Mesh
by Gráinne Hamilton & Jen Kelchner
A human-centric organisational design for a decentralised world

Within the digital revolution, every organisation has become a technology organisation. It is almost impossible for an organisation to avoid the use of digital technologies in some form or another, with digital technologies having a significant impact on how organisations work, learn and connect.
To date, traditional work models have focused on centralisation, vertically drawn hierarchies, and on-premise and geographic proximity-based workers. In total, these attributes simply are not well-suited for the increasingly remote and gig-based workforce of the 4th Industrial revolution that is unfolding in real-time.
To effectively pivot and embrace the potential and flexibility of decentralisation, organisations must change how they design their cultures and structures to prime for Web3. While the teams that manage and implement technology often adopt open cultural practices to aid rapid development and deployment, the open, transparent and decentralised nature of Web3 technologies, moves the need for open practices beyond the realm of technology teams to the whole organisation.

Catalysing human-centricity to empower a connected decentralised world
What people say?
Mesh is an organizational design that helps organizations to generate connection, visibility, and trust, and to regenerate.
To date, traditional work models have focused on centralization, vertically drawn hierarchies, and on-prem/geographic proximity-based workers. In total, these attributes simply are not well-suited for the increasingly remote and gig-based workforce of the 4th Industrial revolution that is unfolding in real-time. To effectively pivot and embrace the potential and flexibility of decentralization, organizations must address questions as they prepare to create a bespoke strategy uniquely suited to their needs.
This book addresses these various questions and more, bolstered by the authors' collective decades of work in the open community. It will provide an exhaustive framework that is understandable – and more importantly, implementable!
Epigraph
Foreword
Concept Map
Setting Context
1. Where have we been, where are we now, where are we going?
2. An Organisational Design
3. Trapped & Untapped Value
4. Organisational Culture
5. Organisational Structure
The Design Concept
6. Mesh Model
A Method for Implementation
7. Mesh Method
Implementing the Design
8. Mesh Mindsets
9. Mesh | Core
10. Mesh | Operational
11. Mesh | Global
Powering Performance
12. Empowering (Re)Generative People
Seeing the Unseen
13. Skills Visibility
Optimising Deployment
14. Contribution Visibility
Managing the Mesh
15. Primer Tools
Emergence
16. Web3 Solutions
17. Emergence & Expansion
Acknowledgments
Glossary
Bibliography
About the Authors
Mesh is built around an open, regenerative culture, empowered by a granular, mesh structure to generate connection, visibility and trust.
Authors Gráinne Hamilton and Jen Kelchner are systems thinkers and bridgemakers who help organisations transform - catalysing human-centricity to empower a connected decentralised world.

Gráinne Hamilton
Gráinne Hamilton has contributed to the creation of innovations that have revolutionised how we learn, work and connect, from early work on open education and online learning with the University of Edinburgh to concept architecting the award-winning Cities of Learning UK with the RSA, Open Badge Pathways with Mozilla, and the Mesh organisational design. As an author of the Open Badge Standard she has influenced a global paradigm shift in how organisations think about learning and skills, from education institutions, to governments, to global Top 5 companies. She spent ten years helping universities digitally transform and enjoys partnering with leaders to future-prime organisations with open and regenerative organisational cultures, flexible structures and human-centric approaches.

Jen Kelchner
Jen Kelchner is an engaging thought leader, ardent about revealing hidden work, removing limitations, the psychology of change, and pioneering the future. Advising teams and senior leadership on team and workflow design, performance improvement, operational cost opportunity, integration and implementation strategies, as well as the release of trapped & untapped value in people and operational management at Deloitte and her management consulting career thereafter. She has created assessments and practices on open behaviours, removing limitations and on contribution tendencies which includes defining the human-centric components of Mesh; and, co-created the Open characteristics, Open Organization books and resources as well as assisting in architecting the global knowledge community, The Open Organization.