Organisation design can mean many different things. Put simply though, it’s making sure that all the ‘building blocks’ of an organisation are aligned to deliver the strategic plan. At InFocus we use a simple organisation design approach that is driven by employees and managers. The aim being to avoid ‘the annual / bi-annual’ organisation design activity which can be so disruptive to the organisation. We also use insight from The GC Index to support decision makers on appointments to new roles and teams.
What are the building blocks and why worry about them?
Simply put, they are the core parts of any organisation. For instance it can include processes, structures, roles, technology, ways of working and behaviours. Why are they important? Well too often organisation design starts with a structure and trying to align people to new roles. As a result we often tailor the design to the individual and not what the organisation needs for now and the future. This approach leads to a number of issues. Firstly, it doesn’t align the processes to the roles which can impact service and delivery. Secondly, if that person leaves the structure doesn’t always continue to work as expected. More importantly without aligning behaviours then the changes start to drift which leads organisations into this constant cycle of restructuring.
Our approach to organisation design
We follow a simple model, that encourages active engagement from employees, managers and other stakeholders. We believe that transparency in the design process leads to greater buy in to the changes. The tool can be used by managers on-going to support any decisions around processes and roles meaning that the design evolves as the organisation changes. This should result in less upheaval.
How it works
We run a series of workshops, which can be undertaken virtually, working through each of the stages. We actively encourage employees and managers to collate information and scenario plan. There is no fixed timeline for each stage, it depends on scope, the numbers of people and time availability. However once a team/organisation have gone through a cycle, it’s possible to start at different points depending on need. For example if a manager needs to make an interim change due to a new product they may not to go through the explore stage if those elements have stayed the same.
For any new organisation design activity we would expect to at least go through each of these stages:
- Documenting the building blocks using a RAG status. This makes it easy to communicate and generate buy-in
- Mapping current processes through collaborative workshops and meetings. We would collate data that supports these processes i.e. volumes of work.
- Agreeing the key metrics and benchmarking with external organisations and peers.
- Defining a simple Value Chain that supports the vision & strategy.
- Scenario planning different operating models if required.
- Defining job descriptions and structure charts aligned to the agreed operating model.
- Determining individual impact analysis and use this to define an implementation model.
- Agreeing effective KPI’s and measures of success in order to track successful implementation and embedding.
If you would like further information or support on assessing your current organisation design then please complete the contact form below and one of the InFocus team will be in touch!