Research and Insights from the Center for Effective Organizations
What does it truly take to build a responsive, high-performing organization—one that learns, adapts, and thrives over time? To answer that, Chris Worley unpacks what agility really means—beyond the buzzword—as well as how AI is transforming organizational life and what it takes to lead through today’s complexity.
In this podcast, Chris Worley discusses the importance of agility in modern organizations, how performance is measured, and the challenges companies face today, emphasizing organizational resilience, strategic communication, and the impact of artificial intelligence on business goals. He also explores the complexity of organizations, the evolving nature of strategy and its teaching, the critical role of leadership in a constantly changing environment, and the growing need for social responsibility.
Organizations often give catchy names to transformation initiatives to create focus and signal their importance, but this practice can unintentionally reinforce the idea that change is temporary, leading to disillusionment and cynicism when further changes arise. Instead, aligning efforts with ongoing strategies and framing them as part of a continuous process, like “LRP Activation,” fosters clarity, engagement, and a culture where change becomes a normal and accepted part of organizational life.
In this Org Design Podcast episode from the Organizational Design Festival 2024, Chris Worley discusses common organizational design challenges, the role of strategy, and the impact of power and politics. He highlights the importance of curiosity, trust-building, and psychological safety in leading successful organizational change.
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Why and how organizations change – especially in competitive and dynamic environments – are central questions in organization theory and strategic management. Organization agility (OA) has emerged as a construct to describe the way organizations adapt quickly to continuous disruption and change, and theories explaining how OA works and produces performance outcomes have proliferated.
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with Dr Susan Albers Mohrman, Prof Christopher G. Worley and Prof John Boudreau
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with Dr. Philip Mirvis (Babson), Dr. Susan Mohrman (USC), and Professor Christoper Worley (Pepperdine)
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Adapting to digitalization and to the COVID-19 pandemic has stoked interest in the design and operation of agile organizations. But what gets lost in the search for the right structure or the best work methods is how agile organizations change. Agile organizations are...
Research conducted by CEO’s Dr. Chris Worley at USC’s Marshall School of Business, in partnership with goetzpartners – a German advisory firm – and the NEOMA Business School in France, offers insights into the movement of companies’ agility levels. (A full version of...
Welcome to the companion website to Assessing Organization Agility: Creating Diagnostic Profiles to Guide Transformation by Christopher G. Worley, Thomas Williams, and Edward E. Lawler, III. Here you will find the resources mentioned in the book. For the online...
The STARLab acronym “Socio-technical Action Research Lab” points to a specific type of lab which is designed to create socio-technical action research. This paper outlines the distinctive features of the socio-technical action research lab. First, it outlines the ideas that provide a foundation for STARLab, along with the essential concepts of tacit knowledge and design thinking. Next, it provides a brief background of the origin of the design lab methodology. Last is a description of how the lab works – planning, environment, and process.
STARLab Consortium
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The STARLab (Socio-Technical Action Research Laboratory) addresses the gap between the rapid advances in digital technology and the slower evolution of the social systems that are being impacted. Technology advances carry the potential to fundamentally change the nature of work, of the employment relationship, of organizations, and of societies. STARLab’s goal is to accelerate the generation of knowledge about how to design socio-technically integrated organizations to simultaneously address economic and human needs.
STARLab Consortium
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