Becoming the Octopus Organization
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Organizations everywhere are investing heavily in “transformation,” yet many still feel rigid, slow, and constrained by layers of approval, process, and permission. Despite new language, new tools, and new operating models, the underlying way work gets done often hasn’t changed.
Join us for an intimate, interactive roundtable with Jana Werner and Phil Le-Brun, co-authors of The Octopus Organization.
Jana is a Global Executive Advisor and Executive in Residence at Amazon Web Services (AWS), where she works with Fortune 500 leadership teams on organizational transformation and enterprise strategy.
Phil spent more than three decades at McDonald’s, including serving as international CIO and leading technology delivery across more than 120 countries, and is now also an Executive in Residence at AWS. Together, they bring deep, lived experience of leading change at global scale.
Drawing on insights from their book and decades of hands-on leadership, this conversation explores a powerful shift in how organizations operate—from rigid, permission-based “Tin Man” structures to adaptive, resilient, and intelligent “Octopus” organizations designed for continuous change.
As always, this will be an interactive dialogue, not a presentation. Members will engage directly with Jana and Phil through stories, examples, and candid discussion grounded in real-world experience.
Things We Will Cover:
Why most transformation efforts fail—and what actually enables sustained change
The difference between complicated and complex environments, and why it matters for strategy
How distributed intelligence and decentralized decision-making can create more alignment, not less
The organizational antipatterns that quietly undermine strategy, innovation, and execution
Practical ways leaders can replace permission and process with clarity, ownership, and learning
This conversation is designed for senior strategy and innovation leaders navigating complexity who want practical, human-centered ways to help their organizations adapt and thrive.