Nordic Management Lab

2020 has already shown us the meaning of the abbreviation “VUCA”, and it’s now, more than ever, that our organisations need to sense and respond quickly.

Nordic Management Lab is a cross-organisational space to work with trends and concrete tools for dealing with the uncertainty of the “now”, while future-proofing your organisation – making it fit for humans and fit for the future.

We’re going to need to find a way to reinvent our organisations through the tough times, and there is work to do – a recent poll indicated that only 17% would agree that their organisation is truly agile and adaptable. In the same poll, 87% agreed that they are holding back at work and have more to give. We think that tapping into that incredible human potential might be the key to this challenge.

Maybe you’re inspired by Frederic Laloux’s “Reinventing Organizations”, Gary Hamel’s “Management Innovation” or Simon Sinek’s “Infinite Games”. But no matter what, all current dialogue about organisational development points in one direction: We are on the brink of a new paradigm of work. A new paradigm that enables us to solve the most worthwhile societal challenges in a more human way. The next question is “what should we focus on first?”.

Our experience points to three core areas to focus your attention on:

1. Reinventing management:

When was the last time you talked about your organisation’s management model? We need to make our organisations more fit for humans and fit for the future. This requires us to move past our bureaucratic ways and reconsider the culture, structure and processes within our organisations.

2. Change as a social movement:

When it comes to the types of complex, adaptive challenges that our organisations are faced by, an exclusively top-down approach to problem-solving just isn’t going to cut it anymore. Instead, we need to expand our toolbox for change to be more inclusive and be driven from all across the organisation.

3. Evolutionary leadership:

In the process of reinventing management, leaders will be required to hold the tension of the old and the new – as well as what it takes to let go of power so that leadership can be distributed. It will take self-awareness, situational awareness and courage to lead an organisation through a transformation to become fit for humans.

We can be inspired by the “Vanguard” organisations in this space of “teal”, “self-transforming” or evolutionary organisations, but there is no blueprint for how the organisation of the future will look. We need to prototype our way forward, test and learn continuously and find the path that best suits our organisation where it is now.

Do you dare to prototype your future self? We’d love to hear from you.

Don’t wait for the movement. Move.