Funny how those who claim to be optimistic about technology are simultaneously incredibly pessimistic about human agency.

What started as a half-baked idea has grown into something more serious. The Organisational Dysfunction of the Day series is becoming a book. 63 dysfunctions so far, explained through Open Systems Theory. The series keeps going, and so will the book. Launching July 2026. Follow along on Leanpub.

Interested in organisational dysfunctions that you see and curious about what could cause them? I have this thread going as there are surprisingly many to choose from. I could not make the threading work as I wanted here on Bluesky, mostly due to the length of the posts. Sorry.

Organisational Dysfunction of the Day The external verdict Context: The organisation wants an independent assessment of the codebase. An external firm is brought in, given access to the repositories, and asked to produce a report. Sometimes the teams are interviewed individually beforehand. ...

“the moment the topology becomes a target, it stops being a good topology” 😂 🎯

I had missed this series of posts .. well worth a read!

The next James Bond should be Gary Oldman in his Jackson Lamb persona.

Organisational Dysfunction of the Day Tyranny of the majority Context: The workshop is wrapping up. There are too many ideas on the wall, and a decision needs to be made, so dot voting is introduced. Everyone gets three dots and places them on their favourites. The tallied results are clear, ...

Question: why does 'Male' come before 'Female' in dropdowns? Last time I looked, 'M' comes after 'F' in the alphabet. Oh, yes - it's the patriarchy again, encoded in a computer screen... (Also: why is there no additional option? same reason)

Socio-technical systems are in the process of being hit by the largest techno-solutionist hammer ever invented.

His takeaway is one that others are repeating. AI is a tool, not a replacement for engineers. If you use it to automate the toil and amplify human learning, you're on a sustainable path. If you use it to replace human thinking then it's probably not.

Recording, slides, chat and even meeting minutes from my session at the #STS Roundtable's Making Work Worth Doing Series are available: "Real World Examples: Designing Workshops Using #OpenSystemsTheory" stsroundtable.com/webinars/mak...

It's becoming increasingly clear to me that this bubble won't burst before making significant damage across all industries and sectors.

Spot on. Knowledge work thrives on judgment that no playbook covers. Self-management unlocks the adaptation routine work can script.

Since it is a day off for most of you and I do not do my dysfunctions series then, here is a small response I often get against OST and that even if it worked in manufacturing (most of the examples are from there), IT is so special it can't work. My response (and #OST):...

Had a long chat with people from a previous client yesterday, including a talk at their Show & Tell, largely triggered by this series. Definitely continuing, and I already have 50+ ideas lined up, so you may well be tired of them before I run out.

Blog post on OKRs: einarwh.no/blog/2026/04...

It's easy to miss the big picture when deep in domain details. @trond.hjorteland.com talk explored how to connect local models to the larger system strategy, helping us 'see the forest for the trees.' Watch or listen: buff.ly/kLLYT6k

Organisational design has quietly moved up the leadership agenda. For a long time, this sat in the background, something to “deal with later”. That’s getting harder now. That’s why we wrote the 2nd edition of Team Topologies → https://www.teamtopologies.com/book

Organisational Dysfunction of the Day Psychological safety as a patch Context: Your organisation may have realised that psychological safety is of the essence for good collaboration. Maybe it came out of a retrospective, maybe someone read the Google re:Work study and Amy Edmondson...

Organisational Dysfunction of the Day The frozen middle Context: Assuming you are a team member in an organisation that has gone through an agile transformation. Your team have been given more autonomy and is expected to self-organise, make decisions, and deliver value faster. Yet...

I'm starting a new series on Conway's Law 🙈 Published: Beyond the Shades of Conway's Law What started as merely note-taking in the form of "Shades of Conway's Law" became a talk, with additional reading, research, and more connections. This is work in progress 😅 thinkinglabs.io/articles/202...

“How do we design our software system so that our teams can be autonomous?” is a very common question I receive during training or consulting. In this episode of Satisfying Software, I dig a bit deeper into team organisation with @joaorosa.bsky.social. [1/2]

Pro-tip: follow Trond on Mastodon too :-)

This year is the 10th edition of @dddeu.bsky.social, and I wanted to share my personal journey during the next couple of weeks. This conference and the people organising it (spoiler alert, my colleagues) have been an important in my professional career for the past 10 years. [1/n]

Most 'transformation' fails because it tries to change behaviour without changing constraints. People aren’t resisting; the system is working exactly as designed.

Valuable data you provide here, @kenny.weave-it.org, and, as you say, it sadly confirms the rut many organisations have gotten themselves into by not doing the work needed for truly empowered agile teams.

So if you want teams to make intentional architecture decisions, either centralise those decisions fully (DP1) so everyone knows where they stand, or do the actual work to move towards DP2 with clear boundaries. >>>

That's exactly what I see in my own work. A team takes a decision they believed was theirs to make, management overrules it without conversation, and trust erodes. The boundaries were never real. >>>

Blog post: einarwh.no/blog/2026/04...

Exactly this. The structure problem shows up fast in org design. You can rename your teams 'product squads' but if they still report to a project manager who answers to a PMO, you've changed the vocabulary and nothing else. The accountability model is the actual transition.

I had a chat with Claude, as one does these days, and asked what a good argument could be made for #OpenSystemsTheory that could catch the ears of top management, and the response was quite nice:

I hope you don't miss this opportunity.

Imagine your team doing agentic coding in the codebase serving mills of customers without understanding how it works, and you get paged at 2 am, and since no one knows how the system works you need to ask LLM to tell you, and it gives you, wait for it... a PLAUSIBLE answer what might be wrong.

Organisational Dysfunction of the Day Management in team workshops Context: Workshops are for many a unique opportunity for people to get together and collaboratively work on a problem or a design of something, be it EventStorming, Retrospectives, Design Sprints and such.

Organisational Dysfunction of the Day Retrospectives Context: You and your team have decided it's time to do a retrospective prescribed by the Agile methodology you are using. You all see the use of it and contribute with a lot of ideas and concerns about your work. ...

Organisational Dysfunction of the Day Passing the buck Context: Experienced situations at work where you and your team want to decide on something, and someone points out that you should check with the grown-ups first? Passing the buck to someone else to make the decision and take responsibility.

waking up to the absolute best and absolute worst of humanity. no in betweenies today

I managed to make a little dent with my series of posts on #SocioTechnical principles of the day, and though it was due to do something similar, but this time in the context of modern organisations (especially #agile ones) and the modern version of #STS, known as Emery's #OpenSystemsTheory ( #OST).

I managed to make a little dent with my series of posts on #SocioTechnical principles of the day, and though it was due to do something similar, but this time in the context of modern organisations (especially #agile ones) and the modern version of #STS, known as Emery's #OpenSystemsTheory ( #OST).

Brilliant to join @trond.hjorteland.com and @ruthmalan.bsky.social today on this call! A very patient and helpful exploration of this canonical paper, and an intelligent and appreciate audience - recommded! :-)

"Telling a group that it is responsible for its own work and at the same time appointing a ‘leader’ who is also responsible for the work of the ‘group’ induces a crisis of responsibility. Who is actually responsible for coordination and control?" (1/2)

Discussion will be led by @trond.hjorteland.com . You might know Trond Hjorteland from his talks on sociotechnical and open systems at conferences like DDDEU, and this one, hosted by @virtualddd.com www.youtube.com/watch?v=_B7A...

More context on this #Artemis II image: * This is the night side, lit by moonlight. You can see city lights in Spain & Portugal, & a sliver of day at lower right * The Sun is entirely behind Earth, which makes it a kind of solar eclipse, but w/ Earth doing the eclipsing instead of the Moon: ☀️🌍🚀🌕

Very happy to have the #ArtemisII livestream so I can spend at least a little time pretending I live in a better universe where this is the biggest news of the week. The biggest news involving rockets, even.

Really looking forward to this discussion on Monday April 6th! @trond.hjorteland.com brings his background as an active practitioner and curious inquirer into sociotechnical and open systems, and it’s already a lovely group who have indicated interest! We’d love to have you join us :)

It's my own fault for using ChatGPT as a search tool, but this really made me laugh. "...with an important nuance..." is sublime 🤌

This talk from Birgitta Boeckeler was my highlight of the Agile meets Architecture conference - really happy to see it made public now. I listened a second time it was so good :-) youtu.be/qB7rsbDfmQg?...

"ADRs just become a dump of opinions." It's one of the more common reactions when introducing the architecture advice process. And honestly? It's not wrong. But here's the thing: that's not a problem the advice process creates. It's a problem it makes visible. >>>

AI pilots are easy. Scaling isn’t. Check your org’s readiness with the free self-assessment. You will get your results across 5 dimensions and also more details in a PDF by email 👇 joaorosa.consulting/is-your-company-ready-to-scale-ai #AI #Scaling #OrgDesign