Agile. Lean. Horizontal. Cell-based. Non-hierarchical. There is no shortage of hype and buzzwords when it comes to the modern organization.
The truth is organizational change is hard. And this difficulty is multiplied at scale. How can large, global operations coordinate and adapt fasts without devolving into analysis paralysis? How do you build together with virtual teams that will never meet in person and may not really have a common language? How do you keep pace in a rapidly evolving market? How do you design your organizational structure for hypergrowth? How do you stay relevant?
Every team that goes past a certain size struggles with some or all of the above questions. Yet, not embracing profound transformation will almost certainly lead to frustration, lack of productivity and, eventually, irrelevance.
Impact organizations are particularly old-fashioned: top-down, heavy footprint, high-overhead, low-tech, slow-moving. This creates exciting opportunities for anyone – large or small – who is willing to embrace profound transformation all the way and evolve into a leaner, smarter, faster-moving organization.