"How to Win with the Team you Have": Unlocking workforce potential
In a recent podcast, Patricia Frost , Chief People and Places Officer at Seagate technology, shared her philosophy of “winning with the team you have”. Drawing from her military background, she emphasised the importance of unlocking the potential of existing talent rather than seeking solutions externally. Yet many organisations often overlook the human and social capital already created within, and venture outside to fill any gaps.
This led me to reflect on how organisational models can either enhance or impede the ability to recognise and realise the human capability available within an organisation. Over the course of the last nine issues of LEADINGThought we have explored the reasons and conditions necessary to maximise human potential for the benefit of business, the economy, and society.
Organisations represent a critical component of human society, as this is where people come together to create value. Therefore, how we organise people to collectively deliver is key to maximising their contribution.
The Evolution of Organisational Models
Gareth Morgan’s classic work ‘Images of Organization’ [9] uses 8 metaphors to represent the complexity of human organisations, from machines, to organisms, to brains, to cultures and political systems, each of the metaphors represents a way of thinking. These can all exist at once or at different times, as thinking within organisations shifts.
Organisational models evolved over time to either constrain and control or enable and free up human capability. For most of the 20th century the mechanistic view of organisations, focused on efficiencies, creating hierarchies to control output, and often neglected the full capacity and capability of the people within organisations. As we have been progressing into an age of fluid accountabilities, and agile delivery, we are having to re-think those principles for organising people and work.
HR functions that act as the conduit for getting work done, driving productivity, and seeing and mitigating risk are having to evolve in their philosophy and approach, to align with the new reality. From human resources to human capital, to people experience, the thinking has evolved to create the conditions for tapping into and realising human potential. The debate is ongoing as to how successful and impactful these efforts have been, however, there is a clear trend that underpins organisational practice.
We are being reminded that we are potentially on a trajectory of human-machine organisations, with some predicting machine-only organisations in the not-too-distant future. Some of the fundamental assumptions underpinning organisational practice are now challenged:
It’s about work not roles: a realisation of the need to deliver work and breaking down roles into tasks and responsibilities enabled by technology. This means considering different ways that work can be completed, whether that’s through flexible teams coming together and then disbanding, external experts, or AI agents.
Talent is everywhere: the ability to tap into the whole of human capability by using technology means that talent is no longer constrained by the role they undertake and can be shared across the organisation for the delivery of work. An evolving workforce, made up of ‘exponential contributors’ or ‘superworkers’ according to Josh Bersin , will now be able to bring together, AI, technology, and skills to work at great speed and stay ahead of change.
Progress over perfection: this has been a criticism of traditional HR processes, with teams focused on building the perfect job architecture, career pathways, or skills taxonomy. However, in an increasingly fluid and non-linear world, this is an environment of experimentation where adaptability and agility need to be prioritised.
Unlocking workforce potential
So, what are some of the key principles that should underpin how we organise people to complete work in organisations, to continue to unlock workforce potential in the age of AI. The answer is not about bringing more agents and technology; it’s about enhancing the potential of people to release their capability through technology with humans the orchestrators of this.
Apply a systems mindset: Systems thinking [4] emerged in the 1960s as a counterpoint to the classical management view of organisations as machines. Systems thinking adopts an open, holistic approach, focused on interdependence between the different parts of an organisation, recognising that change in one part will impact another. Applying a ‘system’s’ mindset, can unlock value that may be missed if the focus is primarily on efficiency and control. There are several well-known frameworks that adopt systems thinking, with McKinsey’s 7 ‘S’ one of the most popular. McKinsey has recently updated its 7S model to highlight the importance of the interconnectedness of 12 elements that help align internal capabilities with external realities to unlock value.
Create space for innovation: Building into your organising principles the importance of innovation is critical. Innovation is unlikely to emerge within the established organisational structures and hierarchies. Rather, it is more likely to emerge from informal networks that may be found around the edges of organisations. Therefore, creating the ‘adaptive’ space [2] that enables discovery and brings those ‘edges’ into the core organisation is key for innovation.
People-Centred organisational and work design: Strategically changing workplace conditions that enable human capability to be realised, is critical in unlocking the potential and value that already exists. This isn’t about adding headcount or compromising customer experience. It is about considering the whole system of work, including the operational reality that may impact how people behave and perform, to organise for value. Research on the Good Work system by Zeynep Ton [10], and on wellbeing by E. Kelly and L. Kubzansky at Harvard have identified the conditions that will ensure healthy and productive workplaces alongside superior customer outcomes. These include, increasing the stability of workers’ schedules, ensuring adequate resources, so workloads are reasonable, giving people more control over how they do their work. Ton describes how in a retail setting where store hours were reduced, alongside better schedules and more overlap in shifts, this led to better consultative selling and in turn higher sales and customer satisfaction. With employee burnout and mental health issues increasingly a concern, these approaches can help to mitigate the risks while unlocking potential and value.
Winning with the Team You Have
If you are to ‘win with the team you have’ you need to empower individuals within organisations to use all their talents and skills to deliver work. The use of technology to convert all your organisational data and insights into ‘integrated intelligence’ can help empower individuals through personalised solutions, creating a competitive edge. But it also raises several questions about the changes needed in how people and work are organised, the shape of future organisations, and how they continue to evolve for the benefit of human society.
Resources
Arena, M. J. (2021). Adaptive Space: Shifting from Structural to Social Design. Management and Business Review, 1(1), 85-91. https://doi.org/10.1177/2694105820210101012 (Original work published 2021)
Arena, Michael J. Adaptive Space: How GM and Other Companies are Positively Disrupting Themselves and Transforming into Agile Organizations. New York: McGraw-Hill Education, 2018.
Bersin, J. (Jan 2025). The Rise of the Superworker: Delivering On The Promise Of AI. https://joshbersin.com/2025/01/the-rise-of-the-superworker-delivering-on-the-promise-of-ai/
Katz, D., & Kahn, R.L. (1966). The social psychology of organizations. Wiley.
Kelly, E. L., Berkman, L. F., Kubzansky, L. D., Lovejoy, M. (Oct. 12, 2021). 7 Strategies to Improve Your Employees’ Health and Well-Being. Havard Business Review, https://hbr.org/2021/10/7-strategies-to-improve-your-employees-health-and-well-being?ab=hero-subleft-1
Lovejoy, M., Kelly, E. L., Kubzansky, L. D., & Berkman, L. F. (2021). Work Redesign for the 21st Century: Promising Strategies for Enhancing Worker Well-Being. American Journal of Public Health, e1–e9. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2021.306283
McKinsey (Jun 25, 2025). The new rules for getting your operating model redesign right.
McKinsey (Jun 18, 2025). A new operating model for a new world.
Morgan, G. (1997). Images of organization (2nd ed.). Sage Publications, Inc.
Ton, Zeynep The Case for Good Jobs: How Great Companies Bring Dignity, Pay and Meaning to Everyone’s Work (Harvard Business Review Press, 2023).