'Tis the Season for Octopus Energy
Every December, teams do a funny thing.
They double down on systems that aren't working while secretly hoping the new year will magically deliver clarity, capacity, and maybe a better attitude.
It won't.
What will help is something I stumbled into this month: an article in Harvard Business Review called "Become an Octopus Organization". It's adapted from Jana Werner and Phil Le-Brun's new book, The Octopus Organization. And yes, it sounds like a marine biology lesson. It's not. It's a mirror. A very accurate one.
Their central point?
Most organizations are structured like heavy machinery: rigid, hierarchical, deeply bureaucratic... when what we actually need is the adaptability of an octopus.
A creature with eight limbs and zero patience for nonsense.
Honestly, it felt personal.
A Few Things We Might Need to Admit Out Loud
Tin-Man organizations (the rigid, over-enginerred ones) don't suffer because their people lack intelligence or talent. They suffer because the structure itself chokes the oxygen out of good work.
A few rebellious truths:
Half your meetings exist because no one was brave enough to cancel the first one. There. I said it.
Leaders become bottlenecks because the system trains everyone to depend on them. It's not ego. It's architecture.
Shared ownership is often code for "everyone assumes someone else is doing it". A bold strategy. Rarely effective.
Many of your processes were designed by someone who left the organization before your current employees were in high-school. And yet here we are, following them like scripture.
December doesn't create chaos. It simply exposes it.
What Octopus Organizations Do
With Zero Drama
According to the research, Octopus organizations do three subversive things:
They remove friction wherever it shows up.
Not soften it. Not tolerate it.
Remove.
It's amazing how controversial this feels in some organizations.
2. They hand real ownership to the people closest to the work.
You know... the ones who actually know what's happening.
3. They treat curiosity as a feature, not a threat.
If "Why do we do it this way?" shuts down the room, you don't have a process problem.
You have a culture problem.
This isn't radical. It's what happens when you stop designing systems to soothe fear and start designing them to support people.
If You Want a More Adaptive Team, Stop Policing Them
Here's what this looks like in the wild:
Decentraize decisions that never needed central authority.
If someone on your team has to ask permission for something they’ve done 500 times, the system is broken, not the person.
2. Make truth-telling safe.
Nothing kills adaptability faster than a team whispering in corners instead of speaking in meetings.
3. Encourage experiments instead of committees.
No more task forces that meet biweekly to "explore possibilities".
Run a 7 day test and see what happens...
4. Spread what works; let the rest die peacefully.
Not everything needs to be "scaled".
Some things just need to be quietly buried.
5. Subtract Relentlessly
A rule.
A step.
A form.
A ritual that only exists to appease a ghost from 2016.
Burn it down (professionally).
Tiny rebellions create real change faster than sweeping initiatives ever will.
Are You Ready for Something Better?
The authors describe Octopus-style leaders as “system architects.”
Not the superheroes. Not the fixers. The architects.
Leaders who don’t patch broken systems with personal effort. Leaders who refuse to be the emergency brake and the engine at the same time. Leaders who decide that clarity is kinder than control, and simplicity beats sophistication every day of the week.
So as you head into the most overstuffed month of the year, here are some questions worth carrying:
Where am I enforcing something that no longer makes sense?
Where have we confused structure with safety?
Where could we give power back to the people who actually know what they’re doing?
What needs to be removed, not improved?
This isn’t about being anarchy-curious.
It’s about choosing the kind of organization that actually works. One that adapts, trusts, breathes, and moves.
One that’s a little less Tin Man.
And a little more Octopus: capable, perceptive, and done letting bureaucracy win.
Eight arms still optional. Courage, decidedly not.
