Aaron Dignan

The Ever Better Organization Managing Complexity and Uncertainty in the 21st Century

We sit at the precipice of a completely new world. Exponential technologies are transforming our economy in unpredictable ways – democratizing power, concentrating wealth, connecting everyone and everything, and challenging our assumptions about rights and privacy. In response, new ways of working and organizing are gaining popularity, spurred on by Generation Y entrepreneurs who are willing to question everything about what an organization is and how it should operate.

The change we face technologically and culturally is nothing compared to what’s coming. To be ready, Dignan contends we need to focus on making our teams and companies more adaptive, more exponential, and (perhaps counterintuitively) more human. In this presentation he offers a path to readiness that applies to anyone, from the new hire to the chief executive.

Strength of Digital

Showing viewers how digital companies dominate every industry, Aaron Dignan explains that digital doesn’t necessarily have to be software in the most literal sense of the word, but a mindset for business, in his digital keynote.

Dignan walks us through an innovative way of looking at how companies operate and orient their organizations, agendas and initiatives, and how if we change the way we think about them and structure them more efficiently they are likely to make more of an impact.

Taking advantage of this trend in his digital keynote, Dignan shows examples of leading digital companies and what we can learn from them. He also points out that the operating system that seems to work best in literally every industry is digital — the dominant players and fastest growing companies that shape the market place of every industry are always the digital companies.

The Responsive Organization

Tesla, the fastest-growing stock in the automotive industry and maker of the safest car ever made, is run by a software engineer. Amazon has a market cap three times bigger than Target, in spite of the fact that it operates at a loss. Valve is able to run a multi-billion dollar gaming company with a few hundred employees without job titles or managers.

What is happening? Technology—particularly software—has had a destabilizing effect on legacy organizations everywhere. Today’s fastest growing, most profoundly impactful companies are using a completely different operating model.

These companies are lean, mean, learning machines and are organized around a new pattern: the ability to evolve in real time. In this presentation, Aaron Dignan will speak about his research on organizational responsiveness, his work on the front lines with companies like GE, American Express, and PepsiCo, and why companies everywhere need to change the way they work and organize in order to succeed in an age of uncertainty.