Why I’m Now Writing as The Intelligent Organisation

Over the past few years, my thinking has shifted. I’ve spent much of my career exploring leadership, technology, and change. Increasingly, that exploration has been shaped by a single question:

What does it take to stay in the game when the game itself keeps changing?

That question led me to the idea of the Intelligent Organisation.

Not intelligence in the academic sense, nor as a function of individual brilliance. Something more fundamental - the ability of an organisation to remain viable in an increasingly disruptive world.

In other words, organisations need to behave more like adaptive living systems than inert machines.

Up to now, much of my writing has been under my own name. That made sense when the work was more exploratory, ie a mix of ideas, reflections, and observations.

But increasingly, it became clear that:

• The unit of change is not the individual, but the organisation

• The challenges we face are systemic, not personal

• And the conversation needs a clearer frame

Writing under my own name started to feel diffuse.

Because it names what is required. We are moving into a world where:

• Disruption is continuous

• Stability is temporary

• Past success is a poor predictor of future viability.

In that world, organisations don’t just need better leaders or better strategies, they need to become more intelligent systems. This is fundamentally an organisational design issue.

That means rethinking:

• How decisions are made

• How information flows

• How people and technology work together

• And how the organisation behaves as a living, adaptive entity.

This publication will explore:

• How organisations can prepare for an unknowable future

• What we can learn from living systems

• How organisations can become more intelligent, even when they weren’t designed that way.

If you’re receiving this, it’s because you’ve engaged with my work at some point.

You haven’t been added to something random. This is simply a more focused expression of the same exploration.

If it’s not relevant to you, you can of course unsubscribe at any time.

The aim is not to provide answers, but to sharpen the questions — and, in doing so, move us closer to organisations that can survive and contribute in a more uncertain world.

Ade McCormack