At the start of a recent organizational design the leader asked me to provide a list of outcomes for the effort. Being a good consultant, I turned the question back on him. I explained that he and his team needed to craft the specific design principles that they hoped to accomplish via our work. The leader pointed out that over the decades that I have helped organizations I must have observed some high level outcomes that should be true for all design efforts.
This leader had a good point. His question led me to develop the below list of general criteria that I have sought in every design I have ever facilitated. I often use building a house as a metaphor for carrying out organization design. Just as every house needs a foundation, walls and a roof, every organization design needs to have the below conditions:
- Strategy and Goals
- Supports business strategy, sales, productivity
- Culture and Readiness
- Fits our organizational culture and people are ready/able/willing?
- Role Definition and Alignment
- Leads to clear roles/alignment across the organization? Enough resources?
- Operational Model
- Can be implemented? Appropriate span of control? Supports work flow?
- Risk and Cost
- Level of risk acceptable /mitigated? Power balanced? Cost acceptable?
This list turned out to be a good high level scorecard for what our successful organizational configuration should look like. I think we can all agree that all organizational designs need to be able to be operationalized at an acceptable level of risk and cost, while accomplishing the strategy and fitting with the culture. If any one of these key criteria was missing we would consider our work a failure.
Yes, the specific design criteria that an organization seeks such as agility, more collaboration, better products, etc. are still in play. However, the above bigger picture criteria must be true!
Note: This blog does not reflect the views of my employer.
Kevin Anderson, Dr. Organizational Design 