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I always squirm a bit when people ask me what I do for work. There’s a moment when I think “what’s the best way to describe running an organisation design consultancy in this particular instance?”
Sometimes I’m lazy: “I help organisations to do people stuff”
At times I’m a bit lofty: “I help companies to be better”
And on the occasion I’m talking to a small child, I compare myself to a teaching assistant.
It’s probably rarer that I’m literal: “I help to design organisations”. That’s typically because people either haven’t heard of it as a job before, or they have, and think it’s a bad way to spend your time.
There are some common misperceptions of organisation design that are in my head as I fumble around the “so what do you do for a living” question. They are that:
- It’s about org charts
- It only serves to cut costs
- It only ever leads to restructures
- It’s something the big consultancies sell; and
- It’s not really a job.
It’s about org charts
Organisation charts are more useless now than they have ever been. The first known org chart, captured for the New York railroad in the 1850s was actually a thing of beauty. Reflecting a shift from micro to large-scale organisation, the design served a profound set of principles that would stand up well in any progressive company today: “Power should be delegated. Autonomy should be granted. Authority should match responsibility….”.
Seventy years later, the next iterations of the org chart from the likes of Fayol and Hollerith had moved beyond complex ecosystems to describe more rigid hierarchies in which (in Fayol’s words) “to manage is to forecast and plan, to organise, to command, to co-ordinate and to control”.
In modern – often matrixed – organisations, we are well beyond this notion. The most you can really infer from the lines of an organisation chart today is who receives HR notifications to approve annual leave or perhaps complete performance reviews (and even then, it’s unlikely that either can be done without broader context or conversations). Static, pyramid-focused organisation charts do not show you how work really flows through a system, where people take their direction from or who is accountable for what. If that’s what you need to visualise, there are technologies that can help to do this properly (Functionly and Glassfrog being just two examples).
So, no. Organisation design is not just about organisation charts. In most of the work we do at Kindred it’s not about organisation charts AT ALL. Of course, there are times where we need to develop one, just so we’ve captured all the roles and jobs that exist. But it’s an imperfect by-product rather than an end, representing just one of the many lenses we’ve had to apply to how things will work in the future.
It only serves to cut costs
When companies really want to cut costs in a big way, they tend to call on MBB or big 4 firms to help. They come in, analyse a load of data, benchmark stuff and support businesses to assess where they can do things differently. From a people cost perspective, they may decide to centralise more, do some outsourcing or offshoring, look at automation and process efficiency…etc. All these things raise organisation design questions or challenges, but they are not there to simply serve a standalone “organisation design” agenda. There is no such thing.
OD exists to serve an organisation’s strategy. If a company’s strategy was simply to cut costs and nothing else then yes you would likely pull on the sort of levers described above – do it quickly and painfully, adopting the numbers-based business case that your chosen big firm has produced. But even where companies are looking to cut costs, they typically want to be efficient AND delight customers, or centralise AND improve quality, or reduce headcount AND transform in some way. To do this, you need to really think about what the trade-offs are, how to create an environment that can operate quite differently and what this means for the flow of work. You’re likely doing more of some things, less of others and perhaps demanding different things from leaders and managers in the process – quicker decisions, clearer expectations and so on.
Cost cutting is rarely a standalone consideration, and organisation design is often about growth and change more than anything else. At least, it has been in my own career.
It only ever leads to restructures
When we train on OD with client teams, we often start by asking people what comes to mind when they hear the phrase “organisation design”. Whilst “org charts” is the most common answer, “restructure” is the next. And this isn’t without reason. We’ve been in a period of significant economic uncertainty and upheaval. Companies are undertaking corporate restructuring, integration and cost-cutting which inevitably drives organisational change. Restructures are a natural (if sometimes painful) part of how organisations evolve. They are a consequence of cost cutting, sure, but can also be a consequence of growth and change.
The issue with restructures in the context of OD is that they can either be a) not the right lever to pull or b) only necessary due to inattention about how the organisation is performing over too long a timeframe. They’re a blunt and sometimes destructive instrument, where the pain can outweigh the gain.
I’ve talked about the garden analogy for org design before. Just like gardens, organisations need continual care and attention to make sure the right conditions are in place for people and teams to perform. Restructures are the equivalent of the labour intensive, once-or-twice-a-year attack to the garden that the less green-fingered amongst us tend to perform. In between these times, we just watch the plants and the soil do their own thing, see what happens, and then make a massive intervention again when the whole thing looks out of control. As a bare minimum it’s fine. It doesn’t help the garden to thrive as well as it could. The most robust plants survive and take over the whole place, whilst the less established, more delicate ones suffer. If you’re an avid gardener and tend to each part of the garden in the right way (and at the right time) then the whole ecosystem works more in balance, looks better and feels nicer to spend time in. The same is true of organisations. If you want to know what organisation designers do beyond leading restructures, then refer to below (“it’s not a job”).
It’s a big consultancy thing
The big consultancies certainly sell organisation design services. I spent years training at one of them and went to build up the OD practice in another. But organisation design is not just a “big consultancy thing”, or even a consultancy thing alone. It’s a field of research and development, a global community and discipline. It’s evolving as much as our society, its norms and the technology at our disposal does too. Companies value OD as a capability more now than they ever have, evidenced by the growing number of in-house OD leaders and teams – some of whom I’ve been privileged to partner with. Much like other things, organisation design can be a subject, a passion, a side-hustle, a full-time job or a lifetime career. It’s more of a field than a service and, in my experience, the leading thinkers and doers in that field are not at the big firms – not today.
It’s something you only need to think about periodically (i.e., not a job)
Outside of consulting, where you might go from one organisation design project to the next, it might be fair to assume that organisation design is not a full-time endeavour. That, akin to interior design on a house (or gardening in a garden) it’s something you just call the experts in for when the need arises. As I’ve described above, many organisations do take this approach – either because they are too small to justify the investment or they do not see OD as a strategic capability that they require on an ongoing basis.
But there is a growing number of companies that take the opposite view, who deem it valuable to have people looking at how the organisation is operating over the long term. If you’re one of the fortunate people to work in a company such as this, I know from my own experience that you’ll be one of the busiest people around. OD is one of those things that many people need to see first-hand to recognise the value, and once you have you tend to spot the needs all over the place. Internal teams often start with a single dedicated role which quickly becomes overwhelmed by the pull from various parts of the business. And as the function matures the agenda shifts from one of ‘pull’ to that of ‘push’ (or at least nudge), in which you might be inherent in helping shape the direction of the organisation, building skills and developing the teams or modes of working required to stay competitive in the market.
So, what is it that a full-time organisation designer might be doing day-to-day? In my experience, it’s a combination of things in parallel. At any one time, you might be helping to assess how to pivot a particular part of the business, working with the team to explore the set up required to deliver a growth agenda. Alongside this you may be addressing some pain points or friction between two departments who have a lot of reliance on one another to get things to market. You could also be working with colleagues in the People function to develop ways to monitor the organisation’s shape and health on an ongoing basis or grappling with the capabilities that are required to deliver on a refreshed strategy. And so on and so on. Some of the work you do is short-term problem-solving, some is long-term organisation-building. It’s a gig that brings a lot of variety.
I always get a kick out of speaking to people who hold a permanent OD role in an organisation, to see how their focus is shifting over time. It can be a really gratifying ride, and an opportunity to get your hands into all different parts of an organisation. Not many other jobs give you that privilege.
So, there you have it.
OD is more than org charts, cost cutting and restructures. It’s as much the territory of individuals as it is consultancies, and it’s one of the best jobs around. If you’re already establishing your own path in this field or are thinking about making a pivot, do reach out – I’d love to speak to you.
