The Empathy Advantage

4Upgrade Your Operating Models

After many years of planning, Boston embarked on the Big Dig in 1991, a massive 16‐year construction project that rerouted roadways around the city. Not long after the first shovels began moving dirt, Chris moved away from Boston after living there for more than a decade.

Each time she returned to Boston – flying into Logan Airport and renting a car, she'd shove the rental agency's map in the glove box, confident she knew her way around. Even though, over time, the rerouted streets look less and less familiar, she continued to drive confidently, certain that the next intersection would lead where she was hoping to go.

It took years of return trips to Boston before Chris finally admitted that she was lost, that her old map didn't work anymore.

Business leaders today are not so different. We have had a way of working, organizing, and leading that worked well enough when everything was familiar. These models and maps are comfortable; after all, they got us where we are today.

As Alfred Korzybski, the father of general semantics, aptly noted, “A map is not the territory it represents. But, if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness.”¹ Borrowing liberally, we would suggest that organizational structure is not the company it represents, but, if correct, powers a company toward its usefulness.

For much of the last century, the dominant organizational structures optimized for productivity, often at the expense ...