The New Organization

 

Thirty years ago, Peter Drucker wrote an article called The Coming of the New Organization.

 

My career started at about that same time. I have spent that time as a consultant to many kinds of companies – business-to-business and consumer, products and services, startups and blue chips, manufacturing, education, healthcare, technology, arts, and community organizations large and small. I've worked with many different kinds of teams and started seeing and exploring emerging work patterns. In short, I think the organizational designs of the past are not well suited for future problems.

Today, I use Drucker's piece at the beginning of a class I teach at Northwestern University. I found it to be quite useful with my graduate students as we explore the dynamics of information strategy. I'm no Drucker, but my aim with this project is to explore the dynamics of a New Organization. The ideas here represent my experiences, education, opinions, and collaborators, including my graduate work at the IIT Institute of Design, my teaching at Northwestern and MSU, and especially my many clients and colleagues at Peopledesign.

 

This project is for people who aim to effect positive change in their organizations or institutions. I believe in the power of people to solve problems together. In particular, I am keenly interested in what I consider to be the critical organization issues of our time – health, education, work, and government. 

 

The stakes are high. We must adapt to our current realities to survive and thrive. We are a global community on a pale blue dot. Working together better is our mandate, our responsibility, and our purpose.

 

I hope you find this helpful in our collective pursuits to become ever more effective and humane.