Organizations succeed over time only when they adapt to the speed and character of external change. Every aspect of an organization — from how it operates and is structured to how it is led — must match the current yet ever-shifting context in which it exists.
Greg Mably
What Defines a Successful Organization?
In our age of discontinuity, you need the ability to continually shift.
September 19, 2022
· Long read
Summary.
The characteristics that help an organization succeed have changed over the past century. While a highly structured, top-down management style used to be companies’ preferred approach to organization, the internet has made this structure (and the layers of hierarchy that developed over decades) irrelevant. In this article, the author discusses how a successful organization today moves from mass markets to markets of one, routinely replaces core competencies, shifts to team-based structures, and manages from the outside in, among other features.