Latest Book Review: The Ocotopus Organisation, by Phil Le-Brun and Jana Werner

I don't know about you but once in a while I stumble across a book so on-point that it feels like the planets have aligned and that some interplanetary intervention has led this book to jump off its shelf to me.

This was that book.

Timely as ever, I got my hands on this book at the turn of the year after a somewhat impulsive earlier in 2025. Its title caught my attention but so did the Harvard Business Review featuring it.

Its premise sits at the heart of the disruption the world of work is experiencing right now implying that many (most even) of the worlds businesses are set up the wrong way. They aren't built to cope in the super-agile world we now need to function within.

Playing on a metaphor centred around the Wizard of Oz, it describes businesses as akin to the tin man. Rigid, clunky and in some cases rusting to a halt. Organisations are stuck in the past, with outdated ways of working and unable to adapt fast enough to the rapidly changing world businesses find themselves in today.

The solution?

The authors provide us with a different metaphor to play with. That of an octopus. Far and away one of the most intelligent species on the planet but highly adaptable too.

The octopuses strengths lie in not only being adaptable - its 8 legs able to think and operate both independently and in perfect harmony - but also in its curiosity.

Should leaders want to set their organisations up for success in the current age. Should they want to equip themselves in a way that will enable the riding out of any storms that come their way. Then a change of mindset and a change of approach are in order.

As Dr Willie Jolie famously said, the past is a great place of reference but it shouldn't be a place we choose to reside in. Things change and we are in the midst of an almighty shakeup that requires organisations (and their leaders) to be willing to rip up the rule book and do things differently.

This doesn't mean throwing the baby out with the proverbial bathwater but it does mean looking in the mirror and asking whether you are prepared to change whatever is necessary to be set up for success in the future? Is your organisation more tin-man like than octopus-esq? And are you prepared to change how you do things in order to be the organisation the future needs you to be?