Establishing a coherent and plausible north star is essential for guiding organizational direction, but it's challenging to create one that is both feasible and beneficial. An ineffective north star can lead to a lack of coordination, making it difficult for bottom-up initiatives to enact change. Official plans that lack credibility can be even worse than having no plan at all, hindering the ability to reconfigure and undertake local experiments. While a north star is necessary for coordination and achieving better outcomes, it doesn't have to be excessively planned. However, creating a truly good and workable north star is a rare achievement, as it's not intuitive and entails making constraints legible to many. Without a feasible path to the north star, organizations risk designing impractical solutions, while solely exploring the adjacent possible can result in aimless direction. A balance between the two is essential for success.
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Why do organizations get slower as they grow? What can organizations learn from slime molds? What are the advantages of top-down organization versus bottom-up organization, and vice versa? How can organizations encourage serendipity? What use are doorbells in jungles? Why is it so hard for organizations to set a "north star" that is at once plausible, coherent, and good?
Alex Komoroske has over a decade of experience in the tech industry as a product manager focusing on platform- and ecosystem-shaped problems. While at Google, he worked on Chrome's Web Platform PM team, Augmented Reality in Google Maps, and Ambient Computing. He's fascinated by how to navigate the emergent complexity within organizations to achieve great results. You can find some of his public writing at komoroske.com.
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