“It’s the principle of it!” I said when I was a teenager to my parents on the subject of my freedom to choose whatever teenage thing I wanted to do. So now many years later instead of it being my final exclamation to a lost argument it is now a driver for how I do organisation design.
When an organisation decides they want to do organisation design I need to know why? Any organisation design is going to cause lots of change and disruption so an organisation needs to know why this is being done and it shouldn’t be an activity that is glossed over. To do this I like to have specific design principles that allow decisions to be made that align to the design principles. The design principles can then be used to test design models.
Unfortunately though, I see so many design principles that are vague and lack depth and cannot be used to test design models. For example, the following are poorly considered design principles which leads to further queries:
Programme provides value for money
- Is this short term or long term?
- What is the driver for this? Shareholders, budget deficit etc?
Teams are aligned and joined up to avoid silo working
- What are the current problems? Where does the interface and relationships fail that has led to silo working. This often masks a problem in process, culture or ways of working
Staff are fully engaged and committed to the programme
- Is this an increased score in staff surveys /pulses or an increase in retention? What is the management capability to support this?
If the above design principles were written specifically for the organisation to solve their problems then they would inform the right design model. An improved set of design principles may be as follows:
- Leads to a reduction of operating costs of 5% in year 1
- Critical operating processes (e.g. recruitment) demonstrate minimal handoffs between teams
- Retention of staff identified in the talent pool does not reduce
(note this is not an exhaustive list of design principles)
For an Organisation Design to satisfy these design principles the end result can be quantified and is likely to lead to an improved design.