CTO Blog

So, an intriguing post by Andy and to my mind a useful distinction has been born to help understand the differences between matrix working and mesh working. It inspired me to this short post back on a possible 'how' that we're seeing some in industry start to adopt.

So, just how can a business create the conditions to result in the best ‘organisation of the Mesh’ to deliver a given outcome? What things does a business need to do to precipitate the pull of the Mesh worker (more free-will; less predictability), rather than drive the push (less free-will; more predictability)? How can these things be brought into the business’ operational strategy?

Perhaps the first thing to recognise is that the Mesh is itself an information system. And our use of business process disciplines – useful for a hierarchy or fixed matrix – doesn’t seem to work so well with a Mesh. Try process modelling a social network!

Further, an information system is a special type of a system. And what’s a system? Systems thinking probably helps most here. And it’s probably worth starting to get some familiarity with this stuff because in the Mesh working world of 2.0 we are dealing with systems day-in day-out.

Systems thinking; information systems – to my mind two areas to begin to get to grips with for today’s CxO wishing to deliver value from Mesh working; or in other words, some useful techniques to help manage what organisations are already transforming into on our watch.