Using Microstructures and Informal Networks to Enhance Strategic Agility

Stefan Lotz
Dec 28, 2025
3 min read

Most leaders agree that we now operate in a VUCA world — volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. Yet many organizations still rely on structures designed for stability, predictability, and control. That mismatch explains why so many strategies look compelling on paper but stall in execution. The problem is rarely vision. It is rarely leadership capability. More often, strategy is being asked to move faster than the organization’s structure allows.

Dual Systems: Why One Structure Is No Longer Enough

Traditional hierarchies remain essential. They excel at scale, efficiency, governance, and risk control. But they struggle with speed, experimentation, and sensing weak signals from the environment.

Research on organizational ambidexterity — later reframed as dual systems — makes a straightforward case: organizations need two modes operating at the same time (see Kotter in References).

A formal operating system that runs the core business
A networked, adaptive system that enables strategy, learning, and change

Most organizations acknowledge this tension conceptually. Far fewer design explicitly for it.

Microstructures: Where Strategy Actually Moves

Strategy does not move through org charts. It moves through microstructures — the small, repeatable units where people coordinate work and make decisions.

These include familiar forms:

Squads, pods, task forces, tiger teams
Cross-functional project teams
Communities of practice

But equally important are interactional microstructures — the habits and routines that shape daily behavior:

Decision forums and escalation huddles
Sprint reviews and retrospectives
Cross-team demos
After-action reviews
Learning circles and peer problem-solving sessions

What unites these structures is not size or novelty, but proximity to real work. They shorten feedback loops, surface tensions early, and allow strategy to be tested rather than endlessly debated. This is where agility is built — incrementally, not ceremonially.

Informal Networks: The System Behind the System

Every organization has a second structure that rarely appears in strategy decks: its informal networks.

These networks determine:

Who people go to for advice
Who they trust with sensitive information
How fast information actually travels

Krackhardt & Hanson (1993) has identified three networks that have a substantial impact on informal relations.:

Advice networks — where problem-solving expertise resides
Trust networks — where risk-taking and collaboration are possible
Communication networks — how information flows (or stalls)

Ignoring these networks does not neutralize them. It simply blinds leaders to how work really happens. This explains why formally “well-designed” teams can underperform — and why unofficial groups sometimes outperform fully resourced initiatives.

When Microstructures Align With Informal Networks

Microstructures become powerful when they work with informal networks rather than against them.

In practice, this means:

Task forces staffed around advice networks solve problems faster
Communities of practice thrive when they reflect existing trust relationships
Cross-functional teams fail when they cut across unresolved relational fractures
Decision forums improve when trusted brokers are present, not just senior leaders

Even small interventions can have outsized effects:

Changing who facilitates meetings
Adjusting who leads a project
Creating regular cross-boundary interactions
Supporting existing learning rituals instead of imposing new ones

These are not large reorganizations. They are precision adjustments that unlock capacity already present in the system.

What Leaders Should Do Next

Leaders seeking greater strategic agility do not need another transformation program. They need sharper diagnosis and targeted action:

Identify where strategy actually gets enacted
- Look beyond formal roles to the teams, forums, and routines where decisions are made.
Surface informal influence deliberately
- Notice who people rely on for advice and trust — and involve them intentionally.
Strengthen interactional microstructures
- Improve the quality of meetings, reviews, learning loops, and cross-team exchanges.
Run small, testable interventions
- Adjust team composition, leadership roles, or decision rights — then observe the effects.
Treat structure as dynamic, not fixed
- Microstructures should evolve as strategy evolves.

Strategic agility emerges from many small design choices, not from a single bold move.

The Bottom Line

Strategy fails less often because it is wrong — and more often because organizations are not designed to carry it.

Leaders who want adaptability, speed, and resilience must look beyond the org chart and start shaping the microstructures and informal networks where strategy actually lives.

Agility is not an initiative. It is an organizational design outcome.