Month: July 2020

With signed contract in hand, I’ve decided that 1 August, 2020 is the day I begin writing the third edition of my book The Economist Guide to Organisation Design.

The corollary of that decision is that the blogs I write in the coming months will follow the book writing flow and may not be weekly but more spasmodic.  I have to keep up a disciplined pace on the writing – the submission date of the draft is end May 2021.

Last September asked my blog readers whether I should write a third edition.  I was in two minds about it. What tipped the balance in favour of writing it was the coronavirus – Covid-19 crisis.

Covid-19’s impacts have triggered, exacerbated and/or highlighted the five concurrent global crises we are now living with:  health, economic, humanitarian, political and climate.   Both individually and collectively these crises are forcing organisational rethinks and redesigns.   I can’t think of any organisations which are untouched by one or more of them ways not experienced or thought about pre-Covid.

This makes the third edition and exciting and challenging task.  I’m wondering how to pitch it at a level that is helpful to managers.  Think about some of the design implications they are facing in relation to the five concurrent crisis:

Health:  As we don’t know how Covid-19 will play out,  we are assuming we will have to maintain social distancing and remote working for some months or possibly years.   With this in mind organisational decision makers are redesigning their physical layouts ,  remote working policies, and grappling with questions similar to ones this organisation asking:

• Should we institute a business travel policy that anyone returning from a business trip cannot come into the office for 2 weeks?
• Should we tell people who usually come to the office by public transport to travel by car or bike instead?
• Should we allow staff who travel to foreign countries on holiday (even ‘green’ ones) back to the office within 2 weeks of their return?

Design questions on this include:  How do we design safe workspaces?  What systems and processes may need redesign for remote working?  What are we assuming about work location and the design of work?

Economic:  Oxford University economist Kate Raworth, author of Doughnut Economics, says ‘The need for new economic thinking is most evident than ever. I’m planning a series of video blogs exploring the coronavirus crisis through the lens of Doughnut Economics.’  In her twitter thread on the blogs she quotes Buckminster Fuller “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

One existing model that may be becoming obsolete is that of the Rational Economic Man.  Watch a delightful rap puppet video between three students and their economics professor. ‘While the professor argues that Economic Man – a rational, self-interested, money-driven being – serves the theory well, the students counter that a more nuanced portrait reflecting community, generosity and uncertainty is now essential. A musical puppet adventure challenging the heart of outdated economic thinking ensues.’    Supposing organisation leaders and designers rejected the Rational Economic Man what new design thinking, approaches and models would we develop that rendered our old approaches obsolete  and helped to create new types of thriving businesses.

Humanitarian: Humanitarian assistance is ‘intended to save lives, alleviate suffering and maintain human dignity during and after man-made crises and disasters caused by natural hazards, as well as to prevent and strengthen preparedness for when such situations occur.’

The IPPF points out that:  ‘While most countries are currently struggling to respond to COVID-19, the pandemic poses a particularly dire threat in fragile and humanitarian settings. An estimated 1.8 billion people live in fragile contexts worldwide, including 168 million in need of humanitarian assistance.’  Covid-19 is having an immense impact on the operation of humanitarian organisations.  “In humanitarian response, there will be a ‘before’ and ‘after’ COVID-19,” Ed Schenkenberg van Mierop, executive director of the think tank HERE-Geneva, wrote in late March.’

But an analysis from The New Humanitarian suggests that ‘as the crisis born of this global pandemic has evolved, some of the promises of deep transformation in a humanitarian aid sector that has long resisted reform have proven overly optimistic – at least so far.’ The analysis offers ‘13 ways the pandemic may change the future of humanitarianism – and the forces of resistance that may get in the way,’ and asks the question:  How do you think COVID-19 will transform the humanitarian aid sector?

Political:  The International Foundation for Electoral Systems, as of July 15 2020, has recorded election postponements in 62 countries and eight territories, with a total of 108 election events postponed.  They note that ‘Countries are also grappling with how to modify election procedures to minimize the risk for COVID-19 transmission, or change the system for voting completely to avoid the need for voters to physically go to the polls.’   These imply a whole range of re-designs of voting systems.  At the same time, Covid-19 is having a serious impact on trade, trade treaties and supply chains.

The WTO writes that ‘New trade measures are being taken by governments every day in response to COVID-19. If the different actors engaged in supply chains are not aware of these new requirements, they can struggle to adapt to the new conditions, thereby risking unnecessary disruptions. For example, exporters and importers need to know about new procedures and regulations affecting exports and imports, newly introduced export restrictions, tariffs, taxes and regulations, and new customs rules and transportation regulations.’ This shifting political context will continue to have organisation design implications.

Climate:  It’s cheering to read that ‘A new analysis of policies designed to promote economic recovery following the global coronavirus pandemic has led the experts to recommend ten concrete measures that will slow global warming while creating new jobs. … A group of more than 30 UK universities, formed to help deliver positive outcomes at the UN Climate Summit in Glasgow (COP26), have highlighted the fiscal recovery policies that promise to bring both short-term high economic impact and long-term structural change to ensure the UK meets its 2050 climate goals.  I’m wondering how many organisations will factor climate change action into their redesigning their operations as a response to Covid-19.

As I have conversations with organisation design colleagues on the way the practice is evolving as these crises evolve, I’m wondering how much of the book I’ll need to re-write completely.   Do you think organisation design practice is evolving at a speed necessary to design in the context of these five current and concurrent crises?  Let me know.

In August I start training for a new career.  I’m planning to be a celebrant and my  pre-course start assignment is to write the story of my life in 500 words – within 15 words either way.  The instructions say,  ‘You can write in any style you like, and you can use the first or third person. We will ask you to read part (or all) of your life story aloud as a public speaking exercise, so please don’t include anything you would prefer to keep private.’

This is proving a hard task.  I’m wondering what the story of my life is, and how do I tell it in just 500 words?  I’ve had a couple of goes at it from various angles and now I’m skimming ‘how to’ guidance and discover there are many books on how to write your life story which I don’t have time to read as I have to submit mine next week.

What makes it hard is there isn’t one story.  When I visited my daughter in Beirut I bought a string of prayer beads.  There are 33 beads on it and for some reason as I was thinking about my life story I remembered the beads and wondered if I had 33 life stories.  I found I had – it was easy enough to list them out – my life as a teacher, my life as a student, etc.  They are all ‘me’ at all times – there isn’t a part that I don’t carry with me, though there may be parts that I prefer to keep private.

Mulling this over, led me to remember the poster at work i.e. in the physical office I used to go to, not my new Zoom screen home workplace. The poster proclaims that the goal is to be an organisation ‘where everyone feels able to bring their whole self to work and perform at their best. One that can attract, develop and retain the most diverse talent. Where openness, honesty, challenge and innovation are encouraged and valued.’

In a blog I wrote last year, I said, ‘Many words and phrases in organisational use puzzle me.  ‘Bring your whole self to work’ is a current one, as is ‘empowerment’, and ‘resilience’.  They’re possibly ok as concepts, but what do they mean in practice and what are the organisational design implications of them?’

The phrase ‘bring your whole self to work’ is particularly odd, in my view.  Who doesn’t bring their whole self to work?  What bits do they leave somewhere else?   I could leave bits out of my written life story but when I go to work, I am automatically bringing my whole self.

I was discussing the phrase, by email, with Chris Rodgers, earlier this week.  He says, ‘Good luck in pursuing your challenge to the “bring your whole self to work” mantra. As it continues to gain momentum, we can expect a plethora of books, programmes, diagnostic tests and the rest to appear.

From my perspective, this is another superficially attractive concept that shows little or no understanding of the complex social dynamics of organization.  … People can’t do anything but ‘bring their whole selves to work. However they turn up, their actions are always reflections of their whole selves.  An individual’s sense of self is a relational phenomenon. It is being perpetually (re)constructed in the moment of their ongoing interactions with other people (both actual and imagined). People, that is, whose own sense of self is similarly being formed and reformed in the midst of their own interactions. There are no pre-existing “true selves” waiting to be discovered, “brought to work,” and applied “authentically”.

Crucially, too, people don’t only bring their ‘whole self’ to work all of the time, they also ‘bring along‘ everyone with whom they have an important relationship. You might recall, from our past exchanges, my notion of people’s “personal frames of reference” through which they strive to maintain all of their important relationships in an acceptable state simultaneously. Maintaining this imaginary and socially constructed frame intact is a key factor affecting people’s in-the-moment participation.

The real challenge, then, is one of managers enabling people, individually and collectively, to contribute their time and talents to the full. Doing so in the light of what is actually emerging; the constantly shifting power relationships amongst those involved that are enabling and constraining their actions; and the political dynamics that are continuously in play, as they and others seek to deal with the different interests, intentions, interpretations, ideologies, identities, and so on.’

What Chris says is very similar to what Nick Chater, Professor of Behavioural Science, Warwick University, says in a (free) Futurelearn course I am doing called  ‘The Mind is Flat’ Nick has a book with the same title.   A reviewer says about it, ‘You probably think you have beliefs, desires, fears, a personality, an “inner life”, maybe even a subconscious. Poppycock, says Nick Chater, a behavioural psychologist. All that stuff is folk nonsense. The brain essentially just makes everything up as it goes along – including what we fondly think of as our direct perceptions of the world, which are a patchwork of guesses and reconstructions. There is nothing going on “underneath”; there are no depths.’

It’s a view shared by Chris Rodgers who says, ‘I do agree with his [Chater’s] basic premise that the mind is ‘flat’, in the sense that there is no processing going on in our unconscious as a precursor to our conscious thinking and acting. Nor do we have a store of memories, in the sense that this notion is ordinarily understood.  Instead, our memories, thoughts and actions are constructed (and/or reconstructed) in the moment. Crucially, though, these tend to follow the patterns of our past sensemaking. That is, these are based on precedent rather than principle, as Chater also points out. As regards our memories, I talk about our re-membering of the past (i.e. putting it together afresh each time from our current vantage point). This draws on the Stacey/Griffin/Shaw notion of the “living present”.

Similarly, Jon Kabat-Zinn in his book ‘Wherever you go there you are’, says, ‘you carry your head and your heart, and what some would call your karma, around with you.  You cannot escape yourself, try as you might’.

Agreeing with the notion that you can’t not bring your whole self to work, I’d like to see the phrase  dropped from organisational vocabulary.  (Understanding that you can, however, sensibly choose what to keep private about yourself).

Instead of meaningless phrases, let’s focus on the goal to be organisations ‘that can attract, develop and retain the most diverse talent. Where openness, honesty, challenge and innovation are encouraged and valued.’    And in Chris Rodger’s words address the real challenge, ‘managers enabling people, individually and collectively, to contribute their time and talents to the full.’  (See also this London Business School blog on the topic).

Do you think the phrase ‘bring your whole self to work’ should be dropped?  Let me know.

Image:  Extract from Walt Whitman, Song of Myself, 51

Each month I get the European Organisation Design Forum Newsletter, available to their members.  (I’m on the newsletter’s ‘Curatorial Board’.  The board member role is to suggest/select articles, books, podcasts, videos etc for inclusion).

I seem to now be on high diversity and inclusion alert because l noticed that all the contributions for the June newsletter were from white, western males.  It’s not a huge number of contributions each month but this month’s led me to wonder what we might be missing as a profession if our information, research and ‘look to figures’ are predominantly from that category.

Curious, I logged onto the EODF website (member’s area), I took a look at the Resource Library, ‘one of the most comprehensive collection of Org Design resources in the world, organised by 9 key themes.’  FYI, the themes are Agile organisations, Holacracy, Re-organisation and re-design, Change management,  Strategy and leadership, Collaboration, decision making and job design,  Structure and operating model,  HRM, culture and organisation development,  Emerging trends.

I picked the theme ‘Structure and Operating Model’.  There are 32 items in it.  16 are classified as ‘articles’, and 16 as ‘blogs’ (two of the blogs are + video).  Discounting the 6 blogs listed that I wrote, leaves 26 items.

Naming the authors gives us the following (some items were co-authored)  Bram, Ben Dankbaar, Sergio Caredda, Joost (two blogs) , George Romme, Aaron De Smet + Sarah Kleinman + Kirsten Weerda,  David B. Yoffie ,   Annabelle Gawer + Michael A. Cusumano, Barry Camson, Jack Fuller, Michael G. Jacobides + Martin Reeves, Ranjay Gulati, Adam Pearce, Zhang Ruimin, David Hanna, Yve Morieux, Nicolay Worren (two blogs) , Andrew Campbell, Dov Seidman, Pim de Morree, Gary Hamel +  Michele Zanini,  Simone Cicero  (two blogs),  Michael Bazigos + Jim Harter, Art Kleiner.

There are 29 authors in total with 3 articles co-authored with women.  There is no woman writing an article as a sole author.  I don’t know what gender each author identifies with as this is not stated so I’ve taken the names (and in some cases seen accompanying photos) which leads me to assume that of the 29 authors there are 4 women, there is one Chinese and one Indian American author.  I believe all the others are white males.   That’s 80% of the authors on this theme of organisation design are white males.

I’m taking that theme as representative of the others – so I’m lacking a rigorous, larger sample evidence base – but from observation and my knowledge of the field the theme does feel representative.   The organisation design field is dominated by white male speakers/writers for it.  And as I frequently suggest articles for inclusion I’m contributing to the domination of that category.

Presumably, but I don’t have data to back up this presumption, the fact that the ‘voice’ of organisation design is dominated by white, western males, reflects a deeper imbalance of ethnicity, gender, and (possibly) culture in the work that we do?   (On culture the writers of the articles I looked at are either American or European apart from Zhang Ruimin who is Chinese).

There’s not an easy answer to the question how to address the imbalance.  Other disciplines are asking the same question.  For example, a  recent film ‘Picture a Scientist’ ‘tells the stories of three female scholars, revealing the systemic and structural nature of gender discrimination and harassment in academic science. The film shows how intersections of sexism and racism shape experiences differently for white women and for women of color and how implicit bias both generates inequity and prevents us from noticing it.’

And the American Economic Association, on June 5th issued a statement saying that “we have only begun to understand racism and its impact on our profession and our discipline.”  As the author of the article on this says, ‘Openness to more diverse groups of people and ideas should enhance the profession’s understanding of the world. Barriers to entry are not only unfair, they could undermine healthy competition in the marketplace for ideas.

It’s time to examine whether there is implicit bias in the way we talk about, record, research and practice organisation design and whether this is undermining ideas, generating inequities, and limiting our understanding of the organisational worlds where we do our work.

When I saw June’s line-up of white, western male articles in the EODF newsletter, I suggested to the Curatorial Board that we could agree some principles for article inclusion, that would encourage a broader range.  A colleague responded, ‘Lovely idea Naomi, also when I think of inclusion of gender/ethnicity, I think we must highlight our EODF/ODF members works and writings. This also means cross cultural. Sometimes we go to the same well too often.  Our articles and readings should be broadly inclusive and representative of our hopes and professional experiences.’

So now I’m wondering what principles for inclusion would work to present some broader perspectives on organisation design.

One, I think is around language used.   I read an interesting blog, ‘Terminology: it’s not black and white‘ The NCSC now uses ‘allow list’ and ‘deny list’ in place of ‘whitelist’ and ‘blacklist’.  And wondered if there are there organisation design terms or article language we should think about?   As an aside, when I first went to live in the US (from the UK), the US language use, and US sports terms as management speak left me feeling baffled at points.  And I remember having to explain ‘donkeys years’ to a colleague.   Are colloquialisms and some of the terms in common use in management articles excluding?

Another is about assumptions – perhaps we could choose articles and then critique or comment on the assumptions implicit in it.  For example, one of my assumptions, I often discuss with people in the Middle East and China whom I work with, is that organisation design should be a collaborative, involving process with a range of workforce members and other stakeholders.  Typically, their view of how organisations should/do organisation design doesn’t assume this.  So, a principle could be that each article comes with someone’s critique or observations on the implied assumptions in it.

A third principle could be to ask for suggestions for article/blog/podcast inclusion from the community of readers (or broader community).  On this principle there would be no standing Curatorial Board selecting articles but an open call or running list that people contributed to and the selection made by a rolling panel of people.

Differently we could look to the stated mission of the ODF ‘We are organization design practitioners who share knowledge, create community, and promote excellence in practice to help organizations around the world become more effective, successful, and inspiring.’   Or the EODF’s which is to be ‘a professional organisation design community that catalyses insight and inspiration for impact’.   And check that each item in the newsletter supports the achievement of those missions – with someone’s explanation of why they think it does.

What principles do you think we should adopt in selecting items for the monthly newsletter?  Let me know.

Image:  Beneath the Surface

How would you answer this question?

‘I’m working with a client and thinking about whether their Business Partners (e.g., HR, Finance, Supply Chain etc) should report:

1. Solid line back to the centre (maximising consistency and capability etc) and dotted line to their customer i.e., Operations  – or
2. Solid line to their customer (i.e., Operations) (maximising customer service) and dotted line back to their Function.’

Someone asked me it the other day.  Here’s how I responded: ‘There isn’t a quick ‘right’ answer.  What are they trying to achieve?  What is the work? What arrangements will make the work more meaningful to the job-holder?  What are the measures that will evidence that a solid line maximises either consistency or customer service?

There are multiple other variables in the mix.  The quality of the relationships is one.  For example, the HRBP reporting as a solid line to their customer may not get on with that person.  Capability is another – an inexperienced HRBP may not have the skills to maximise customer service.

Does it have to be one or other?  Could some functional business partners report with a solid line to the functional head e.g. finance BPs, and other BPs e.g. HR report with a solid line to the customer.  Taking a mixed approach by function you could see (perhaps) which method gave better outcomes and what were the variables to consider?’

My answer may not be satisfactory to the questioner as it doesn’t give anything more than further questions.  But too often I see people reach for an organisation chart ‘solution’ to an issue, problem, or opportunity.

One reason for this may be that they equate an organisation chart with the phase ‘organisation structure’ and/or ‘organisation design’, and think that by changing the reporting lines and roles they are redesigning or restructuring.  This is not the case.  A traditional organisation chart is simply a visual representation of job roles into hierarchies, layers and spans.  Changing these elements clearly does change things but it is not a good starting point for design, redesign, or restructure.

In the article 10 Principles of Organisation Design, authors Gary Nielsen et al using the word ‘structure’ as a synonym for organisation chart rightly tell us to ‘Fix the structure last, not first. Company leaders know that their current org chart doesn’t necessarily capture the way things get done — it’s at best a vague approximation. Yet they still may fall into a common trap: thinking that changing their organization’s structure will address their business’s problems.’

Organisational structures are neither represented or organisation charts nor are structures simple.  They are much more complex and not, perhaps, amenable to a simple visual representation.  (See my blog ‘What I talk about when I talk about structure’).

Richard Karash’s blog ‘How to see structure’, describes structure as ‘the network of relationships that creates behaviour.’ Saying, ‘The essence of structure is not in the things themselves but in the relationships of things. By its very nature, structure is difficult to see. As opposed to events and patterns, which are usually more observable, much of what we think of as structure is often hidden. We can witness traffic accidents, for example, but it’s harder to observe the underlying structure that causes them.’

If you think that an organisation’s structure is represented on an organisation chart then think again.  Go even further in your thinking, consider the possibility that an organisation does not need a chart at all in the way we traditionally have one.  Aaron Dignan’s article The Org Chart is Dead explores some ideas around this, suggesting that ‘The problem with the not-so-modern org chart is that it presupposes that people generally hold one role, have one boss, and that both of those states are semi-permanent, at least in-so-far as the chart is worth printing and distributing.’

He rightly says that this is not the case as things are changing so fast in most organisations.  His view is that. ‘If Facebook is the social graph, we need an equally elegant solution to the organizational graph. This tool would be a living, breathing org chart — a dynamic network — combined with what I’m calling “GitHub for organizations.”’

A concept that is akin to this social graph are the ‘desire lines’ that urban planners work with, described by Robert Macfarlane, quoted in a Guardian article on the topic,  as “paths and tracks made over time by the wishes and feet of walkers, especially those paths that run contrary to design or planning”; he calls them “free-will ways”.

Similarly, Andrew Furman, a professor in interior design and architecture at Ryerson University in Toronto who has spent years looking at desire lines, says they illustrate “the endless human desire to have choice. The importance of not having someone prescribe your path”. In a heavily constructed city, there are “rules as to how public and public-private spaces are used”, he says. Desire paths are about “not following the script” … An individual can really write their own story. It’s something really powerful if you do have that agency to move.”

We may not want to go that far in an organisation but there are perhaps parallels in concepts of self-organising teams, and emergent strategy that suggest that rather than depict hierarchies, reporting lines, layers and spans we pick up on Dignan’s idea of ‘git hub for organisations’.

I wonder if the remote working, at least for white collar workers, triggered by Covid-19 heralds the end of the hierarchical organisation chart and its representations of command and control in various forms.  Interacting solely via technologies seems to having some impact on levelling hierarchies and allowing people close to the work to make decisions about it.

Didier Elzinga,  CEO Culture Amp, quoted in an HBR article,  believes that the shift to remote work will have profound implications for the organizational culture of big companies, especially when it comes to giving distributed teams autonomy to make their own decisions.

During the Covid-19 crisis his company has been holding a daily meeting with about 20 leaders ‘where they run through a deck of the latest information related to the crisis, which is then published on an open channel on Slack. Once they gave people the data they needed to contextualize their decisions, Elzinga and his team made an exciting discovery. Leaders were more comfortable distributing authority and allowing teams to make their own informed decisions, without wasting time chasing down information and approvals.’  Given the context and the data people can find their own paths and make the right decisions.

Here’s a suggestion:  Let’s divorce the concepts of organisation structure from its linkage to an organisation chart and formal hierarchies, instead looking at structure through a systems thinking lens in the way Karash describes.  Let’s then consider whether we need an organisation chart in any traditional form at all, and think about new forms of organisation ‘charts’, maybe dynamically depicting the desire lines of an organisation’s functioning rather like the ‘organisational github’ that Dignan talks about.

If we did this would we then be better able to design healthy organisations which avoided the maintenance of hierarchical structures which, Margaret Heffernan’s words produce perverse outcomes.’?   Let me know.

Image: Desire lines