Episode Overview

Podcast: HBR IdeaCast
Title: Moving Beyond the Slow, Hierarchical Organization
Date: December 9, 2025
Host: Adi Ignatius (and Alison Beard)
Guest: Jana Werner, Executive in Residence of Enterprise Strategy, Amazon Web Services

In this episode, Adi Ignatius and Alison Beard speak with Jana Werner about why most organizations are struggling to adapt to today's volatile business environment and how the traditional, hierarchical model often impedes real progress. Drawing from her recent HBR article and book, Werner offers the “octopus organization” as a metaphor for agile, responsive, and resilient companies. Practical insights explore how to balance autonomy and alignment, encourage innovation across the business, and fight bureaucratic tendencies.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Problem with Traditional Hierarchies

• Organizations Are Stuck in the Past

  • Modern companies still mirror early 20th-century “factory” models: designed for standardization, specialization, and control (02:45).
  • “They’re built on a foundation of permission… designed to de-risk and be efficient. Yes, we are trying to evolve… But many larger traditional organizations I work with… are finding it hard.”
    — Jana Werner (02:53)
  • Evolution typically happens in “pockets” rather than as sustained, whole-company change.

• Lip Service to Agility

  • Companies think they’re progressing by adopting Silicon Valley habits, but often simply “tack on” new tools and lingo to old structures (03:58).

The Octopus Organization Metaphor

• Why the Octopus?

  • The octopus is a living organism marked by distributed intelligence, sensory awareness, and rapid adaptability.
  • “They have neuroclusters in each of their arms. So they don’t just have a central brain, but they have decentralized intelligence.”
    — Jana Werner (10:40)
  • Werner was inspired by the documentary My Octopus Teacher and through learning about the octopus’s ability to shapeshift, adapt instantly to its environment, and let its arms act semi-independently in pursuit of a common goal (10:00).

• Designing Companies as Living Organisms

  • Move away from “command and control” and towards connection, agency, and true adaptability.
  • “It’s about creating agency more than this permission setting culture we currently have.”
    — Jana Werner (04:23)

Making Customer Centricity Real

• From Words to Action

  • Many organizations claim to put the customer first, but their budgets and actions say otherwise.
  • “You look at their budget and 80%… is actually spent on keeping the lights on, on infrastructure, on internal change.”
    — Jana Werner (07:13)
  • Leaders who are effective:
    • Engage directly with customers (e.g., Indra Nooyi riding delivery trucks).
    • Push real decision-making to those closest to the customer.

• Empowering the Frontline

  • “Giving them the opportunity to think about how they solve problems for their customers and not pushing those decisions up the chain.”
    — Jana Werner (08:40)
  • Innovation should not require massive up-front approval processes; small experiments and rapid iteration are vital.

Balancing Autonomy and Alignment

• Accepting Some Mess

  • Leaders should provide clarity and focus on what matters, then let teams solve those problems how they see fit.
  • “Accept that there will be a bit of duplication and … messiness. But we rather accept this for the gain of more innovation and more speed and customer centricity.”
    — Jana Werner (12:11)
  • Traditional silos are less productive; instead, companies need horizontal alignment and shared goals.

• Pitfalls of Siloed Leadership

  • Leadership teams act in silos, each executing separately (“team of leaders” vs “leadership team”), which fragments the pursuit of organization-wide goals (12:47).

Culture of Innovation: Spreading, Not Scaling

• Innovation Shouldn’t Be Isolated

  • Innovation labs can separate “real” business from innovation, hindering diffusion.
    • “That puts innovation to the side. …a lot of this innovation then doesn’t reach the customer.”
      — Jana Werner (15:22)
  • Instead, “give broad access to innovation mechanisms... enabling organizations across the piece to innovate.” For instance, Amazon’s Prime originated from an employee in a non-innovation role (15:53).

• Building Everyday Innovation

  • Provide everyday tools and performance incentives for innovation at all levels (16:55).
  • “We expect this in our annual performance reviews… Innovation can be small.”
    — Jana Werner (17:07)

• Avoiding “Monkey on a Pedestal” Syndrome

  • Don’t build infrastructure (the pedestal) before solving the central challenge (teaching the monkey, i.e., the tough core problem).
  • “His point is get to ‘no’ quickly. Tackle the most difficult and challenging problems first, and then you get to ‘no’ quickly.”
    — Jana Werner recalling Astro Teller’s advice (19:32)

Fighting Bureaucracy and Stagnation

• Persistence of Bureaucracy

  • Bureaucracy is a natural tendency (“Parkinson’s Law”: organizations grow bureaucratic in their sleep by 5-7% per year).
    • “It requires discipline...organizations… take a commitment to say, we have to constantly groom.”
      — Jana Werner (21:06)
  • Examples: Google imposed deliberate constraints (“positive friction”) to rein in sprawling processes (e.g., hiring).

• Measuring Bureaucracy

  • The “Bureaucracy Mass Index”: assess time/resource waste and take active steps to reclaim efficiency (22:29).

Ownership & Accountability: The Pig and the Chicken

• Ownership Culture

  • Organizations contain many “chickens” (involved, giving partial sign-offs) but far fewer “pigs” (fully accountable, owning outcomes end-to-end).
  • “You need more pigs in your organizations. Maybe don’t call them pigs. At Amazon we call them single-threaded leaders… But the idea is someone who really injects energy and urgency into initiatives, is passionate about something, can dive deep into issues, move forward.”
    — Jana Werner (26:29)

• Leadership’s Hardest Shift

  • Leaders must actively let go of authority, create clarity of context and priorities, and become “architects of the system.”
  • “A third of her [Dame Julia Hoggart’s] role is to continuously create that clarity into her team and to keep recreating it.”
    — Jana Werner (28:29)
  • Invite curiosity where leaders are less naturally comfortable, especially around technology.

The Tyranny of Too Many Priorities

• Single-Minded Focus
  • The word “priorities” was singular until the 19th century—a reminder that true focus is about hard choices.
  • Example: Benedict Bohr (extreme mountaineer/CEO) tackles only what’s absolutely needed—carries 7.4kg on the mountain vs. typical 50+kg, a metaphor for ruthless prioritization.
    — Jana Werner (30:20)
  • The “Hell Yes Test”: Only pursue initiatives that generate genuine unanimous enthusiasm.

Immediate Steps for Leaders

• Start Small, Stay Curious
  • Begin by listening: “Start listening and asking more questions than they may be used to. And that’s a bit uncomfortable.”
    — Jana Werner (32:21)
  • Tackle “anti-patterns”—areas where the organization feels stuck, shoulders drop, or people laugh off discomfort.
  • Support teams in tackling tough spots, help surface hidden assumptions, and “light a thousand small fires” rather than command change top-down.

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Old Model:
  “They’re based on models of Frederick Taylor and co – a bit of a rusting construct built on standardization, specialization, control, individual performance focus, compliance, essentially predictable outcomes.”
  — Jana Werner (02:45)

• On Distributed Intelligence:
  “My 10 year old daughter told me they have neuroclusters in each of their arms. So they don’t just have a central brain, but they have decentralized intelligence.”
  — Jana Werner (10:40)

• On Messiness in Innovation:
  “We actually accept that there will be a bit of duplication and … messiness. But we rather accept this for the advanced gain of more innovation and more speed and more customer centricity.”
  — Jana Werner (12:11)

• The Pig and the Chicken:
  “There’s a difference between those that contribute and those that are really committed and accountable… we say, you need more pigs in your organizations. Maybe don’t call them pigs.”
  — Jana Werner (26:29)

• On Priorities:
  “Did you know by the way, the term ‘priorities’ only existed in singular until the 19th century? ...how can you go back to focusing, to getting brave, and having less priorities.”
  — Jana Werner (30:00)

Timestamps for Major Segments

• 00:43 – 03:58: The challenge of outmoded, factory-model organizations
• 04:23 – 05:17: Why the octopus metaphor and shifting from command-and-control
• 07:09 – 08:26: Moving from lip service to true customer centricity
• 10:00 – 11:01: The octopus’ distributed intelligence and what organizations can learn
• 12:11 – 13:12: Balancing autonomy and alignment—coping with messiness, silos
• 15:22 – 16:36: Rethinking innovation labs; making innovation everyone’s job
• 18:28 – 19:53: Avoiding the “monkey on the pedestal” anti-pattern, focus on core problems
• 21:06 – 22:29: Bureaucracy’s inevitability and the need for active countermeasures
• 26:29 – 27:16: Ownership culture—turning “chickens” into “pigs”/single-threaded leaders
• 28:03 – 29:48: Leadership’s fundamental shift: clarity, letting go, curiosity about tech
• 30:00 – 32:04: Ruthless prioritization, lessons from extreme mountaineering
• 32:21 – 33:21: Simple, actionable first steps for leaders

Actionable Takeaways

• Shift focus from “permission to innovate” to real agency at all levels.
• Build distributed, cross-functional capabilities; push decision-making closer to the customer.
• Measure and fight bureaucracy as an ongoing discipline.
• Foster an ownership culture by clearly designating accountability for outcomes.
• Innovation should be democratized—not isolated in labs.
• Ruthlessly clarify and reduce real priorities—if it’s not a “hell yes,” it’s a “no.”
• Leaders: create ongoing clarity, let go of control, and stay curious—especially about new technology.

Recommended for: Anyone seeking practical ways to make their organization more nimble, customer-focused, and innovative in the face of continuous transformation. If you want to turn your hierarchical “tin man” into an agile “octopus,” this conversation is essential listening.