Q10: Emergent Resilience: The Future of Organizations
Over the past few years, our organizations have changed significantly. What it all means for years and decades ahead is yet to become clear — which is why we see an evident need for the topic to be front and center, in the interest of ensuring a positive trajectory for organizations and society. This has compelled us, together with our core partners in Quorum1 and Emerge Tech Lab, to ignite a conversation around what we might need to take our organizations to the next level — and we want more of you involved. We hope that this article, in some shape or form, conveys why this is important — by first considering the topic from the perspective of a recent crisis we’re all familiar with.
What did the pandemic teach us about organizational resilience?
Although past crises (financial, environmental, medical…) have left their imprints, the constraints imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted, on a different scale, how frail our organizations are. Governments and global guardians weren’t responding fast enough to changing conditions. Once decisions eventually were made, they in turn affected people and businesses in ways that threatened their wellbeing, livelihoods, and very existence. And, such a domino effect was accentuated by our relative powerlessness, with life-defining decisions being made on our behalf at a rate that simply was insufficient.
As implied, this is nothing new — but the most recent conditions pointed out how severe the consequences can be. Businesses going bankrupt; children losing out on crucial development and education; people losing jobs and, worse yet, lives; much of which could have been prevented in some shape or form. It’s for these reasons, and many more, that it is important to explore what can be done to sidestep meltdowns in the future.
So, what do we attribute it all to? One could make the case that many of our crises are exacerbated by a real lack of resilience on many levels. Our organizations, both in the private and public realm, suffer from information silos and rigid structures that leave us with sub-par outcomes. In times of crisis, we also saw the worst of top-down structure where the bottom is left without actionability because the top cannot make up its mind. And, if there is any interest in gauging the perceptions of the people said structures seek to serve, we have equally had real difficulties doing so in real time.
But, to avoid painting an all-gloomy picture — over time, we have found some good in the bad. For one, some organizations have completely changed the way they do things and successfully stayed afloat (or, dare we say, thriving) as a result. On other ends, individuals have found out more about what drives them and how they (would like to) function. Some have drawn logistical conclusions and found that they prefer to work from home; others have made more philosophically profound discoveries and realized that they want to stop treating work as a mere means to an end. Point being, that our organizations and structures are actively being called into question by the individuals they are comprised by.
What are these “emergent” organizations?
Acknowledging the doubts, we are faced with choices around how to take organizations to the next level — a mission that the above seeks to characterize as crucial. These choices are made increasingly difficult by the ambiguity of what could be considered the “right” trajectory. There are many known unknowns here, and equally many lines of thought. Some companies (usually those with strong hierarchies) are, for instance, ruthless about people coming back to the office; others are deploying entirely new structures such as decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) that operate on a completely remote basis and try to draw upon the collective intelligence of a given entity in decision-making. It’s worth noting that this example is only accounting for one of the many dimensions and accompanying contrasts pertinent to organizations.
For now, at least from our standpoint, defining the form of organization that arises from these challenges remains difficult. We can’t put a finger on it, and find that it’s likely too early to do so. Right now, emergent organizations (EMOs) are what given participants want them to be. By virtue of even making such a statement, an implied axiom is some bottom-up emergence of leadership and structure being part of the equation. If members want a largely decentralized decision-making structure, then so be it. Equally, if members want a strict hierarchy, they shall have it. Or, do they perhaps want a middle ground between the two? We hear them, loud and clear.
The issue is, that only in some of these iterations can bottom-up emergence remain a staple over time. With DAOs, the natural setup is to make the bottom-up emergence the standing paradigm — with hierarchies, even if the given structure was decided and iterated upon using a bottom-up approach, to go back to elected executive(s) and say “we want to turn this into a DAO” once the structure is set… just isn’t going to happen in most cases. That is an extreme proposition, we know — but we hope it conveys the point that some structures are better positioned to change in tandem with their intended audiences over time. Is that also a component of what we would call emergent organizations? Is emergence a recurring activity or paradigm within a structure, and if so, to what extent? Is this actually what makes organizations more resilient — or rather more scattered — over time? The truth is, we have no clue.
Where we stand on all of this, is not necessarily at either end of the perceived spectrum. Emergent organizations may not have to differ completely from what we currently have. Rather, as might have been the case in the past equally, small shifts in favor of certain dynamics over others might do the trick. More collaboration than competition; more decentralization of structure; better transparency mechanisms to fast-track trust building; maybe that’s most of it? Or, maybe these are just faulty presumptions and incrementalism is exactly what we don’t need (what we say in the next paragraph will support this exact point). Finding out either way does, however, require more diversity in how organizations are brought up, and set up to operate.
Do we need better structures, frameworks, or something else?
Intuitively, we’d believe that the purely bottom-up form of emergence belongs at the highest level of order (government), and that market dynamics have the ability to manage what happens below. If the rigidity embodied by large corporations and traditional companies alike is what’s holding our organizations back, we’d like to believe market dynamics could get those points across and uplift organizations that try new things and move better as a result. Equally, the sort of organizations that do not fulfill a market need, either in what they offer externally or internally, could get washed away by the relative demand for organizations that accommodate more of what we look for. And now, with higher expectations on companies’ operations (in addition to those placed on products and services) becoming increasingly focal, one could perhaps hope for things to play out accordingly. Unfortunately, as it stands, it’s not quite that easy.
The relatively laissez-faire approach is predicated on the ability for individuals to have a choice in voting with their feet, which if society does not have a universal floor could be deemed a pseudo-choice. Most people can’t just leave or boycott an organization whose values and activities they oppose and want to stop. It is thus inevitable that the dynamics we’re discussing here extend far beyond the scope of first-order effects resulting from organizational change. If we lose track of the macro perspective arising from the organizational structures to which we conform and by which we abide, this endeavor is likely a non-starter. So, maybe we need more radical structural change after all.
On the flip side, it’s not all about pre-defined structure. In information systems, we very often talk about social embeddedness and how it somewhat transcends every structure that we put in place. The tasks we deploy, the technology we use, and the structures we erect, are all subject to the people who interact with each dimension and the resulting relational component of value creation and organizational harmony that organically surmounts the axioms by which we compose our systems. This is why mindset and values — some of which occasionally contradict the structures we deploy to enable certain behaviors — are so important to consider in our quest to unveil the nature of organizational resilience.
It’s for this reason that ecosystems have become the theoretical lens, or framework, for what we want to move towards — they are contextually sensitive. Apart from assuming some level of openness to collaboration, ecosystems don’t question how complementarities come about and endure — rather, they simply recognize that such establishment can take completely unanticipated trajectories. If entities (people and organizations alike) coordinate in such ways that unique additional value beyond the sum of the individual parts is being generated, you have an ecosystem. Period. Equally, ecosystems require one to recognize the many interdependencies that help unleash unique value — all while being fully mindful of our relative inability to explain and interpret the dynamics underlying said interdependencies, and the contextual constraints that result from them.
With that said, ecosystems are not a blueprint — rather, they represent an open-ended values framework. This is why each organization — us included — needs to work on adding context to the equation and deriving their own interpretation of an ecosystem to account for the objectives that fit their vision — in FuzeQube’s case, that’s meaningful innovation in all its shapes and forms. From the get-go, as part of our initial roadmap, we suggested that we need to think more holistically about how value is generated, in whichever context. This same mindset should, in our view, be applied toward inquiry into organizations and what they permeate through their many dimensions (and despite their many limitations). This is what we would like to see a collective, dedicated effort toward next.
Where do we go from here?
As you may notice, this article isn’t going to cut it. To be able to draw more comprehensive conclusions around organizational resilience and what it could enable for entities and people alike, these questions need more concerted attention, inquiry, and (above all) attempted practice over time. We need people and organizations, at whichever level of desired commitment, to contribute to the topic. After all, the results are sought in the interest of making organizations better for all of us — whatever that implies. We could talk about what an emergent organization is in theory — but all too many things work in theory, only to fall short in practice. In the context of organizations, we often have too much to lose with the latter.
Questions of the nature brought up in this article are core to our mission — and we’ve been lucky to have collaborators in exploring them. Over the past few weeks, FuzeQube has had the privilege to delve deeper into the topic of emergent organizations together with core partners Quorum1 and Emerge Tech Lab, equally dedicated to providing nuanced perspectives to the realm in the interest of enabling resources through which to tackle the change needed for our organizations to do more, and be more.
To jumpstart our cohesive initiative, all three organizations have put together their own articles (with this being ours) to present our respective stances on emergent organizations, and what questions we are keen to explore. We highly encourage you to read their articles to get an idea of the many angles that can be taken, and why we all consider this conversation crucial:
Emerge: Shaping the Future: How Emergent Organisations Challenge Traditional Hierarchies
Quorum1: Life Beyond the Org Chart: The Radical Future of Emergent Orgs
In addition to discussion-based inquiry, the three parties are actively putting theory into practice by taking novel approaches to organizational change, and trying to enable complementarities where they have previously been difficult to establish. These initiatives will position us to get better perspective and data on the dynamics and behaviors such change induces, and perhaps draw some more well-founded conclusions around the characteristics of emergent organizations, and how they potentially enable more resilience for entities and the people who inhabit them. But, we need more.
If these are issues you, as an organization or individual, are passionate about — we want you to be part of the conversation. As we deepen our inquiry into emergent organizations, we are in active search for collaborators to enhance our research and implementation efforts, and would be honored to have more of you — those who care about the future of organizations and want to leave your mark — sign up through this Typeform and join us in that endeavor.
And, if you’re still contemplating, no rush — we’re ready when you are. 😊
Bardia Bijani & Marco Kogler
Managing Partners, FuzeQube Group
