An org model for human & artificial intelligence

Outcome Agency

A fluid org model for the agentic age

Org goal

Customer value and higher innovation, by keeping the cost of reconfiguring and learning low in fast-changing environments, with complete, outcome-oriented Driving teams.

HIGHER PURPOSE SHARED PRODUCT STRATEGY TEAM OF TEAMS SUPPORTING FUNCTIONS co-creationco-creationco-creation co-creationco-creationco-creation Customers Driving teamDriving teamDriving team Driving teamDriving teamDriving team Leadership & mentoring Guardrails & funding Shared services & platforms Processes & tooling
Tap any part of the model

  1. Higher purpose

    Why we exist and do this work, not just revenue targets. Ambitions and strategy formulated by leadership, owned by the Driving teams.

  2. Driving team

    Full mandate to drive customer outcomes, and the skills to do it, which it keeps expanding.

  3. Direct customer contact

    Driving teams work with customers, not through proxies. They see whether the outcome happened, and that sharpens the shared strategy.

  4. Shared product strategy

    One strategy for the whole customer domain, shared by all Driving teams. It sets which customer problems matter most, so teams take on the most valuable work first, not the most familiar.

  5. AI agents

    AI makes learning a new area cheap, so a Driving team can move to new work fast. Agents extend what its people can learn, decide and deliver. Augmented teams can move to new work without a long ramp-up.

  6. Co-creation

    No team owns a component. Driving teams co-create customer value across the broad customer domain, with their agents and each other, moving to where the most valuable work is.

  7. Team of Teams

    All Driving teams in one customer domain, guided by one shared product strategy. Together they own the outcomes for the whole domain. Teams form, regroup and move to where the most valuable work is, so the shape changes as the learning of the value shifts.

Guiding principles

  1. 1No team owns a component for the long term. Fixed ownership freezes a narrow view of a customer domain that keeps changing.
  2. 2Driving teams co-own the whole customer domain and work together to design the best solutions.
  3. 3A Driving team volunteers for one high-value outcome and works only on it for a short time, collaborating with other teams as needed.
  4. 4When that work is done, the team widens its focus again and looks for the next high-value outcome: exercising its outcome agency.

The Outcome Agency model builds on:

  • Adaptive TopologyAlexey Krivitsky & Roland Flemm, Org Topologies™: teams of teams own the whole customer problem, directing, doing and delivering in one unit.
  • Agentic ShiftOwn outcomes, not output. Co-create the whole. Zero distance to users. Guardrails, not gates.
  • Beyond BudgetingJeremy Hope, Robin Fraser & Bjarte Bogsnes: no annual budgets. Guardrails, not approval gates.
  • Creating Agile OrganizationsCesario Ramos & Ilia Pavlichenko: design structure to carry out strategy, not adopt a framework.
  • Dynamic Shared Ownership (Bayer)Mission first, management last. 95% of decisions at the edge, 90-day cycles.
  • FaST AgileRon Quartel: fluid teams around one backlog.
  • Fluid OwnershipJürgen De Smet & Viktor Grgić: no fixed claim on components; teams act directly on customer needs.
  • HumanocracyGary Hamel & Michele Zanini: fewer layers, people close to the customer.
  • LeSSCraig Larman & Bas Vodde: an organizational system for product development, aimed at maximizing an organization’s adaptiveness.
  • RenDanHeYi (Haier)Zhang Ruimin: micro-enterprises, zero distance to users.
  • Sociocracy 3.0 / HolacracyDecision rights within guardrails.
  • Team of TeamsStanley McChrystal: shared purpose and fast decisions.