Flexible Organisations

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Is self-organisation or employee empowerment over? We don’t think so. But why do so many attempts to put responsibility in the right place fail in so many cases? We think because the implementation doesn’t get proper attention.

But how do you make it work? That’s what our paper Building an agile organization is about. Enabling self-organisation and a healthy workplace. An agile organisation will be best positioned to identify and implement its own solutions to constantly evolving challenges in the internal and external environments.

Our paper is written for people who want to make a difference. Whether you are a CEO, manager or consultant. Whether you work in or for a small or large company, profit or not for profit.

The writers are Ysbrand van der Werf and Fons Groen. They crossed paths by chance. And they both have over 30 years of experience managing and observing profit and not-for-profit organisations.

The article describes an approach to enable corporations to become agile and self-organising, guided by seven core components, which must all be implemented to be fully effective. Although these core components resemble other recently published insights on organisational structure and guidance, they are unique in their simplicity and cohesion.

We outline our insights in this paper. The approach we propose was largely developed empirically, but it is underpinned by various theories, and it happens to work when put into practice.

Curious? You can download the full paper for free here. We really appreciate your input. Please use the contact button to give your feedback. And if you like, we can discuss our insights later.

Ysbrand van der Werf

Fons Groen