For another year, we spoke to business leaders across media and ecommerce, and the most common topic of discussion was transformation. Executives continue to seek more effectiveness from their teams. However, in 2024, we noticed a marked shift in the root problems leaders were mitigating.

In the past, transformations were mainly technological - shift to the cloud, remote working, continuous deployment, etc. Today's root problems are mainly organizational - a misalignment between talent and business needs.

We believe 2025 will be the year of alignment for business leaders seeking to keep up with new technologies and competitors.

Companies have long followed a familiar path through three life stages towards long-term success: build, innovate, mature.

A company typically spends many difficult years finding product market fit then optimizing their operations. Once things are “working”, a company matures by adding layers and processes to reduce variability and errors.

However, the rate of technological change has now reached such a high rate that there is no time to sit back and enjoy maturity. Incumbents who have long felt invincible will see brash startups come in with much lower cost structures made possible by aggressive integration of AI.

Many business leaders can empathize with the feeling that the same mindsets and processes that keep the company running are blocking the company from evolving. Companies must adapt so that they can maintain and innovate simultaneously. The challenge ahead of business leaders today is to balance where in the organization to insert rigidity and where to insert flexibility. In general, areas of rigidity require more detail-oriented mindsets and smaller teams. Areas of flexibility require more big picture mindsets and flatter teams. The mix of flexibility and rigidity can apply to departments, but also to individual teams.

More often than not, companies find that they do not have the right skills in the right places. This is why it feels like it is more difficult than it should be to make progress. Identifying the misalignment points requires nuanced understanding of individual contributors’ capabilities and the needs of each role. We advise our clients to develop a short-term remediation plan to identify and fill key gaps, while simultaneously working out the optimal organization structure and charting a medium-term path to getting there. These types of re-alignment efforts offer companies a powerful opportunity to reinvigorate teams and boost morale, while improving outcomes.

Note: this post was written without the use of AI.

About Ooblek

Ooblek Partners is a team of practitioners with leadership experience driving innovation and transformative change in some of today's most successful media and e-commerce companies. We specialize in tech strategy, data / AI, cyber security and large-scale platform migrations.