#21 - Version your organisation

Working at the edge of new technology means constant change. Understanding, roles, processes, and even core goals can feel like they're shifting under your feet. The constant adaptation can easily devolve into a state of perpetual chaos, where stability is a forgotten luxury. I've been there, more than once.

What I found is that the real problem isn't so much the pace of change. It's the lack of rhythm. There's no shared clock. No agreed moment to look up and re-evaluate the changed context.

Faced with this, our team adopted a practice from the world of software product development: we started versioning our organisation. Instead of endless, reactive tweaks, we moved to a yearly cadence for major updates and a quarterly one for minor shifts. Every year, we would intentionally design and launch the next version of ourselves: Org v2.0, then v3.0, and so on.

Suddenly, chaos became structured evolution. The rhythm gave us stability. It created a known moment and ritual for change. One that matched the annual budget and strategy cycles. It turned the anxiety of constant change into a predictable and anticipated event.

But its real power was how it invited collaboration. By treating our organisation almost like an open-source project, the annual "release" became a moment for everyone to contribute. Team members could propose changes to our structure, refactor processes, and help define our focus for the year ahead. It fostered a deep sense of shared ownership.

Versioning your organisation gives you the best of both worlds: the stability of knowing when things will change, and the flexibility to make sure those changes are smart and co-owned. When the world won’t stop changing, the best way to harness its energy as a leader might just be deciding when and how to change together.