In today's business world, where everything happens at super speed, how does a company survive these accelerated changes? Author of the book Adaptive Space and Amazon Web Services Vice President for talent and Development, Michael Arena, discusses how creating Adaptive Spaces in the workplace can help build agile teams. Over the years, agility has been one of the keys that help companies survive the rapidly changing market.

Listen to his conversation with host Greg LaBlanc about finding the right balance between exploration and exploitation in the organization. The third space, the adaptive space, should provide an environment where team members can explore new ideas within the company's processes and structure. 

Michael explains to us the various roles people play in creating these adaptive spaces. He and Greg discuss how brokers, connectors, energizers, and challengers work together to build products that uncover new growth opportunities for businesses. Take note of how AWS applies the Two-Pizza team approach, helping them to become versatile and ready to respond to changes quickly and effectively. 

Learn from the case studies and best practices of companies like General Motors, G.E., and leaders like Steve Jobs and Thomas Edison!

Episode Quotes:

Defining the Adaptive Space: 

"It's really a relational and emotional, and sometimes physical space that you create inside of organizations for ideas to flow freely. And for people to have the degree of freedom to really drive adaptation inside of the organization. So, there are times where it's about physical space, but in today's world, that's less and less true. It's much more about the space to be able to connect with people inside your team or across teams. You know, really, it's the safety necessary or the degree of freedom necessary for people to explore new concepts and new ideas."

Why are so many organizations designed to shut down ideas before they get off the ground?

“So what happens is, you know, bureaucracy, hierarchy, rigor, standardization, all those things begin to set in across time and it makes it harder and harder for us to accept new ideas. Virtually everything that's built up is to drive and scale the success of the core handful of things. So the introduction of a new thing is noise. The introduction of a new thing adds risk, you know, to the core thing that you're trying to do. And it's the, it's the innovator's dilemma. You know, that Clayton Christensen's talked about for years and research for years. That's what happens is I call them the antibodies, but the antibodies begin to kick in and they prematurely stifle ideas, before they can bear new fruit.”

How do you maintain the separation between exploitation and exploration? Can you be in the same places with the same people to do both? Or, is it important to kind of keep these things apart?

"So what happens is, you know, bureaucracy, hierarchy, rigor, standardization, all those things begin to set in across time, and it makes it harder and harder for us to accept new ideas. Virtually everything that's built up is to drive and scale the success of the core handful of things. So the introduction of a new thing is noise. The introduction of a new thing adds risk, you know, to the core thing that you're trying to do. And it's the, and it's the innovator's dilemma. You know, that Clayton Christensen's talked about for years and research for years. That's what happens is I call them the antibodies, but the antibodies begin to kick in, and they prematurely stifle ideas before they can bear new fruit."

When matching flow orders can be automated, why is there a need for humans to be at the center of these processes?

"Even the creative processes could be automated. I guess there are two ways I would think about this. I think of technology as an enabler for this process. I don't think it can supplement it. And I think part of that is because of who we are as human creatures. Can it probably someday? Well, I don't know. I think like we are by nature; we create by nature, we build by nature. We want to connect. We are social beings at our core, and we want to connect with other people. Serendipity flows across those connections. At the end of the day, individuals have to interact with individuals. And I think we're seeing a lot of that in a virtual world right now we can talk about virtual. It feels to me like we fast-forwarded the future work five to 10 years in this last year. And I think what we learned a lot about is the importance of human connection and the essential nature of us to connect in different ways to continue to create and value and build things."  

How can companies encourage individuals to contribute? How can companies foster an inside-out, instead of a top-to-bottom culture and approach to innovation?

"I do think that there's this opportunity to do this in a very emergent manner. I think that can happen naturally if leaders set some tone or provide some degree of freedom, you know, to enable it at the top. That's how I tend to think about it is, you know, go to the odds, find a friend, follow the energy. And then eventually, whenever you really start to be convinced about this thing, and you build it and hopefully prototype something so that it's not just a figment of your imagination, but it's a real live prototype. Then you go try to pressure, test it and bring it to a lead. Try to get it resourced and supported. And if you're lucky, your network begins to do some of that work for you because it's now not just your idea. It's our collective idea. And it's much easier to influence and drive change adoption around the new concept. If you've got critical mass or at least some larger group of people invested in it with you."

Show Links

Guest Profile

• Michael Arena on LinkedIn
• Michael Arena on Twitter
• Michael Arena, Ph. D. 

Michael Arena’s Work

• Adaptive Space: How GM and Other Companies are Positively Disrupting Themselves and Transforming into Agile Organizations
• Adaptive Space Official Website
• Adaptive Space: Shifting from Structural to Social Design