Where a growing circle of business leaders comes to share, learn, and inspire organizations to put people first
The very first step to any organizational structure and process is designing jobs and planning how much/many you need of them.
In this video, we have tried to summarize how jobs are created through the practice of job analysis and design and discuss workforce planning activities that lead to creation of job descriptions. We hope you enjoy and in return, share some of your experiences. Thank you for watching!
I recently attended my very first TEDx event, in Zurich. Not only was it my first collaborative event in this city, but its theme was incredibly personal to me: People First.
I once found myself in the middle of an exchange between two HR colleagues. One said, “I joined Human Resources out of my love for people,” and the other replied, “Then you’re in the wrong field.” The truth is we can’t pass judgment on people for trying to fulfill their life’s passion. If a HR colleague is passionate about people or cares deeply about human connection, more power to them, I say. Would that passion shape their motives? We don’t know… Would those motives turn into thoughts that reflect on their behavior? We don’t know… Would their behaviors make it easier or more difficult for them to be effective HR professionals? We simply don’t know…
What I can tell you is that I did not join Human Resources out of my love for people. In fact, I didn’t even start my career in Human Resources. I studied to become an Industrial and Organizational Psychologist because I was and still am deeply interested in human behavior in the workplace. As a young consultant with Deloitte (& Touche, at the time) in 90s, I loved being a part of human capital work, analyzing an immense amount of organizational data to find patterns of behavior. I loved having room to think creatively and collaborate with business leaders to build refined practices to overcome certain hurdles. I loved hearing employees remember my name to say, “Thank you – your help made a difference in my day to day.” I loved being able to turn critical business leaders into confident, trusting leaders for the benefit of others. I simply loved (and still love!) taking organizations by the hand to bring them forward and finally leaving them in a better place.
Perhaps I didn’t join the function out of my love for people; however, being an expert in I/O psychology, I know one has to genuinely care about individuals to have any impact on an organization. Organizational effectiveness work (in-house or out-sourced) does not and will not work if you can’t speak to the minds and hearts of people on the ground.
It is that very intersection (of minds and hearts) that made the theme of TEDxZurich personal for me.
I’d like to share with you some of the highlights of our conversations…
Kicking off the event was Suzan G. LeVine, United States Ambassador to Switzerland and Liechtenstein. LeVine talked about diversity and gender equality in the workplace, and shared some of her personal experiences as an ambassador. Probably the most impactful slide she shared was the following, where we see a huge bottom line disparity between those Fortune 500 companies that have 3+ women in their board vs. none. Now that’s something for us to really think about.
Later in the morning, we heard from Prof. William Schabas, Professor of International Law at Middlesex University in London, who educated us about the progression of humanity. For example, the professor talked about how, at the start of his career 40 years earlier, he could not have dreamed of countries eliminating the death penalty; and yet it is now more and more a reality. He articulated the progress humanity has made on some equality measures (i.e. slavery, women in the workplace, sexuality, disability), but also pointed out two areas where we continue to fall short in making progress:
Between my own teary eyes and those of my American colleagues (whose tears were notably mixed with those from the recent election), Prof. Schabas finished his presentation by saying he still has hope we will continue to make progress and that “humanity doesn’t need more walls, we need more bridges” along the way. What a beautiful sentiment…
Another wonderful conversation later at the TEDx event was about our basic human need to stay creative. Cristina Riesen, an entrepreneur and startup mentor, shared with us her story of growing up in a communist regime and how creativity lit her path during the most difficult times. She said (and I agree wholeheartedly), “creativity is the world’s most underrated resource.” Another good sentiment for us business leaders to remember.
In the afternoon we had many technology discussions, like how technology supports humanity and vice versa.
Later, we switched gears to the workplace. Dr. Alexander Wagner, an expert in the area of behavioral economics and corporate governance in ETH, highlighted how we need to be deeply mindful of our “protected values” in the workplace. In other words, we should maintain our standard of conduct and cultural values… and our number one priority as employers should be to select the right people aligned with those values.
Shawn Achor, a researcher and speaker on happiness, shared five measures of positive psychology in the workplace. Notably, he discussed how happiness and success can compete with one another at work, especially if they are not clearly defined – you can work hard and deliver great results, but is it worth it if you kills yourself in the process?
Now, in promoting our online collaboration platform, we have been talking a lot about how humanity is going through a shift; how we are at the cusp of redefining ways of doing things; how technology is calling for us to rely more heavily on data (to drive more accurate decision making); how people are longing for systems, processes, and procedures that work to their benefit (vs. other way around); and how employees are craving a better integration of individuality in the workplace.
For those leaders as determined as we are to put people first, we invite you to hop on the bandwagon. Help us usher in the way to make work a better place for many, by helping HR and business leaders focus on the right practices that bring the best out of people – in terms of engagement, productivity, and satisfaction.
For this, we want to bring best-in-class business leaders – the most recognized HR professionals around the world – together in one platform to share their knowledge and expertise. We want to engage in conversations with employees. We want to build bridges with managers. We want to support our business and service functions (like HR) move into its next phase.
But we can only accomplish all of this with your support.
I have just one thing to ask of you: Will you please join us by subscribing to the Whirling Chief platform, our social media channels, promoting hot topic debates, or by simply helping us connect to your leaders? Because people really do come first!
One of the top issues keeping CEOs awake at night is organizational capability.
According to a May 2014 McKinsey & Company study, capability building ranks as a top-three priority for many CEOs. When we speak to CEOs and other upper executives in leading organizations, we hear they are well aware of any significant capability gaps in their organizations and, for the most part, know which direction they need to head. More than half the executives, though, struggle to translate capability building into operations – they have a hard time translating such an exercise into performance improvement measures at an individual and organizational level.
This should not come as a surprise, as capability building is one of the most complex activities of organizational development work.
When done well, capability building can result in bottom line benefits. Those can include maximizing organizational potential as a means of increasing competitive advantage, establishing service functions (yes, including human resources ☺) as a strategic partner, and improving stakeholder and customer satisfaction all around. However, there is very little in the research and summaries on how organizations build their organizational capability. This is what we will try to address in this article (and follow-up pieces).
What is ‘Organizational Capability’?
According to Leonard-Barton (1992, p. 113-4), organizational capability “is the knowledge set that distinguishes and provides competitive advantage” to an organization.
You may think of it as your organization’s core competencies (not an individual competency, but as a competency overall).
Implications for Building Organizational Capability
An organization that is clear about its core organizational capabilities can focus more effectively toward its business strategy, and can communicate what it values now…and in the foreseeable future. By strengthening the enablers to support core organizational capabilities, at least three impactful benefits can be achieved:
How To Think About Building Organizational Capability?
There are several models to organizational capability building. We tend to see no absolute right or wrong here. That said, with any model leveraged, an organization should be interested in advancing these 3 domains:
Strategic Intent: This relates to understanding the business direction to align capabilities to strategy. Because strategy is dependent on day-to-day operational excellence, it is critical you validate your strategic vision against select capabilities. That way, can make trade-off decisions as necessary to mature your competitive advantage. Ensuring you have a clear and concise logic to investment and resources choices will only help you become laser focused on your end-goal.
System Stability: This is about establishing the right processes and structure. There are several organizational thinking/assessment models an organization can use here. No matter what theoretical approach you take to assess your system’s integrity and stability, you will need to consider structure, leadership, culture, process, and technology as a part of that approach.
Individual Know-How & Accountability: This is not only about selecting the best talent available for key positions that comprise strategic work within the select few capabilities. It also includes growing technical & social competence across the organization to be most effective within the context of your culture.
We recently held an Apero event for Whirling Chief in Switzerland’s beautiful Villa Wenkenhof, to celebrate our first five exciting months with many of the people who got us here. There is a genuine story to this undertaking we have made and we thought this would be the perfect time to share it.
The idea of an online collaboration platform comes from a very sacred place in our hearts – straight from our love of Human Resources and Organizational Development. And it also comes from our strong wish to ‘make work a better place for many.’
When you have such a mission as ‘making work a better place for many,’ one is immediately faced with enormous statistics. Such as, 50% of people in the global workforce are not satisfied with their work.
Of the 50% who are satisfied, only 35% are truly engaged. The numbers are higher in some countries and significantly lower in others.
And because those numbers have such an impact on our lives, we tend to shy away from them. We disassociate ourselves from the hard facts by saying, “I understand there are some people out there dissatisfied with their work,” while trying to convince ourselves, “It is not me,” or, “It is not the people I know.” Really? ☺
But the numbers are not only real, they’re disturbing: 1 of out every 2 of us is NOT satisfied going to work every day. It could be you, reading this post. Yes, you. Or your next-door neighbor or best buddy…
And precisely because of those statistics, we have a beautiful opportunity to make things different.
When one is passionate about the human condition and sees such an opportunity, one cannot help but ask:
We did just that…
We talked to experts to understand the changing business conditions around us. Oh, we understood, all right…and acknowledged that the world is at the cusp of redefining itself and the only inevitable result is change.
Think about it…
Economically speaking, we are evolving. Just consider how we moved from a product-focused economy in the 70s to a product/service-focused economy in the 80s to a customer-focused economy in the 2000s. And now? Well, now it’s all about relationships.
Sociologically speaking, we are evolving. The average life expectancy of an organization has changed from 75 years in 1955 to less than 10 years in the 2000s. Incredibly, 52% of Fortune 500 companies disappeared in the last 15 years.
Ecologically speaking, we are evolving. The laws/policies governing companies are changing, the principles of leadership are changing, the management practices and organizational processes are changing (i.e. performance mgmt. processes). Even the DNA of our workforce is changing.
The reality is as consumers, workers, managers, and leaders of tomorrow, we want something different and progressive! We want better support systems, more sustainable governance models, more equitable use of resources, and higher accountability. What’s more, we demand sustainability and, overall, we want higher quality lives.
It is no different with ‘work.’ We want safe work environments where people are not stepping on top of each other to get ahead; we want supportive relationships where people are invested to share and learn from one another; we want authentic leaders who do what they say and say what they do; we want people processes that work for the benefit of individuals and organizations as a whole; we want work to be better integrated into our overall lives – after all, isn’t work a big part of life?
And, of course, organizations who acknowledge these facts and work to adopt their business practices will continue to stay in the game, while others will simply fall behind!
So then we asked ourselves, what is it we could do – individually and collectively? What could HR do to usher the way to a solution?
Now, we may not be experts on any of the conditional topics above, but we do know organizational psychology very well. We know sustainability requires contextual change (meaning evolvement in conditions) and we know building a culture is about getting like-minded people together to behave a certain way (to lead the way).
So then we said:
“What if we can bring together leaders who have reached a level of inner peace, resourcefulness, and consciousness to serve others?
What if we could bring together leaders who have been able to build psychologically safe, fun, and productive environments to share their knowledge?
What if we ask some tough questions to open up dialogues?
What if we serve people with on-demand learning opportunities – short, easy to understand, practical, self-serving, and yet reliable information?”
After all, we all want work to be a better. And who could communicate that more clearly than those who have had success in making work a better experience?
This is exactly how the idea of a collaboration platform came to be…
We didn’t decide to take a position on business,
We didn’t decide to teach anyone HR & OD practices,
We didn’t decide to create something new and brilliant,
All we decided was to help change the context…
By bringing leaders together to show the way, to lead the way, and to inspire the way. Simply, to put people first.
With that, we have had a beautiful journey so far and our celebratory apero was just the first tiny step forward. There plenty more to come (on Phase II of our platform, changes in UI, on our new collaborations, etc). Thank you for continuing to support Whirling Chief. Be sure to stay tuned…
The world is at the cusp of redefining itself. Businesses are being redefined. The way we organize ourselves, the way we connect. The way we learn is no different… Today’s patterns for learning (professionally or personally) is vastly different than in previous times. Knolskape does just that. It helps organizations rethink the experience of learning.
Whatever the need – on-boarding, capability development, assessments, or engagement – Knolskape can help re-energize any organizational programs through its award winning experiential learning products and platforms. It has been recognized among the world’s top 20 learning gamification companies. We recently conducted a Q&A with Founder and CEO Rajiv Jayaraman to discuss what the future holds for us…
Whirling Chief:
Before we start our interview, what does the name Knolskape stand for or mean?
Knolskape:
KNOLSKAPE is a combination of Knowledge and Landscape. We are playing an interesting role in shaping the landscape of learning.
WC:
In the digitalization of the workplace, we hear so many technology companies pop up with the most creative solutions. How or from where did the idea of Knolskape originate?
K:
We were focusing originally on the academic market. We developed simulations and serious games for making management education interactive and impactful. We worked with a lot of Top tier B-schools across the world, and slowly we pivoted and started focusing on the corporate market.
WC:
Why did you choose to focus on learning, as opposed to another discipline?
K:
Before KNOLSKAPE, I was working for Oracle in California. During that time, I was very passionate about theater and film making as well. I wanted to do something at the intersection of computer science and story-telling. It is with this thought that I decided to pursue my MBA at INSEAD. During my MBA program, I used a powerful simulation product that opened my eyes to alternative forms of learning. That was my ‘A-ha!’ moment: computer science and story-telling coming together for a domain that I was always passionate about – learning.
WC:
What’s the significance of simulation learning? How does it differ from other types of adult learning activities?
K:
In the last 150 years, we have managed to industrialize learning. The so-called expert comes in and delivers a lecture, and the learners are expected to absorb this and undergo a behavioural change automatically. In this process, the experience of learning takes the backseat. Today, with technology, we are able to bring experience back into the learning process through simulations.
The significance of this mode of learning is that it targets the head, heart, and the hand, as opposed to just the head with traditional forms of learning. Learners learn in a safe environment where they can learn by doing. This helps them see the relevance of learning and also prepares them for real world decision making.
WC:
With simulation learning, do we completely do away with classroom learning? How do you ensure different learning styles are being served during a game?
K:
The best way to use simulations is in a facilitated environment, be it in classroom or live virtual programs. While simulations promote learning by doing, it is important for reflection to happen at the end of action. This is where facilitators play a big role. This way, we are able to cater to different learning styles as well.
WC:
One of your services concerns ‘Leadership and Strategy.’ For our readers who may be unfamiliar with such concept, can you please elaborate how one simulates strategic leadership or similar?
K:
We live in a VUCA world today, where strategies change ever so often and leaders are expected to act in a highly uncertain environment. In such conditions, it is highly imperative that we give our leaders a safe environment where they are able to hone their decision-making skills. We focus on specific leadership topics in our simulations: leadership styles for a multi-generational environment, leading without authority, building trust, and business acumen, where the learner takes a decision across many functions of the company.
WC:
Could you talk about your clients? What kind of organizations leverage your products and services most? Are there some organizations better suited for this sort of learning than others?
K:
Any organization that wants to see business impact for their learning dollar is an ideal client for us. Our methodology helps you deliver level 3 and up on the Kirkpatrick model. Typically, companies that are geographically distributed, dealing with a large number of employees tend to derive maximum benefit from our products. We run gamified leadership, sales, and digital academies for our clients globally.
WC:
How would you categorize the future of learning for us? How do we need to rethink the what, who, and how of learning in our dynamic global and digital times?
K:
The future of learning is everything that is learner-centric. We will see systems that will foster self-paced learning in an engaging fashion, and provide analytics that will help learners learn deeply and will also be anytime-anywhere. I foresee that bite-sized mobile learning is going to be a big thing in the short term. We are also betting big on AI in the learning process. In the future, the classroom will learn us. Social learning is also very important.
WC:
How about for HR professionals? What should I, and my colleagues, do differently in our teaching, learning, and leadership to meet the new digital and global demands in practice?
K:
L&D function needs to build the following skills:
WC:
Any last pieces of advice?
K:
Learning professionals in the future need to be design thinkers with deep understanding of business needs and the individual’s learning aspirations. For the longest time, we have not used science in the talent process. Now technologies are available. Time to get cracking.
By Sandro Krug
During my career in HR, across different industries, different companies, different countries, and different business functions, I have met few people who feel fulfilled with what they are doing at work. Sadly, it seems that many people too often are grasping at straws, trying to find reasons why they still do what they do. But why is this? And more importantly, what can we do to improve our degree of fulfillment at work?
Is it meaningful?
If your work is something you truly love, it will give you drive, direction, and a deep feeling of fulfillment every day. But do we always know exactly what makes us happy? Do we know what drives us in the direction of fulfillment? To find out, I suggest to start with WHY1.
Write down all aspects (not matter how small) why you think your job is meaningful to you. Ask yourself why you chose that job. Finish that exercise, then try to answer a few simple questions:
If you come to the realization you need to change your job, I suggest you plan your next steps in a tactical way. Before you apply for a job, it might be useful to get acquainted with the purpose, vision, and mission of your prospective employer. If you get a glimpse of their strategy, all the better.
Then ask yourself: How does their reading material relate to my personal core values? Is the purpose meaningful or maybe just a nice marketing slogan? Talk or write to people who work for this company and ask them if they can really see a link with the purpose in their daily work. Lastly, check references well.
Do you touch someone’s heart with what you do?
In 1990, Kahn was one of the first to describe ‘personal engagement’ as the “…harnessing of organization member’s selves to their work roles: in engagement, people employ and express themselves physically, cognitively, emotionally and mentally during role performance.”
Today, ‘work engagement’ has become a buzzword in most of the multinational companies I know. Martin Seligman, a pioneer of the psychology of happiness and human flourishing, says that according to modern theories of self-esteem, life is only genuinely satisfying if we discover value within ourselves. Yet one of the best ways of discovering this value is by nourishing our unique strengths in contributing to the happiness of others. Consequently, the final stage is the meaningful life and, specifically, the meaningful work in which we find a deep sense of fulfilment, by employing our unique strengths for a purpose greater than ourselves.
Let’s assume that you feel engaged at work. You can express yourself in many different ways, and it feels right. Right in your heart. Now let’s assume that by the way you express yourself, you also positively influence others. This leads to the effect that you use your signature strengths and virtues in the service of something much larger than you are. Touching the heart of someone else.
Dare to be authentic!
We all want to be respected as human beings with our unique characteristics (gender, ethnicity, religion, thoughts, beliefs, etc.) that make us who we are as individuals. In private conversation we might state our opinion in another, maybe more direct way, than in business. But we always share a part of our identity. It’s obvious: in business we’re often faced with situations where we need to incorporate a lot of different perspectives before we share our opinion. And we might also say things in another way than we would in a private conversation. This, however, does not mean that you cannot be honest with yourself.
I will always vividly remember that senior manager, who admitted in a private conversation that every day, when he enters the office, he needs to put on his “business mask” to fulfill all expectations that the company raises. I was shocked to hear that. I acknowledge that we all need to stick to a certain corporate etiquette, but if you cross a certain line you can seriously damage your health. Research shows that loss of genuineness (inauthenticity) is one symptom of depersonalization, which is one of three characteristics of burnout. So is it really worth keeping a job when you have to behave with all the enthusiasm of a child on the way to the dentist?
What can you really risk if you speak up? If you do, you will always contribute to an open and authentic culture. You are not only acting as a role model for others, but you will also be perceived as a genuine and courageous colleague. Last but not least, you stick to your personal values and directly help your body to be in balance with your mind, and vice versa.
Play to your strengths!
Bandura has defined self-efficacy as one’s belief in their ability to succeed in specific situations, or accomplish a task and reach a goal. Furthermore, scientific results indicate that both self-efficacy and work engagement affect job satisfaction. So, what he is saying is that we should play to our strengths, rather than act like a Jack of all trades, master of none. To strengthen one’s level of self-efficacy, it is crucial to broaden one’s skills in specific areas, form a stronger sense of commitment to our interests, and to recover quickly from setbacks at work.
Additionally, it is important to understand and leverage individual talents to develop a “personal best” in order to increase future potential at work and foster one’s self-efficacy. The Reflected Best Self (RBS)™ is an interesting feedback-seeking exercise that helps to identify and understand unique strengths and talents in four subsequent steps:
Knowing your strengths offers you a better understanding of how to deal with your weaknesses—and helps you gain the confidence you need to address them.
In my opinion, fulfillment at work can best be achieved when we play to our strength, have the privilege to touch others people heart, and experience meaningful work in an authentic way.
Now let me ask you: Is your work meaningful to you? How do you make it meaningful? How can we all create a meaningful workplace? I’m curious to read your thoughts and ideas in the comments!
1 Also see our recent post, “Leading from the heart,” by Simon Marshall
A few weeks back, we shared an intro on HRM for people managers. Today, we share an orientation video for HR professionals. What is your role as a HRBP in HRM?
Do we really own all of the HR activities or where do we co-share? How much of ownership need be authentic? Where do we lean in and forward?
Join us in the conversation by leaving a comment under the video. Let us know what details of functional activities to cover in the upcoming series. Thank you!
Today, we jump back to a topic we started last week. Namely, organizational design. We touched on the basic premise of this work, and ended by listing the steps needed for its success.
Let’s dive into these steps one by one next:
Many times, senior management teams or the corporate leadership groups go through either a strategic planning process or an executive team development process prior to beginning a redesign initiative.
Depending on how clear they are about their strategy, how well developed their internal capabilities might be, the maturity of their planning process, and how well they work together as a team, this work alone can take anywhere from a few days to weeks.
In essence, developing a case for change is about conducting an environmental analysis to validate the need for a change.
If you have not lead any such workshops as a HR professional before, please leave a comment under our link so we can make it a point to explain how this work can be led.
Assessment of current state is taking time to understand current challenges, strengths, and limitations of an organization. There are many different assessments and transformation models available to organizations for leading such work. Some of these tools could include (just a few examples):
Ultimately, though, what we are looking to understand is how critical parts of organization are working, how these parts are interrelated, whether there are any key interdependencies, the health of the organization, and where progress is needed.
This is the heart of the organizational design process. This is where we design what the future organization is going to look like.
There are formal and informal components that need consideration while initiating redesign. For example, we would need to consider how decisions are being made as a formal process change or we need to consider how people make sense of their work as an informal process change.
Where there is no subject matter expert available in a company, it would be most beneficial to reach out to external talent during design.
Implementation planning is about reviewing in detail the interdependencies to understand where and how much change management may be required, the pivotal places in the organization to monitor transformation, who to care for and at what frequency, etc.
Reward systems, performance systems, information sharing, decision-making, and management systems are often changed and adjusted during organizational design work. So we expect to see some challenges in regard to adaptation in specific places of the organization. Identifying these early on and working a collaboration plan into implementation steps is most helpful.
Last but not least, the final step is to operationalize the design. During this stage, roles and people are organized into the new structure and the change may be supported with some training, team effectiveness work, and skill-building activities.
It is important to recognize some of the changes can be accomplished quickly. Others may require implementation over a longer period of time.
Words matter… How we communicate to those around us and how we approach stakeholders to form coalitions matter a lot.
There is certain terminology in the book of business and human resources management we have come to dislike over time.
‘Work-life balance,’ for example. It implies work is something different than life, where in reality it is a big part of life. It segregates the two and builds a separation of time, resources, and values, which is simply untrue of the human condition.
‘Feedback’ is another one. Not only is its definition limited to statements of opinion, it has become a word that implies there is only negative information in the system and the focus is only backwards looking. In reality, the way we want to use this word is in an effort to open channels and create transparency. How can we enable a two-way conversation when there is nothing nourishing about the way we use and leverage the word?
There is another word we are hung up on: ‘diversity.’ The definition is simple – it means having variety of a kind. The way the word is used in the industry we find, however, problematic. We say, for example, that we want diversity in the workplace. What does that mean exactly, though?
Do we want different kinds of opinions in the system? Different looking people? People of different race, gender, and ethnicity to be present? Do we want different sexes?
What is it that we seek through ‘diversity’? And what happens if we have it all? What do we achieve from having so many kinds of people at work? Do we cherish having different opinions? Do we approach conversations equally and fairly with those who look different than us? Do we show ‘tolerance’ for people of different races, genders, and ethnicities than us? Do we make ‘friends’ with them? And what’s the benefit we look to have in the workplace as a result of these answers? Can you see the path of this logic?
The word ‘diversity’ is certainly better when accompanied with ‘inclusion.’ However, it still does not approach the level of depth we may need to reach to overcome certain challenges in the changing global workforce.
And make no mistake, our workforce is changing. Here are a few simple facts:
On the other side, we have 86% of CEOs reporting that technology advances will transform their business over the next five years. 1 (PwC 2014 US CEO Survey)
So, our question is this: In a world of digitalization, globalization, and changing demographics, does asking for ‘diversity’ make sense?
We need so much more than just differences in opinion, looks, etc. We need connection, we need collaboration, we need to overcome our individual and group biases and increase our ability to embrace differences fully. And, yes, we need to take a step forward – an uncomfortable one for corporate America – and love one another unconditionally.
Millennials are heading that way. In the 2015 Forbes article, “Millennials Have a Different Definition of Diversity & Inclusion,” journalist Lynda Dishman covers how this new generation sees ‘diversity’ as something bigger, and how it is a necessity for business success.
Stay tuned as we publish a toolkit on how to build successful organizations by embracing human souls. Until then, we prefer ‘understanding’ over the word ‘diversity’ and, if you agree, we ask you to share our post. ☺
In the 2016 Annual PwC Survey of Chief Executive Officers, conducted in 2014, many CEOs reported anticipating significant disruptions to their businesses during the next five years as a result of global trends.
Because some of our team members at Whirling Chief are consultants on the SESIL PIR Consulting side, we have a lot of discussions about our OD service or, more specifically, the need for structure changes and organizational design.
Organizational design is terminology used to describe different methodologies that support the identification of dysfunctional aspects of: work flow, capabilities, procedures, structures and systems, realignment to fit current business realities/goals, transition planning, and implementation.
In a combined article in 2015, PwC and strategy+business published “10 Principles of Organizational Design,” summarized by the visual below.
Though we love that these principles were published, we find them incomplete without identifying the proper steps to lead the work. Therefore, today we would like to share with you high levels of activities that take place in organizational design work.
First and foremost, it is very important to note that organizational design is a means to an end, not vice versa. For most successful organizations, organizational design activity leads to a more effective organization – from profitability to customer service, to internal operations or increased employee engagement.
Secondly, organizational design is never a standalone activity. It is most effective when used as a benchmark or keystone of business transformations and strategic planning discussions.
Last but not least, when we refer to organizational design, impeccability should be a desired state, recognizing there will likely be an impact to core elements of an organizational body – like systems, processes, technology, and people, which can make the organizational state significantly worse if not done well.
Some business opportunities that would benefit from organizational design thinking include, but are not limited to:
Now, as for the steps of the process, below is a good flow:
Communication is the blood flow across these key steps, and the length of time for change would differ depending on the type and size of the business.
Next week, we will share more details on the process steps above. Please, in the meantime, feel free to share from your experiences and learning on the topic.
Where a growing circle of business leaders comes to share, learn, and inspire organizations to put people first
