The characteristics that help an organization succeed have changed over the past century. While a highly structured, top-down management style used to be companies’ preferred approach to organization, the internet has made this structure (and the layers of hierarchy that developed over decades) irrelevant. In this article, the author discusses how a successful organization today moves from mass markets to markets of one, routinely replaces core competencies, shifts to team-based structures, and manages from the outside in, among other features.
Buy CopiesOrganizations succeed over time only when they adapt to the speed and character of external change. Every aspect of an organization — from how it operates and is structured to how it is led — must match the current yet ever-shifting context in which it exists.
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Ram Charan serves on seven private and public boards across the globe and is author or coauthor of 36 books and several HBR articles on corporate governance. He is the co-author of Boards That Lead: When to Take Charge, When to Partner, and When to Stay Out of the Way.
