The Octopus Organization: A Guide to Thriving in a World of Continuous Transformation

Leave large-scale transformation efforts behind. Drive lasting change with a new, nimbler operating model focused on small-scale, continuous change.

Large-scale organizational transformations usually don't work. What originally starts as a way of improving an organization becomes an all-consuming distraction, a value-destroying set of activities that, even as it becomes clear they will fail, must be completed at any cost.

But there is a better way: becoming an Octopus Organization.

The octopus is everything you need your organization to be in these turbulent times: extremely smart, endlessly adaptable, and highly resilient. Its eight arms work beautifully in concert, but crucially, each arm can think for itself if it needs to work independently. Your organization can work as intelligently and as beautifully as these amazing creatures, if you change your operating model.

Authors Phil Le-Brun and Jana Werner, veteran executives and leaders in Amazon Web Services who've worked with hundreds of large firms, show you how to become an Octopus Organization in this hyperpractical manual of best practices from organizations that have left behind the old, broken model of large-scale change and adopted this modern, nimbler model of small-scale, continuous change.

The Octopus Organization shifts to focus on incremental experiments and persistently improves through a newfound ability to evolve and adapt. It is a complex, living system driven by internal capabilities such as talent, relationships, workflows, and purpose, and by external forces such as new technologies and changing customer desires. It draws on the collective intelligence found within the organization to continuously identify the best levers for improvement, creating meaningful change in months, not years.

Providing a new way to think about transformation, The Octopus Organization offers strategies that will empower leaders to turn their organizations into nimble, adaptive, and highly resilient systems.