Month: October 2016

Last week I was talking with someone with 'too many direct reports'. I've been here before and commonly the statement comes with a request to know what the 'right' number of direct reports is that someone should have. Fortunately this wasn't part of the conversation I had in this instance.

The start-point was to find out more by completing the sentence, 'I have too many reports – to ….. what?' We discussed 'to control', 'to pay sufficient attention to each of them', 'to run successful meetings with', 'to develop their skills', 'to manage my own work-load', 'to know what's really going on', 'to focus myself on the strategy and big issues', 'to network with my peers', 'to develop my own skills and knowledge' and so on. We were trying to find out whether the issue is actually too many direct reports or it feels like that because of other things. (See a book QBQ! The Question Behind the Question for good tips on this type of conversation).

Getting to a span comfortable for a particular leader means understanding that various factors play into the mix. An article by Julie Wulf in the Harvard Business Review (April 2012) How many direct reports suggests five important areas to consider and recommends exploring the implications of each. PWC has used three of the five points from the HBR article and ranged some questions under them to form the 'C-level span of control diagnostic tool' adding in one additional aspect not in the HBR article – I've listed these at the end of this piece.

The tool 'allows you, in just three minutes, to get a sense of the target number of direct reports based on your current leadership situation'. I am deeply dubious about the '3 minutes' to even get a sense of things but I pretended I was the person in question and did the diagnostic (and got an answer of 5 – 8 and wondered if that was the single answer to any permutation but didn't explore that thought further).

The value in this tool is less in the answer it throws up and more in the conversation and reflection that it generates around what a large number of direct reports 'gives' the leader and what it 'takes from' the leader. (See a research paper Span of Control and Span of Attention for some insight on this). The dialogue facilitates further reflection on what a smaller number of reports could give and take and whether this would be beneficial to the situation.

Assuming that there is a case for reducing the number of direct reports the tricky thing is then to actually do it without confusion, conflict, wounded feelings and people feeling demoted. I've presented a negative because that's what I've usually observed in this situation. Only a few people are thrilled to be now excluded from the 'inner circle'.

One way through this is to have a discussion with the current large number of reports on the thinking behind the statement and get their views on how a reduced number of direct reports could be achieved. They might come up with things like experimenting with a 'job share' i.e. halving the number of direct reports by pairing them up so only one of the pair appeared at management meetings and trusting them to keep each other/the leader briefed, or inserting a deputy who handles functional reports while the manager handles operational reports.

How would you handle reducing the number of direct reports? Let me know.

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Listed below are the five HBR areas with the related PWC questions + the additional PWC area with questions.
1 Evaluate Where You Are in the Senior-Executive Life Cycle

• How long have you been in your role?
• How many direct reports do you expect to change?
• What is the status of the strategy?

2 Assess the Degree of Cross-Organization Collaboration Required

• How much time do you spend on collaboration across units?
• How related are your businesses?
• How global are your operations?
• How adept at collaboration is your team?

3 Consider How Much Time You Spend on Activities Outside Your Direct Span of Control

• How much time do you spend with others besides your direct reports (e.g., customers, regulators, field operations)?
• Are these "outside" activities aligned to advancing strategic priorities?

4 Consider the Scope of Your Role
(Not in PWC diagnostic)
5 Consider Your Team's Composition
(Not in PWC diagnostic)
Current span and situation (PWC)

• How many direct reports do you have now?
• What is your level in the organization?
• What is your role/function?

On Friday and Saturday I was at the EODF conference, and was honoured to be labeled 'special guest' and give one of the six keynote presentations. Although nerve-wracking it was a good reflective experience for me.

I wrote about the challenge I'd set myself last week.(Being on the edge of inside). Briefly it was about what made my heart sing and my heart despair in the work that I do. I turned those parts into a 20 minute presentation of 10 slides each with one or two images rather than wordy bullets about what I was going to say (in case I didn't stick to the script).

Fortunately a couple of days before the presentation I asked a colleague if he'd be willing to listen to the presentation and offer feedback and comments as a rehearsal. He did a great job and in the course of our discussion I realized I'd left out something I'd promised to people which was to 'pose some fundamental questions for reflection on organisation design theory and practice'.

This was a useful activity for me in thinking on my own OD practice and, ready for the conference, I came up with the following (in bold):

1. If you look at performance stats for an organisation – take the Marks & Spencer ones as an example – what are the stats telling you that could point to design challenges or opportunities and what aren't the stats telling you?

2. Once you know the challenge – the M & S one is to 'resurrect sales' – where do you actually start the design process?

3. The two questions above are about trying to get some context, information, and 'feel' for the organisation so that you can find a sensible entry point for design work. How much of an organisation's context do designers need to have before they can do good design work or does having a team of internal and external consultants working together provide better design solutions?

4. Newcomers to organisations (whether as new hires or external consultants) have to rapidly 'read' the organisation if they are to work successfully in it. But I'm wondering whether some organisations are easier to read than others and my question here is – 'is organisation design about making an organisation legible? (See my blog that references organisational legibility).

5. One of my 'rules of thumb' (thx Herb Shepard) is 'start where the system is', but this can be a double edge sword. How best should designers adapt their methods and techniques to suit the context – without losing the 'bite' or slipping into collusion with the context?

6. This (Q5 above) is a constant question of mine to myself and what I'm doing in terms of adaptation is take some of the theories, thinking, and practices of wicked problems and applying these into the organisation design work and this approach is going well. So my question here is 'Is it time to stop using a programmatic/formulaic approach, with phases and steps, to organisation design – how useful is this in a complex system?'

7. Using a wicked problem approach to organisation design means I'm now using a different style of doing it – much more of a movement than a mandate, not quite a stealth approach but towards that. What are the different styles of doing organisation design – stealth, challenge, radical, expert, traditional – are we or should we be consciously doing organisation design work in a particular style and what are the impacts and consequences of designing in different styles – think Gaudi v Frank Lloyd Wright.

8. Entering the realm of wicked problems means many things one of which is there isn't a clear cause/effect 'outcome'. This makes it difficult for organisation designers to prove their value. In the absence of cause/effect what signifies organisation design value add? (Answers welcome here).

9. As we do our work we're noticing that inviting lots of people to participate in the design work is helpful , and in general (not just in my organisation) I observe that organisation design skills and understanding are increasingly being sought. Who most needs them in an organisation and how can they be cheaply and effectively taught or transmitted?

10. My final slide is about participation – what I'm learning is, it is not that we consultants design the organisation it's the people in it who do. How can we work better with that realization?

What fundamental questions for reflection on organisation design theory and practice would you pose? Let me know.

Thanks Bill Zybach for the rehearsal discussion.

I set myself a hard task when I sent off my paragraph to the European Organisation Design Forum saying what I would talk about at the annual conference coming up this week.

Naomi will discuss with us the hard but rewarding day-to-day work of designing an organisation capable of moving from a risk-averse, hierarchical, very traditional paper-based 'analogue' organisation to a 'digital' one without any service loss or disruption. She will offer insights into what makes her heart sing whilst at work, balanced by the occasional journey home in despair. Along the way she will pose some fundamental questions for reflection on organisation design theory and practice.

To get myself thinking on it before Friday arrives and I stand in front of an audience I decided interview myself. As follows:

Q What makes your day to day work hard?

The hardest part is trying to get a grip on the context. If you've ever seen House of Cards or Yes Minister or Yes Prime Minister or The thick of it you'll get the idea. They're don't seem to me to be satires. They feel like documentaries. For a newcomer to the British Civil Service, as I am, it's the biggest challenge and one that many experience.

The whole environment and context is hard. The legacy of stuff, the antiquated technology, the risk averseness, and the sheer 'buggeration factor' as former Prime Minister, David Cameron described it make organisation design and development work really challenging.

Q What does this context mean for your organisation design practice?

I've come back time and again to the 10 rules of thumb for change agents they keep me going in the low moments and remind me that organisation design is a type of change and it takes persistence, resilience and courage to do it. My 3 favourite 'rules' are: Keep an optimistic bias, never work uphill, and start where the client is.

Many times I've thought that I'm in an unfathomable Alice in Wonderland environment and I'll never find my way out and even further off is the possibility of making the organisational environment 'fit for the 21st century'. In these moments I found the theories and practices of 'Wicked Problems' very helpful as we develop the 'test and learn' way of doing organisation design.

When I feel I'm not 'one of us' in the work I pick up Debra Meyerson's research on Tempered Radicals and in that same vein recently read a wonderful piece by David Brooks At the edge of inside which talks about: 'those who are at the edge of the inside. These people are within the organization, but they're not subsumed by the group think. They work at the boundaries, bridges and entranceways'. This makes me think that organisation design is not about designing ourselves into a new way of living, but living ourselves into a new way of designing (praxis over theory) and living differently from others is not the easiest thing in a community.

Q What makes your heart sing?

The gains are so delightful. We see them often but there's no cause/effect visible that we can measure (unfortunately). For example, our work has proposed big structural changes as necessary ways forward if we are to meet our organisational objectives and several of these, dismissed at the initial 'hearing' are now being taken up and worked with. So although it's hard to 'prove our value' we have lots of circumstantial evidence that the stones we throw into the pond are making ripples.

Alongside the consulting work we're having great success with our organisation design capability building. It's gaining ground with each cohort intake and we're on the road to getting it accredited in the near future. Helping enthusiastic and energetic people understand that an organisation is a system and can't be changed through an 'org chart' view of it is great, and hearing their stories of taking risks, giving things a go, not waiting for 'permission' and seeing them take small steps and then bigger steps towards greater confidence as they apply their learning is really rewarding.

But what I makes my heart sing most loudly is the joy of working with a hugely committed workforce and an incredible team of people who are willing to dive in there and get stuff done and who find the time and energy to support each other, laugh a lot and keep on learning. #ODProud indeed.

What makes your heart sing or gives you occasional journey home in despair as you do your organisation design work? How does it inform your OD practice? Let me know.

This week just gone was peppered with discussion on new types of organisation designs and questions on whether traditional organisations can morph to a new design – flat, networked, nodal – or are they destined to stay hierarchical, bureaucratic, several levels structures?

Lee Bryant asks 'What is the use case for organisational structure?' He says that 'the rise of social technology in the workplace creates new possibilities for how we organise work.' But reading through various fascinating links he adds to his piece and from these to further links to other articles on the topic it seems that the new possibilities aren't being realised.

Certainly I've noticed the big, long established organisations I work with having huge difficulty in exploring or adopting any of these new possibilities.

Reasons for sticking with the way big organisations typically organise work in hierarchies, bureaucracies, management layers, and rather inflexible systems could be due to the desire for 'legibility.' Small organisations can be flat and flexible because they are 'legible', as they get bigger and more complex that 'legibility' decreases and a desire to 'simplify' in order to return to legibility takes over. The drive towards simplification is evident in many management ideas – seven steps, five principles, four box grids, etc. Venkatesh Rao in A Big Little Idea Called Legibility explains the inherent dangers of it and also offers four reasons why it remains attractive.

Rao's idea of legibility is taken in a slightly different direction David Manheim in Go Corporate or Go Home. He (Manheim) makes a brilliant case in saying that the way information is held in databases defines the organisational structures. Read it and see whether you agree with his hypothesis. (Since the advent of PowerPoint I've thought that Microsoft defines organisation structures by offering so few structure related graphics).

Bryant offers Haier as an example of a company that has the ability to both stay legible and reinvent itself to take advantage of new opportunities. It has been through reinvention three times as new technologies appear and is now attempting a fourth one – that takes it a far remove from hierarchy and bureaucracy – to become 'platform' based in the way described by Bryant.

'It makes more sense for an organisation to maintain a single, conservatively managed shared services platform to provide all the common services required, and then allow individual teams or business units freedom to create their own apps on top, than it does to maintain a one-size-fits-all vertically-integrated software stack that forces all parts of the organisation to tolerate a lowest-common-denominator inflexible product, which is traditionally how IT functions have tried to meet the many and varied "requirements" of their business.'

In this platform model 'Each employee of Haier has the opportunity to become an entrepreneur who can start up his or her business on Haier platform to directly create value for customers.'

Whether Haier can do this and how it would fare under a different CEO are both matters of conjectures. However, a strategy+business article on the company suggests that 'much of the credit for Haier's success accrues directly to Zhang Ruimin, the company's CEO since 1984'. There are many other companies whose fortunes have dipped when a single minded leader departs. In many instances these have been asked back to 'save' the company. See a list here.

Not all organisations can take the Haier route. Most organisations of any size have a hierarchies, layers, and organising structures that make them 'legible'. But how can they stop being hidebound bureaucracies, and usefully take advantage of new technologies? Several ideas are being tried by various companies. They include:

• Culling senior managers (reducing management layers)
• Developing models of "self-organisation" or "self-management" on a larger scale than previously attempted
• Changing the ratio of employees to managers (wider spans and fewer layers)
• Dividing into smaller units that are easier to manage and motivate.
• Running projects over shorter cycles also keeps the build-up of bureaucracy to a minimum
• Giving smaller teams more independence and granting more autonomy to workers
• Running "hackathons" -— internal competitions -— to find novel ways of solving operational problems.
• Developing leaders who continually look at subtracting unnecessary rules and procedures

Is your use of better tech enabling it to become a better organisation? Let me know.