The ‘new’ organizations in the world we are living in

Not so long ago, in the ‘old’ world, our environment was dominated by traditional linear companies that operate in a slow, bureaucratic manner. Nowadays, due to ongoing market trends, more demanding customers and rapid technological developments, our world is becoming ‘smaller’ and more information-enabled. This resulted into the availability of disruptive opportunities for everyone and the creation of a different bread of organizations.

Moreover, these changes have lead to the emergence of organizations that are moving at a fast pace, who are not afraid to take bold risks and experience tremendous growth with a minimum amount of resources in a short period of time. The term ‘Exponential Organizations’ (ExO) has been widely used to describe these firms.

A crucial consideration that attributed to the existence of these organizations is our current generation. It is vital to note that Millennials are more purpose orientated than the previous generation and in continuous pursuit of a more meaningful life (matter over money). The surge of ExO’s has been built on the foundation of these characteristics, in which people are not afraid to speak up and question the status quo. Founders of companies like Uptake, Uber, Zenefits and Slack make it a (personal) mission to challenge and improve these standards through the operations of an organization.

These features are noticeable in the way companies operate and publically communicate to their stakeholders. The use of ambitious and aspirational statements of company purpose has substituted the current, rather conservative corporate statements. These hip statements are aligned with the previous mentioned personal purpose and pursuit of meaning, aiming to capture the attentions of these individuals.

Moreover, this shift from traditional companies to ExO’s, has created a higher level of risk and uncertainty for both (1) well-established companies and (2) new organizations. The guarantee of success for the former mostly through the dependency and reliance of reputations, company age and size, or sales numbers have become obsolete and unstable. For the latter, the business environment has become real battlefield, having to deal with extreme fluctuations throughout their company life cycle, combined with a quick rise and fall experience.

On a personal level, this implicates that we have to learn how to recognize and act upon these disruptive opportunities and also be able to professionally position ourselves within such an ExO.

So in order to make sense out of all this and to leave you with a solid impression of our message, the words of David S. Rose sums it up perfectly:

“Any company designed for the success of the 20^th century is doomed to failure in the 21^st”

This blog post was inspired by the book Exponential Organizations by author Samil Ismael.