We are working in systems designed for production lines. With line managers and workers. Once upon a time this was a good way of designing organisations. Now we need adaptive organisations that move at the speed of change because they are self-organising, with fluid hierarchies led by the best person in that moment to do that job; not someone promoted into a permanent position until promoted up, sideways or out. Examples include Agile, Sociocracy, Holacracy, Management3.0 and more.

Each of these pillars must be optimised for whatever challenges we are facing. Existing organisations have primarily been optimised to face and thrive in a world of technical challenges. Each of the pillars needs to be done very differently to create an adaptive organisation that can thrive in a world of adaptive challenges. An adaptive organisation, with all four pillars at full strength, is the ultimate learning organisation.
Regardless of whether your organisation is optimised for technical challenges or adaptive challenges, these four pillars can only change within the constraints imposed by your organisation’s meaning-making. So the two human pillars must change before the task and stakeholder pillars can change without risk of collapse.