The Trilogy
These three essays form a connected body of work. Each stands independently, but together they constitute a unified argument: that transformation, properly understood, requires both the humanist practice of leadership and the inventive orientation of design — and that organizational architecture is the medium through which both become real.
Effective transformation requires more than well-designed structures or coherent plans. It requires leaders who can give form to uncertainty, exercise authority with gravity, and hold open the space in which others commit to a future not yet fully realized. Drawing on Zaleznik's account of leadership in serious organizational settings, the essay develops four interconnected themes: character, imagination, interpretation, and command.
Transformation fails not only through poor execution but through weak architecture — and shaping that architecture is a core leadership responsibility, not a technical matter to be delegated. Drawing on Boland and Collopy's Managing as Designing, the essay treats governance, sequencing, coordination, and decision logic as design decisions. It introduces the concept of emotional architecture and argues that transformation structures must be designed for experiential as well as operational coherence.
Most transformation efforts fail not because leaders lack frameworks or metrics, but because change is treated as an optimization problem rather than a design challenge. Building on Boland and Collopy's distinction between a decision attitude and a design attitude, the essay reframes transformation as an act of organizational architecture — and examines what it genuinely takes to move from endorsing a design orientation to leading from one.
Earlier Work
Prior to founding Division Group, Eric Teunissen produced research papers in the context of senior project and consulting roles. These papers addressed specific operational problems and contributed to the methodological innovations that later became the foundation of Division Group's practice.
Note on Industrial Relocation Projects
Reliably Forecasting Profits in Project Matrix Organizations