Moving beyond Hierarchies with Polar and Bubble organizations

By Giuliano Zorloni

In recent decades, companies have adopted outdated, rigid, bureaucratic organizational behaviors, characterized by an excess of procedures and control, despite an external world undergoing unprecedented change. In response, some companies have resorted to programs and consulting aimed at overcoming this organizational obsolescence, experimenting with "matrix" or "flat" reorganizations, Six Sigma interventions, "lean organization" initiatives, leadership development programs, and most recently, smart-working programs. However, these efforts have rarely achieved real results, and after a while, the same companies often embark on new transformation processes, following the same rules as before and achieving similar outcomes. The main reason for these failures is that all these initiatives were and are designed and implemented using the same mindset they aim to combat. Hierarchical structures reinforce themselves through behaviors that the organization itself seeks to dismantle. In an endless loop, programs follow one another, and with them, the failures.

WITHIN THIS BOOK YOU WILL DISCOVER

- How to create and grow a company based on the new organizational paradigms.

- How to combat the existing reality through new organizational processes that render the current ones obsolete.

- What "polar" and "bubble" organizations are.

- Our OKR-based addressing methodology.

- How to discover talent in the company.

- What is a High-Performance Culture.

- Our Open Equity and Virtual Stock plan.

- Yorange, the software application for managing change.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Giuliano Zorloni
• Release date: May 19, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224789825

Giuliano Zorloni

Giuliano Zorloni is a digital executive and senator, he has spent the last 30 years as a passionate manager in companies such as Siebel, Oracle, NTT Data, Accenture. As an entrepreneur he has founded several successful companies, not least Symphonie Prime recounted in this book. He graduated in Electronic Engineering from Milan Polytechnic and studied Design Thinking at INSEAD, culminating in the writing of his first book 'Design Thinking in 2 hours'. Adjunct professor at the Faculty of Psychology of the UER in Rome, he lives between Rome, Milan and Munich. In his spare time, he is interested in entrepreneurship and lean organization, as well as helping young people with their projects and start-ups. Writing and painting, as well as playing golf, complete his day. He is currently founder and co-CEO of Symphonie Prime.

Book preview

PREFACE

New market scenarios and the transformation of the socio-economic-cultural landscape require new thought patterns and approaches that may seem crazy to most.

They are just the expression of those chasing the future and trying to imagine it.

The shift toward an exponential economy has, inevitably, generated cracks in the already fragile and obsolete labor market, which is still too anchored in traditional logic and resistance dictated by fear of change.

Meanwhile, globalization has pushed more and more companies in the Western world to turn to low-cost professionals located around the globe.

Offshore teams of programmers and designers take shape in Ukraine, Romania, Belarus, India and Pakistan shifting the axis of business to the East.

Furthermore, the advance of artificial intelligence and the spread of exponential technologies has accelerated the growth of the intangible economy, in which the added value of the average worker has been significantly reduced.

Today, software platforms, know-how, and data represent the distinctive value in the marketplace and belong to a small and inaccessible circle of workers.

Much of the workforce lacks the appropriate skills and considers technology a threat.

One lives the nightmare of robots replacing humans.

Partly it is true - even if it belongs more to a captivating plot of an apocalyptic film - partly it is what man wants to see.

Surely all jobs that require repetitive or programmed action will be done by applications, virtual assistants, and machines driven by artificial intelligence.

The human-machine struggle is unequal.

Jobs that require intellect, relationship, emotions, values, coordination, and intuition will resist.

In short, everything that distinguishes a human being from technology.

Not to mention all the new jobs that will arise because of technology itself.

The ongoing digital revolution requires, without mincing words, a strong re-skilling of the existing workforce.

Peter Diamandis, a visionary entrepreneur and expert on exponential organizations highlights in one of his books Abundance how all of humanity is facing a future full of abundance in which new opportunities emerge thanks to exponential technologies.

We live in an age of change in which the only certainty is the ability to adapt and evolve.

Faced with this new paradigm of work that has unhinged the certainties on which organizations have been founded since Taylorism, it becomes necessary and reasonable to hypothesize frontier organizational models.

Workers demand greater dignity, flexibility, and integrity.

Work is part of everyone's life, and well-being lies not only in finding a balance, but in integrating the two dimensions.

The 2020-2022 biennium has made known what for many had already been predicted: a record - and growing - number of people are leaving work despite the complexities of the historical period.

A phenomenon related to the growing belief that life is too short to be wasted on demoralizing work.

The famous Millennials - now managers and soon decision makers - and the next generation are looking for meaningful work where they can express their talents, pursue their ideas, work in a dynamic environment, collaborate in teams rewarding flexibility, respect and mental and physical well-being.

Traditional, bureaucratic organizations are slow, shortsighted, detached from reality, unexciting.

They are everything a young recent graduate or an enterprising intern does not hope to encounter.

Never.

But sadly, it happens.

Extraordinary enterprises built for the future and for people are few and far between.

If you look around, so much has changed. We can do almost anything with our smartphones.

Video calls reduce the distance with our distant friends and family.

We can buy everything and receive it at home after a few days thanks to a few clicks.

Soon we will be passengers in driverless cars. Education has finally met the Web.

Even the health system is discovering the power of open data.

I could go on and on. But one thing is still stuck in the past: management.

Jurgen Appelo, an expert on happiness at work, writes:

Management is too important to leave to managers. Right?

It seems that many professionals have not yet come to this conclusion.

Frederic Laloux has managed to summarize the evolution of organizations in a fantastic book that identifies a model to be inspired by, that of Teal Organizations, founded on purpose, empowerment and autonomy of decision-making by individuals.

Several experts in Organizational Theory have remarked over the past two decades on the centrality of people and—at last—what was locked up in essays and manuals has found light in the application of models that favor self-management, distribution of decision-making power, collaboration and contamination with the external environment.

Organizations must be increasingly responsive, adapting to change.

Antifragile.

And migrating from a model based on competition and top-down dynamics to a more decentralized and collaborative one is the big challenge for those who want to design the future of organizations.

Before we had DAOs, Decentralized Autonomous Organization, entities regulated by the people in them and based on tokenization of relationships.

A well-known model in blockchain and all to be discovered for today's organizations.

The future of work is at stake today, and Giuliano Zorloni's account is an encouragement to dream big, thinking about more distributed, chain-free organizations.

Moving beyond hierarchies draws the line between organizations projected into the future and those destined for survival or, in many cases, extinction.

Andrea Solimene

Co-Founder and CEO Seedble

CONTENTS

PREFACE

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ZERO

NOTHING HAS CHANGED

ORIGIN OF THE SPECIES

ORGANIZATIONAL DEVELOPMENTS

WE DON'T MEASURE THE PAST

TOWARDS THE PURPOSE

ROME: SPRING

SYMPHONIE PRIME

EIN SPAZIERGANG ZUM MARIENPLATZ

POLAR ORGANIZATIONS

BUBBLE ORGANIZATIONS

APPARENT WIND

BURIED TALENTS

HIGH PERFORMANCE CULTURE

OPEN EQUITY PLAN

OPEN EQUITY W/BLOCKCHAIN

YORANGE

PRAGMATISM OF THE «HERE AND NOW»

CONCLUSIONS

ANNEXES

CHAPTER ZERO

Agood Blackjack player knows that to stay in the game, one must keep count of cards.

«Let's count cards».

Raymond replies to the prostitute who approached him at the casino bar asking what he is doing in Las Vegas.

In reality, few people can truly count cards like the protagonist of Rain Man.

The brilliant students of the MIT Blackjack Team tried this in the 1980s and successfully swept numerous gambling halls.

Following their success, other college teams attempted to replicate their achievements.

However, sooner or later, everyone reaches a point where they must stop counting and shuffle the cards.

This is the moment when we decide to abandon our natural propensity for order and control and open ourselves to the real possibility of making a change.

Uncertainty must turn