Times They Are A Changing…

The Context for an Alternate Organizational Design

Unless we design something different each person, team or group in an organization will naturally adopt the default organizing design, given it is the one we have all been trained and acculturated in.

The aspiration of (almost) everyone in an organization is that work be productive, that relationships be empowering, and the experience of being at work be one of doing something worthwhile that makes a difference to a very specific set of stakeholders.

None of us goes to work to be unproductive, to be frustrated by colleagues such that we end up with the experience of having wasted one’s time, or worse, having missed out on opportunities to experience really fulfilling work. Yet this is what the prevailing organizational design gives most of us – a lot of frustration, and the experience of a lack of fulfillment and satisfaction.

So we need to rethink our organizing model and our practices, so that being at work is meaningful, enjoyable, productive, and makes a difference. So that being at work provides the maximum opportunity for each of us to fully express our genius and the contribution we have to make – the most sustaining reward of work is the intrinsic reward that comes from knowing ­– I made a difference.

The Prevailing (Default) Organizing Design That Needs To Be Changed

Here are some of the key elements of the default-organizing model:

1. Hierarchical – executives, managers, supervisors, individual contributors, each in their box on the org chart, and most with a relationship of deference that increases the further down the hierarchy one is placed
2. Command and Control – policy, strategy and decision-making cascaded down from the top
3. Power-based – status, tenure, expertise, access to resources and connections decide where power and authority to act on one’s own initiative lies
4. Authorities often unclear, and even when they are clear can easily be trumped by someone further up the hierarchy, or someone with access to more power or resources
5. Goals and objectives mostly “handed down”, and frequently occur as a loaded challenge rather than an opportunity
6. Failure can be career limiting, and is best avoided
7. Risks are to be mitigated, and best avoided
8. Trust is low, so watch your back
9. Value statements are usually more slogans than “the way we do things around here”
10. Why we are doing what we are doing is mostly unclear – beyond making money and staying in business
11. Engagement is low, as is enthusiasm
12. The raison d’être of the organization is, implicitly, to maximize the returns to shareholders and investors.

A Possibility For An Alternate Organizing Design

Creating an alternate organizing design/model requires:

1. An alternate mindset
2. New practices, and 
3. New agreements

To use a computer metaphor, adopting a new organizing model is akin to switching from years of using a PC with a Windows operating system to using a Mac and a Mac operating system.  There is a lot that is familiar and a lot that is radically different, even frustrating and confusing.

Anyone can start the process of creating a new organizing model – the impact and leverage increases as the community of participants grows.

Here are some key building blocks of an alternate organizing design/model:

1. The group [team, function, organization] is purpose-driven – everyone in the group knows why they are together and are aligned with, and enlivened by, the purpose they are pursuing
2. Values – are designed to shape actions, decisions and the groups mood and vitality, and they are lived by everyone
3. Shared language – the group works with a shared language with shared meaning, a lexicon that speeds mutual understanding and aligned actions
4. Rules – providing a context for how to work together, they constrain some actions and behavior
5. Roles – all work is articulated as a role that needs to be filled. Everyone has a clear role(s), which means everyone knows exactly what is expected of them and their colleagues in the day-to-day workings of the group
6. Authority, Accountabilities and Permissions are vested in each role
7. Sensing and expressing tensions helps drive change – sensing tensions between what is and what could be and taking action to resolve a tension is a SOP
8. Make a distinction between Governance – the process by which the group alters roles, adds roles, changes policies, adds policies, alters procedures, and adds procedures in a decision-making model so that executing change can happen safely and swiftly, and Operations the day-to-day interactions in which the work of the group is accomplished.

How do we start creating a new organizing design? That is the topic of my next post.