Yesterday I spoke at the excellent Aerials event here in Toronto, curated by the folk behind The Alpine Review. The theme of the day was organisational agility in a networked world, and there was a wonderful line up of speakers including Mark Raheja from August, the consultancy born from the sad demise of Undercurrent.
In his talk Mark took an articulate canter through the forest of organisational change and team development (echoing and building on some of the themes you can see in Mike Arauz's presentation here). One of the most interesting slides for me juxtaposed organisations that are set up around execution with those that are organised around learning.
I've written before about the importance of developing a learning culture in companies, and there are some critical differences here that speak to some of the applications of what this really means.
Like Undercurrent before it, August don't just talk a good game, they bring to life through their own company too. Mark mentioned their experiment in radical transparency – clicking on the 'public' link in the main nav of their website opens up a Google Drive which contains not only a reference library and toolkit, but details on the finances of the business and the internal organisation and operations. It's really quite something. It's early days, but there's already much to admire about the way in which August seem to be working.
Leave a Reply