Your Company Has No Boundaries Only Horizons with Stelio Verzera

Recorded live in Milan at the European Organisation Design Forum, this conversation with Stelio Verzera goes far beyond org charts. Stelio traces his path from aerospace engineering and early internet consulting into 30 years of sociotechnical systems work, and explains why organizations should be treated as living, evolving systems not machines. You’ll hear why he uses serious games and Lego Serious Play to surface what people feel and “don’t know they know” about performance, trust, leadership and strategy and why working with your hands can create breakthroughs that stick for years. Stelio shares the moments that define teams, including when senior leaders unexpectedly find language for what matters and the room changes. He also offers a leader-ready model for change using the metaphor of a river: tools and processes are visible on the surface, but capabilities, culture and people sit deeper and move slower. Ignore the deeper layers and you create change fatigue because the “inertia of the river” will swallow your initiatives. Finally, Stelio looks forward. He argues org design is shifting from mechanistic thinking to organic, adaptive organizing and now toward an ecosystemic view where organizational “boundaries” are mental constructs and leaders’ responsibility extends across partners, families and communities. With AI automating more knowledge work, Stelio believes the future of org design will center even more on relationships, context, and how humans collaborate in a messy world to create value that benefits the whole ecosystem. Functionly www.functionly.com Org Design podcast www.functionly.com/org-design-podcast Cocoon Pro cocoon-pro.com