Today companies must be agile and dynamic, if they want to be competitive. Even if they are inspired by the start up organizational structure, the “stable” companies are still considered as “sound”. So it comes naturally to me to wonder if it’s possible to be remain stable though adopting agile approaches.
Paolo Bruttini– on the occasion of the presentation of the book “Coaching: come trasformare individui e organizzazioni” – he asked: why do cities last for millennia and the companies don’t? Because the governements are weak and develop self-organizational processes that make the city stronger. The enemies of a stable enterprise are control and hierarchy.
Mc Kinsey tackles this issue in the article Agility: It rhymes with stability, (by Wouter Aghina, Aaron De Smet, and Kirsten Weerda) concluding that we should know how to be stable “and” dynamic at the same time.
The smartphone is the example used to expound this model.
The stable backbone is formed by the hardware and the operating system, but they are made agile and able to develop new features in a dynamic way through upgradable and editable Apps.
A topical and most convincing metaphor.
Text by Renata Sias
