I hate to make predictions due to a sentence that stuck in my mind (“prophecy meant for dummies”), but I’m engaging in many discussions on the future of organizations and work, and I want to share my point of view based on the past, current trends and my logic.
I believe that the near future organization will move into a collection of smaller autonomous groups that together create more decentralize and distributed organizations. Those decentralize, distribute and eco-autonomous organizations will push decision making to groups and the groups will delegate decision making to individuals in the group that perform specific functions. Central control function, such as audit, legal, IT and HR will be part of hybrid groups. Groups will not follow the current departmental or expertise base structure (silos). Groups will be a hybrid collection of expertise needed to reach a purpose or perform a function.
The glue for those organizations will be a common purpose that is the energy that pulls all the groups and people together. Revenue, profit and investing revenues in growth will still be a focus, but the purpose will be the glue, the gravity that makes the future organization an organization.
