When people hear the phrase ‘organisation design’ they often assume it means large-scale top-down change (think of the big restructures you see off the back of new strategies, mergers and acquisitions, or rising cost pressures).
But thinking about how work gets done needn’t be a ‘big bang’ exercise to drive significant change everywhere. In fact, organisations that can respond in smaller (and timelier) ways to day-to-day friction in their operating models have the potential to yield bigger benefits with less disruption.
To illustrate this, at Kindred we like to use the analogy of a garden. A garden is a complex system that cannot be fully predicted or controlled. It can get a bit unruly if neglected over time – some plants grow beyond the initial plan, whilst others don’t thrive as hoped. Successful gardeners don’t create something then leave it unchecked for years. They monitor and tend to it.
Just like the natural world, organisations are complex systems. They also can’t be fully predicted or controlled. Creating the best environment requires ongoing attention, and an ability to spot signs that an intervention is needed.
If you’re experiencing day-to-day challenges in relationships, decision-making or delivery, they may point to unresolved organisation design questions. Here’s some things to look out for:
Relationship Indicators
Leaders get on well with one another, but their teams are butting heads
It might just be about personalities, but ongoing interpersonal tensions between teams on the ground can also indicate a lack of functional clarity. If there isn’t alignment on how each team is intended to contribute, then friction can easily arise. This issue often bubbles under the surface if the leaders at the top are constantly acting as mediators or avoiding conflict altogether.
There’s high reliance on two people seeing eye-to-eye
If your organisational progress depends on two leaders agreeing on everything then it’s likely a case of blurred accountabilities. If they tend to be of like mind, the cost is probably inefficiency (e.g. people needing to get two ‘sign offs’ on a given piece of work). If they tend to disagree, then it’s a recipe for chaos for the teams around them.
Teams don’t seem to talk to one another
There can be multiple drivers for poor communications between teams, but it’s worth considering whether it’s clear who needs to stay connected to whom. ‘Joining the dots’ in a complex organisation isn’t easy, and often teams aren’t talking because individuals within them don’t have explicit responsibilities to do so
Decision-making indicators
Decisions go round the houses
Some organisations can be culturally ‘consensus-driven’ but when decisions tend to go through lots of circular conversation, it can indicate a large number of ‘consulted’ parties but no one ‘accountable’ one. Decisions that involve a high degree of commitment, complexity or cost probably should involve a lot of people, but there needs to be a person (or a clear mechanism) to channel perspectives and make a call.
The same decision is being taken in multiple places
There are plenty of instances where different teams grappling with the same decision isn’t an issue; most take their own calls on how to run team meetings, for example. But when the same large-scale organisational decision is being discussed in multiple places, it could signify that there are duplicative agendas at play and an inefficiency in the use of time and energy.
Decisions get made in the room and then unmade outside it
If information changes, it can be right to go back on a decision. But if there is a tendency for decisions to be made by the relevant people in the room and then reversed outside it, it signifies that your governance structures aren’t doing the job they need to. Maybe the notional decision-makers aren’t really empowered to make the call, or maybe the forums themselves aren’t conducive to making firm decisions. Either way, it results in lost time and increased confusion.
Delivery indicators
You can’t get the relevant people together quickly enough
“The diaries are a nightmare” is a phrase I hear in every organisation. And it’s true. Modern matrixed businesses have significant interdependence baked in. And managing that interdependence requires interaction. But if you find you can’t make progress on a key project because just scheduling the time to get the relevant people together is impossible, then you may well have too many contributors who are each playing too narrow a role.
There’s ‘nice to have’ activity in some places, and a lack of progress in others
Teams can vary in their effectiveness – at a given time some may be at the ‘performing’ stage whilst others are still ‘forming’ or ‘storming’. That said, if you’re noticing that certain functions are able to deliver ‘nice to have’ activity whilst others are struggling to move forward on critical priorities, it might be a sign that resources are no longer aligned to strategic priorities.
Certain individuals have become major bottlenecks
It’s not always easy for leaders to ‘let go’, and a member of your team being a bottleneck to progress could have a behavioural driver. There is, however, a natural tendency for organisations to reward high performers with more responsibilities. If you’ve hit a point where one person’s capacity has become the blocker to progress, it could indicate that individual portfolios have become unbalanced and there’s a need to redress them.
What you can do
If you’ve identified some of the challenges above, the next step is to gain a deeper understanding of what is going on beneath the surface. It may be that the solution lies in addressing individual behaviours, but those behaviours are likely to be heavily influenced by the organisational context. Being willing to take stock and tinker with the system where things aren’t working makes work a better place to be, and means that the once-every-few-years major redesign might not be needed after all.
