# Outcome Agency

> A fluid org model for the agentic age. An org model for human & artificial intelligence, by Alexey Krivitsky.

## Org goal

Customer value and higher innovation, by keeping the cost of reconfiguring and learning low in fast-changing environments, with complete, outcome-oriented Driving teams.

## Guiding principles

1. No team owns a component for the long term. Fixed ownership freezes a narrow view of a customer domain that keeps changing.
2. Driving teams co-own the whole customer domain and work together to design the best solutions.
3. A Driving team volunteers for one high-value outcome and works only on it for a short time, collaborating with other teams as needed.
4. When that work is done, the team widens its focus again and looks for the next high-value outcome: exercising its outcome agency.

## The model

Customers at the center, inside one shared product strategy, surrounded by six overlapping Driving teams with AI agents. Together they form a Team of Teams, held by supporting functions (leadership & mentoring, guardrails & funding, shared services & platforms, processes & tooling) and a higher purpose.

- **Higher purpose**: Why we exist and do this work, not just revenue targets. Ambitions and strategy formulated by leadership, owned by the Driving teams.
- **Driving team**: Full mandate to drive customer outcomes, and the skills to do it, which it keeps expanding.
- **Direct customer contact**: Driving teams work with customers, not through proxies. They see whether the outcome happened, and that sharpens the shared strategy.
- **Shared product strategy**: One strategy for the whole customer domain, shared by all Driving teams. It sets which customer problems matter most, so teams take on the most valuable work first, not the most familiar.
- **AI agents**: AI makes learning a new area cheap, so a Driving team can move to new work fast. Agents extend what its people can learn, decide and deliver. Augmented teams can move to new work without a long ramp-up.
- **Co-creation**: No team owns a component. Driving teams co-create customer value across the broad customer domain, with their agents and each other, moving to where the most valuable work is.
- **Team of Teams**: All Driving teams in one customer domain, guided by one shared product strategy. Together they own the outcomes for the whole domain. Teams form, regroup and move to where the most valuable work is, so the shape changes as the learning of the value shifts.

## Builds on

- [Adaptive Topology](https://www.orgtopologies.com/topologies): Alexey Krivitsky & Roland Flemm, Org Topologies™: teams of teams own the whole customer problem, directing, doing and delivering in one unit.
- [Agentic Shift](https://agenticshift.org/): Own outcomes, not output. Co-create the whole. Zero distance to users. Guardrails, not gates.
- [Beyond Budgeting](https://bbrt.org/): Jeremy Hope, Robin Fraser & Bjarte Bogsnes: no annual budgets. Guardrails, not approval gates.
- [Creating Agile Organizations](https://creatingagileorganizations.com/): Cesario Ramos & Ilia Pavlichenko: design structure to carry out strategy, not adopt a framework.
- [Dynamic Shared Ownership (Bayer)](https://www.bayer.com/en/about-us/explore-bayer/our-mission-and-strategy/dynamic-shared-ownership): Mission first, management last. 95% of decisions at the edge, 90-day cycles.
- [FaST Agile](https://www.fastagile.io/): Ron Quartel: fluid teams around one backlog.
- [Fluid Ownership](https://navigatingcognitiveload.com/docs/patterns/pattern-2-fluid-ownership/): Jürgen De Smet & Viktor Grgić: no fixed claim on components; teams act directly on customer needs.
- [Humanocracy](https://www.humanocracy.com/): Gary Hamel & Michele Zanini: fewer layers, people close to the customer.
- [LeSS](https://less.works/): Craig Larman & Bas Vodde: an organizational system for product development, aimed at maximizing an organization’s adaptiveness.
- [RenDanHeYi (Haier)](https://rendanheyi.com/): Zhang Ruimin: micro-enterprises, zero distance to users.
- [Sociocracy 3.0 / Holacracy](https://sociocracy30.org/): Decision rights within guardrails.
- [Team of Teams](https://www.mcchrystalgroup.com/): Stanley McChrystal: shared purpose and fast decisions.

## Contact

Alexey Krivitsky · https://krivitsky.com · alexey@krivitsky.com · https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexeykrivitsky/