be important in shifting organisations to become “Evolutionary Organisations”: Purpose Authority Structure Strategy Resources Innovation Workflow Meetings Information Membership Mastery Compensation Each domain is quickly sketched out with an anecdote, some ideas across a broad spectrum of the management literature, and then thought starters. This is a highly approachable book written in an engaging way. It is very easy to read, and very hard to put down. It gets the weighting just right between being superficial and being so in-depth that you get bogged down in the detail. It makes a compelling argument for moving toward an evolutionary organisation, with plentiful doses of reality to guard against naive optimism. Its closing Part describes how to gently make the transition, to introduce the change so that it is consistent with the ultimate end point of an evolutionary organisation. Which domains are worth dabbling in? How might that be done quickly? The role of small, live test beds for change. The spread of change via contagion rather than decree. This book is important for people in positions of power, as they can transform their organisations simply by shifting their own role from one of control to one of creating and maintaining space for their people. Giving their people and their organisation the space to evolve into their best version possible, and then continuing this evolutionary process. I could go on. I really enjoyed this book. It’s a hopeful book, and it’s a practical book. I found myself reflecting on all of the various places I have worked, including as a leader myself, and thought of where it fell down, where the Brave New Work principles could have been tested. A book that I highly recommend if you think that work could be better, and you want to enable that change.

After having read "Reinventing organizations" by Frederick Laloux, Dignan's book has given me new and powerful insights and practical tolos to identify how to leverage Organizational OS components to deepen into real changes within the organizations. A must read book if you want to help to your organization to get into complexity concious and human centered companies.

This is an important book; of all the books I have read on the topic, it has the clearest, most honest look at what it takes to build a system that will support one of the most effective organizational approaches. It is a straight forward look at what it takes in terms of executive thought and strategy, enablers (called the OS in the book), and process to correctly combine and apply these to create an emergent / employee empowered style of operation. At the core of this method is the decision for leadership to surrender much of their power and place it in the hands of the workforce. This is a journey, not a destination. Many will read the book, try to apply it and fail because they are using the methods mentioned in the book without adopting the thinking necessary to support it. According to a McKenzie report, only about thirty percent of corporate changes succeed. Do to the nature of the changes being asked for in Brave New Work, I would expect the success rate to be substantially less. In today's corporation, it takes a strong brand based on image, charisma, and personal and immediacy in team execution to rise. This is typically the kind of person who prefers to be in direct control. In the Brave New Work world, it takes someone who is willing to allow goals to meander, small failure for learning, and the ability to see, understand and develop the front line of the organization into a fully functioning, transparent, skilled, knowledgeable, semi-autonomous team of achievers. This is control and power of a different kind and it is typically not found in people who have fought their way to the top and are anxious to preserve their rank and position. This is much akin to the professional politician we find today who is interested in maintaining office and accruing power compared to Jefferson's "citizen statesman" who serves out of duty and need with no real desire personal gain apart from the reward of producing a good-of-the-whole outcome. Before embarking on a journey to implement any portion of this system, the change implications for leadership, policy, and the people must be fully considered and a roadmap laid out so the guiding group has a hypothesis formed to when they are on track, when they are off the path, and when they need help. All major changes I have observed require a mentor to coach the people involved out of their current way of thinking. Anything less results in incremental improvement at best. At worst, it results in a relabeling of current practices, restructuring, and a retrograde of results in response to the resulting confusion. Read the book and seriously consider its claims. Then take a long look at if you are trying for a quick win to spike profitability and productivity or if you are willing to take the proposed journey to build a system that will make an exceptional company in the long run. Either path is a valid choice but Brave New Work will not accomplish the first but provides the seeds for the second.

I was already an Aaron Dignan fan from his work at The Ready having used an earlier version of the OS canvas. Brave New Work takes it to another level. Well thought out and presented, this is both a great resource on the theory and why we need organization change but also provides a practical and tested framework for actually getting started. If you work for a legacy organization you will find yourself nodding your head repeatedly and highlighing passages - but best of all this book provides hope that we can reinvent our organizations and do our best work ever.