The Italian hill towns of Tuscany and Umbria provide an engaging metaphor for modern, adaptive organizational structures.

The hill towns were built as responsive communities. They followed the contours of the terrain; they grew and evolved organically; they created multiple opportunities for informal relationships.

The industrial revolution of the 19th century modeled organizations after the dominant paradigm of their time—military hierarchies. That worked. The organizations born out of the 19th and 20th centuries, with fearsome productivity, conquered the developing world.

They knew their objectives; they understood their strategies and tactics for accomplishing them. The generals of "top" management grasped the long distance view and marshaled the foot soldiers of production to attain strategic objectives.

Middle management carried out orders and reported results to top management. It all worked; that management model changed the modern world.

But it does not work so well now.

The hierarchical model worked when the future was fairly predictable. We need a new model for managing organizations in this new world of unexpected and tumultuous change.