The Organic Organization is an end-to-end, living, complex adaptive system. This 21st Century Superstructure calls for fully distributed management and leadership and fully distributed decision rights. It forges new, real-time relationships between people, technology, and  processes. The advantages of this new architecture are unprecedented. These include:

Agility and Speed: In today’s dynamic, turn on a dime business ecosystem, more important decision making occurs at the edges of the organization than at the top. Because demand at the edge is ultimately unpredictable, effective response requires new levels of adapatbility and speed. Decision support networks self-organize through a common environment and set of shared objectives to achieve operational results, at the point of need.

End-to-End Visibility: Because the Organic Organization is a distributed model, end to end visibility is finally possible. Not only does this ‘shared situational awareness’ leverage the intellectual capital of entire workforces, but greater transparency is the result, which leads to more intelligent decisions, more adaptive logistics support and supply systems, and more engaged and committed people.

One Seamless System: By recasting the organization as an integrated collection of vital organs with aligned incentives and reward systems – sharing one common aim – optimization can naturally occur. Cooperation and collaboration across the entire value chain is transformed as the friction of traditionally competitive and sub-optimizing cultural behaviors is eliminated.

Knowing Sooner: In today’s fast-moving world of work, even the slightest edge can become a huge advantage. Because operations are integrated and real-time networks are transparent, anticipatory knowledge is possible, leading to competitive advantage and enhanced decision making.

Exposed Sub-Optimizing Behavior: Just as the human immune system auto-reacts to combat damaging agents, so does the Organic Organization.

Flexibility: In traditional mechanistic organizations, a change in strategy is disruptive and inefficient, because it means turning the entire ship—restructuring—with all the attendant functional breakage and relearning costs. Because an organic Superstructure is modular, changes can be made as emergent needs arise, sourcing any needed resources locally – from the cellular level. This unprecedented elasticity is continuous and maximizes responses to discontinuity in the environment.

Unlocked Intrinsic Motivation: The critical mass of new energy that arises from emergent social systems brings people into the equation in a way that for most organizations has never before been possible. By unlocking the intrinsic motivation of distributed managers and leaders everywhere organizations can reach and sustain true Enterprise 2.0 productivity levels.

Continuous Innovation: In the organic organization, creativity and innovation is neither singular nor linear, but a systemic property. It arises from complex and nonlinear interactions between individuals, groups and environmental factors.  An organic superstructure is not divisible – it does not seek out win-lose, but win-win as a truly fundamental operating principle. This provides the organization a new capacity for generating and realizing the full returns from its technologies and innovations – by matching them with complementary expertise in other areas of their business, such as manufacturing, finance, human resources, marketing, and customer relationships.

Super Platform: Finally, adopting an Organic Organization architecture sets the stage for Superperformance. The natural installation of this 21st century optimization strategy as the overarching business aim is the self-evident next step. By establishing the DNA of “process times culture” across the entire value chain, organizations can be recast as living, complex adaptive systems, and management and leadership can be redefined for all time, leading to Superperformance and the long-term sustainability of the organization.