Author: naomiorgdesign

It's not often I get asked about the bearing that organisation design has on the ethical operation of an organisation. But it's a topic I'm now thinking about. I took a look at the Institute of Business Ethics Briefing on Ethical Concerns and Lapses 2014. 478 were reported during the year, and I'm guessing there were others that went unreported. (There's also a short webcast on it ).

It's interesting that the IBE defines business ethics as 'the values, principles and standards that govern how an organisation conducts its business'. This definition seems to be focused towards a moral obligation for individuals to behave in a 'good' way within certain parameters. It seems to focus on the individual, for example, requiring him or her to sign a 'Code' or subscribe to given values. But where 'concerns or lapses' (what a delightful phrase to hide things behind) occur it is often because of one or more of three things. The organisation design and infrastructure:

• is non-supportive of an individual choosing to be ethical
• is not picking up when breaches occur
• is preventing the right thing happening

In searching around for more on this I read an article Reinforcing Ethical Decision Making Through Organizational Structure. The abstract reads:

In this paper I examine how the constituent elements of a firm's organizational structure affect the ethical behavior of workers. The formal features of organizations I examine are the compensation practices, performance and evaluation systems, and decision-making assignments. I argue that the formal organizational structure, which is distinguished from corporate culture, is necessary, though not sufficient, in solving ethical problems within firms. At best the formal structure should not undermine the ethical actions of workers. When combined with a strong culture, however, the organizational structure may be sufficient in promoting ethical conduct. While helpful, ethics training and corporate codes are neither necessary nor sufficient in promoting ethical behavior within firms.

The author suggests that the formal organisational structure comprises three 'distinct but related aspects' – all of which pertain to organisation design:

1. The structure of monetary and non-monetary rewards
2. The performance evaluation, monitoring and control processes for individuals and business units
3. The systems of partitioning and assigning decision making rights and responsibilities to workers, including job design and the level of empowerment.

In another research paper Organizational Structure, Communication, and Group Ethics the author concludes that

'The data support our main predictions: (1) horizontal, averaging structures are more ethical than vertical structures (where subordinates do not feel responsible) and than consensual structures (where responsibility is dynamically diffused); (2) communication makes vertical structures more ethical (subordinates with voice feel responsible); (3) with communication, vertical structures are more ethical than consensual structures (where in-group bias hurts the outsider).'

How often do we consider these aspects of the ethics of hierarchies or networks or matrix organisations?

A third paper I read Framing the Questions of E-Government Ethics: An Organizational Perspective makes the provocative statement that 'technology impacts moral decision making at the organisational level in ways that we have yet to adequately understand. Extreme digitalization leaves little valuable room for contextual sensitivity and can sustain unreasonable degradation to moral responsibility'.

As private and public sector organisations become increasingly structured around or through technology, sometimes to the point of 'digital by default' we need thoughtful discussion and reflective action on designing our organisations to operate and deliver ethically.

Your view? Let me know.

Most weeks I have a few people ask me organisation design questions. This week I had four and here I'm responding to the one from Alex:

I wondered whether you might be able to suggest any org design courses which may be suitable for me. I am keen to get some insight about any intermediate organisation design courses on the market which do design in an organisation development way.

Alex is already working in an organisation design/development role and isn't a complete beginner. A lot of people are in her position – looking to consolidate and develop beyond foundational skills. I guess in the CIPD's Organisation Design Profession Map Alex is looking to become a Band 3 or 4.

The interesting thing about Alex's question is the point about organisation design in an organisation development way. My organisation design orientation is towards organisation development – but what does that mean? A few years ago I came across a useful discussion on this from Fred Nickols of Distance Consulting. He developed a typology that explains Organisation Development (OD) practitioners as 'hard' or 'soft'. Soft OD refers to the classic tools: teambuilding, group facilitation, conflict management, etc. Hard OD refers to the socio-technical stream of OD, including organizational design, process design and improvement, work design and redesign, and large-scale change management. He also categorises them into internal and external consultants. He's now developed his thinking through the addition of another distinction 'that between OD practitioners who focus on people and those who focus on the organization', pointing out that there's no one best type. You can see the updated typology here .

On Nickol's analysis Alex is looking to conduct hard OD through a soft OD lens but there are lots of ways of doing this. So where does she go to develop her skills? I'm not sure that an 'intermediate organisation design course' is the best way to go. (Expensive and time-consuming). I'd suggest in the first instance to get reading.

Alex wouldn't have to become an academic, but does have to form a view on systems and complexity theory, organisational behaviour, design, and strategy. I've found the Oxford University Press 'very short introduction' series helpful for reflecting on organisation design. I suggest she reads through the ones on chaos, choice theory, complexity, design, ethics, information, innovation, leadership, management, organisations, quantum theory, risk, trust, work. All are thought provoking and relevant to organisation design work. And all have suggested further reading.

If Alex is insistent on a course she may draw a blank. Master's degrees in Organisation Design are almost non-existent. (An opportunity perhaps?). But some of the organisation development ones are good substitutes. One of the best that I know of is at the US Pepperdine University Graziadio School of Business and Management . Its course outline gives a good overview of both the hard and soft aspects of organisation development (using Nickols definition) and she could look to teach herself the listed topics if taking the programme is not an option.

In the UK Ashridge Business School offers a master's degree in organisational change which has a small design element to it. Roffey Park has a Master's degree in People and Organisational Development has less emphasis or organisation design but does not preclude it. (I facilitated a session on organisation design to the current cohort earlier this year).

Also in the UK the CIPD and Ashridge Business School offer short courses in organisation design the Ashridge one is more on the 'hard' side and the CIPD one more on the 'soft side.

Then there are other avenues. The Organisation Design Forum and the European Organisation Design Forum have conferences, networking events, and are building a good community of practitioners. The Organisation Design Community is more academic and publishes the Journal of Organisation Design. All three organisations are worth joining and all have a LinkedIn Group. Indeed, search LinkedIn on 'Organisation Design Groups' and a large number appear. See what they're talking about and pose questions to them.

What are your ideas for developing intermediate skills in doing organisation design in an organisation development way? Let me know.

I'm thinking of taking a course in community organising as the next step in becoming a civil servant: a life/career project I began in January this year. (See blog). I'm attracted to the course because:

'Community organising is about bringing people together and empowering them to achieve change' … Much of my organisation design and development role aims for this approach, although one of the tensions inherent in the role is the fact that often I am working more as an agent of the leaders or executive team who are intent on 'getting people to buy-in' to a proposed change. In spite of statements about empowering people it's often less of an action and more of a statement. I'd like to swing the balance in my work more towards truly empowering people, more on the lines that Debra Meyerson describes in her books and articles on tempered radicals or Margaret Hagan illustrates in her work on designing open law.

Community organising has a whole 'movement' based dimension to it, Barack Obama explained it as follows:
…community organizing provides a way to merge various strategies for neighborhood empowerment. Organizing begins with the premise that (1) the problems facing inner-city communities do not result from a lack of effective solutions, but from a lack of power to implement these solutions; (2) that the only way for communities to build long-term power is by organizing people and the money [they raise] around a common vision; and (3) that a viable organization can only be achieved if a broadly based indigenous leadership-—and not one or two charismatic leaders-—can knit together the diverse interests of their local institutions [and "grassroots" people].

Adapting Obama's statement gives us a movement not mandate approach through which to conduct organisation design and development work:

… organization design and development provides a way to merge various strategies for workforce empowerment. Organizing begins with the premise that (1) the problems facing workplace members and teams do not result from a lack of effective solutions, but from a lack of power to implement these solutions; (2) that the only way to build long-term power to change is by organizing people around a common vision; and (3) that a viable organization can only be achieved if a broadly based local leadership-—and not one or two charismatic leaders-—can knit together the diverse interests of their local workplaces[and "grassroots" people].

Community organising's movement not mandate approach is based in a political power paradigm that I started to learn about in the politics course I did earlier this year and now would like to explore further for two reasons:

1. In my experience (or practice) it is not the lens though which organisation design and development work is overtly played – though managing the covert political agendas and interests is part and parcel of the work. (See the IES Report The Palace: Perspective on Organisation Design for more on this). I'm now re-reading Gareth Morgan's book Images of Organization, specifically Chapter 6, Interests, Conflict, and Power: Organizations as Political Systems as a precursor to going into more depth on the topic.

2. The context for my organisation design and development work in the civil service is one of governmental politics and power. This dynamic is front and centre of all activity. Building that context into the work is critical, challenging and fascinating.

Do you think organisation design/development has a community organising and political aspect to it? Let me know.

We're aiming to take a 'test and learn' approach to culture/behaviour change with a group of people in a specific customer facing job role. The role is a new one and we have to make sure that staff understand what it entails. They will have to develop the technical skills they need to do it well, and the social and interpersonal skills to do it in an engaging and effective way that gives the customer a good experience.

Our specific action is to 'Develop a behavioural change intervention strategy'. Developing an 'intervention strategy' seems to imply a 'plan and implement' (waterfall approach) antithetical to the 'test and learn' (agile approach) with its emphasis 'on short development cycles and constant testing – the learning from which is fed back into the development cycle.'

This has prompted us to consider what we mean by test and learn in this context and what that would involve. 'Test and learn' typically involves taking 'one action with one group of customers, a different action (or often no action at all) with a control group, and then comparing the results. The outcomes are simple to analyze, the data are easily interpreted, and causality is usually clear. The test-and-learn approach is also remarkably powerful.' (From: A Step-by-Step Guide to Smart Business Experiments)

So can we develop a 'test and learn intervention strategy'? Henry Mintzberg (a management expert) in a classic 1987 article, talks about 'crafting strategy', 'Now imagine someone crafting strategy. A wholly different image likely results, as different from planning as craft is from mechanization. Craft evokes traditional skill, dedication, perfection through the mastery of detail. … Formulation and implementation merge into a fluid process of learning through which creative strategies evolve.'

He continues with the image of a potter crafting a pot and develops the analogy to the point where he says 'My point is simple, deceptively simple: strategies can form as well as be formulated. A realized strategy can emerge in response to an evolving situation.' This thinking fits well with the test and learn approach.

Thomas Davenport, in an excellent article 'How to design smart business experiments' tells us that 'Tests are most reliable where many roughly equivalent settings can be observed'. That holds true in our situation when we are looking at many locations where the new job role will be. But he also says 'Formalized testing can provide a level of understanding about what really works that puts more intuitive approaches to shame. In theory, it makes sense for any part of the business in which variation can lead to differential results. In practice, however, there are times when a test is impossible or unnecessary.'

So our question is can we design an appropriate experiment that will lead to us forming an intervention strategy? Davenport offers an approach:

1: Create or Refine Hypothesis
2: Design Test
3: Execute Test
4: Analyse Test
5: Plan Rollout
6: Rollout
7. Add to Learning Library

Steps 1 and 2 are likely to be the most difficult to design. A hypothesis around 'behavioural change' involves a vast number of variables: manager style, tools to do the job, training that contributes, characteristics of job holder, customer expectations, etc. not to mention competing theories of behaviour change. An excellent handbook Reference Report: An overview of behaviour change models and their uses will be helpful in thinking this aspect through.

So we'll give it a go and see what we learn. What is your experience of test and learn around behaviour change? Let me know.

A US friend I holidayed with earlier this year recommended me a book The Life-Changing Magic Of Tidying: The Japanese Art Of Decluttering and Organizing, by Marie Kondo.

Over the years I've bought several books on organizing maybe because personal organizing seems to go with organisation design in my mind, they're both about streamlining, clearing clutter, and making things effective and efficient. I've followed many of their precepts and advice. This weekend – following the Kondo path I jettisoned several cases of books including It's Hard to Make a Difference When You Can't Find Your Keys: The Seven-Step Path to Becoming Truly Organized. I learned from this book and now can find my keys when I need them. But I'm not sure I followed all seven steps.

Marie Kondo is very against prescriptive steps. Her method is more straightforward. She starts by asking clients to put everything that is roughly in the same category in a heap in the middle of the floor. (So, for example, collect together all your clothing from wherever it is in your house and pile it up on the floor). Then pick up each item and ask yourself if it 'sparks joy'. If not get rid of it. I'm very taken by this although it's a little too late for me as apart from the books – now reduced considerably – I have virtually no possessions or stuff having ditched just about everything else when I left America.

A couple of weeks ago I was talking with a colleague, Mark Lancelott, (read a recent blog of his here) about analogies he uses in his organisation design work. He favours one about weeding the garden, and pruning the shrubs and trees. Having read the book, I think the Marie Kondo approach would be terrific and not just as an analogy – more as an approach: some examples

• Imagine taking all your HR policies and looking at them and then asking which of them 'sparks joy' in employees? Which of the policies would you get rid of in the light of that feedback?
• Think about your business strategy. How is it worded and implemented to 'spark joy' in your customers and stakeholders.
• How would you change your workplace environment if you reduced it to the items that 'sparked joy'?
• What organisational papers, documents, reports, and PowerPoints 'spark joy'? (Kondo thinks no papers are worth keeping which could cause alarm in the audit department).

I can visualise the raised eyebrows if organisation design by the Kondo method was mooted but if we believe in employee engagement and high performance or maybe in the concept that 'Work is love made visible' then the idea of sparking joy is not too alien.

Given the stunning success of Kondo's book it might be timely for organisation designers to surf this wave and apply the Kondo method to organisational systems, processes, policies, and workplace environments. People may know what we are talking about, see the connection, and be willing to give it a go – so long, of course, as it wasn't 'another initiative'.

We already have some related principles in lean techniques and the agile principles so we could build on these.

Of course we'd have to overcome our risk averse-ness 'we might need it some day' mentality, but as George Carlin's short comic piece on stuff reminds us we get weighed down by unnecessary things. And we can see this in our organisational lives too. We hang on to stuff that is way past usefulness or other merit. (See my blog piece on horseholding).

I wonder if 'sparking joy' should be one of the aims of good organisation design? Let me know.

Months ago I promised to run a lunch and learn hour on organisation design capability. I was confident that my future self would have all the time needed to research and prepare a high calibre, thought provoking session. Sadly, my future self let me down morphing into my current self the day before the session having prepared nothing for me. (See a great blog on this phenomenon here).

So I turned to my interesting articles folder which my past self collected and which often proves very handy as it did in this case. It turned up a great article 10 new skills every worker needs, in Rotman Magazine. The lunch and learn went well. We spent a fair bit of time talking about skill 7 in the article 'social intelligence', used by employees able to 'assess the emotions of those around them and adapt words, gestures, and tone accordingly.' This smacks a little bit of neuro linguistic programming but ok.

However, it did get me thinking because on the Sunday after the lunch n learn I spent some time with Sam a four year old and some time with Rosie a 98 year old. Watching them both in action gave me a slightly different interpretation of 'social intelligence'. To me it seemed that Sam was learning social intelligence i.e. how to handle social situations appropriately – it was a hot day and he wanted to take all his clothes off and his mother said it wasn't appropriate in a public place. Rosie was unlearning it. In her years between 4 and 97 or so would never have dreamed of taking her clothes off in a public place, but she now demanded to. She was too hot – why couldn't she strip off?

The two ends of the age spectrum seem to elicit different responses to the same demand – Sam gets an encouraging, teacher response. Rosie gets an irritable 'you should know better' response. They get different responses to their social intelligence. So, social intelligence is clearly contextutal. You have to have the right social intelligence for your context. Think of things that were socially intelligent a while ago like racial segregation or prosecution of homosexuals, etc. These are now socially unintelligent and have given way to a different social intelligence – diversity and inclusion, celebration of gay marriages.

Looking at Sam and Rosie shows that social intelligence is a shifting concept that changes not only by age and learning capacity but also by society and societal changes. Sam will have to get to grips with social media protocols which Rosie has never had to deal with.

The meaning of the phrase 'social intelligence' is also changing. Now, it is also about gleaning insights on social behaviours and patterns, from data gathering on social media.

Applying 'social intelligence' into organisation design suggests that organisational members will have to:
a) learn new behaviours, norms, and social interactions associated with new organisational forms that involve 'collaboration', 'everyone a leader', 'innovation', 'agility', 'autonomy', 'discretion', and so on.
b) consciously (rather than unconsciously) unlearn all the social intelligence we have associated with 'command and control' organisations that have hierarchical leaders and (relatively) obedient followers, both of whom think they are in a relatively stable context.
c) use 'big data' intelligence gathering to get insights on how to handle both of the above.

Your views?

Twice in the same day last week I had conversations with people who are feeling frustrated with their experience of the organisation we all work for. I too was feeling frustrated – so that was three of us. Now I'm wondering whether there is a pattern of organisational frustration or even 'a culture of frustration'. Obviously three experiences in one day are not much to go on as a representative sample but I decided to explore the topic a bit. Googling (what else) various combinations of 'frustration/organ isations/behaviour' was quite fun. I found a whole academic Journal of Emotional Abuse and in it an article Organizational Frustration and Aggressive Behaviors. So that was a reasonable start point though I'm not sure any of us are going to go down the aggressive behaviours route.

But if we think we might be heading towards aggression, and depending on how aggressive we feel, we can take a look at 3 Easy Ways to Cope With Frustration (with Pictures), 4 Tips to Deal With Frustrating People , Frustration – 8 Ways to Deal With It, 10 Tips To Overcome Frustration!, or if we're feeling extra-high levels of aggression coming on and are also really keen on handling it we can try 33 Ways To Overcome Frustration .

As an aside it's interesting how we are attracted to a specific number of actions in relation to a problem. It seems to me to be treating a 'wicked problem' as a 'tame problem'. One of my frustrations is that my organisational colleagues are overly keen on numbers – quantitative, 'evidence based', information – that they think give a full picture of the issue, challenge or state of play. My readings of books like 'How to Lie with Statistics', and my general scepticism on reliance on numbers to give a rounded picture counts for little.

A quick scan of the tips and guidance focus on handling the frustrating situation we're in focus on dealing with our frustration rather than trying to change the frustrating situation itself. Is it really true, for example, that 'Your frustrations are significant because they indicate that you are being held back by self-imposed barriers, limitations and habits. You are the reason why you're feeling frustrated, and only you can break free from this cycle.' One of my frustrations is having a computer that takes 3 minutes to open a PowerPoint. (This is true). In fact my main source of frustration is inadequate technology. I am willing to say it is self-imposed and bring in my own devices but that leads to all kinds of repercussions.

In any organisation there are numerous system, process, and technology frustrations that could be designed out which would then leave us less stressed (maybe) when dealing with the people frustrations. For example, I had two process frustrations last week: the first trying to get a staff member's part time working hours approved. The second getting an on-line help guide to filling in a form only to find (when I still couldn't complete the form) that the screen form had been redesigned but the on-line help guide had not been adjusted to match!

Take a look around your organisation. You may well find that the frustrations people feel are due as much to system, process, environment, or equipment shortcomings than to interactions with individuals. Should we consider 3, 4, 8, 10, or 33 ways to overcome these I wonder or should we take an approach that better recognises the complexity of the situation, or should we do both?

Your views?

Earlier this year I read a report on voter apathy comissioned by Lodestone Communications with the research conducted by Survation. Q31 on the survey asks 'Which of the following would be most likely to persuade you to vote in a UK general election?'

Seven choices were offered, with an eighth of 'other'. I asked for (and received) the answers respondents gave to the 'other' category in this question. The majority of answers to the question related to frustration with politicians, for example:

• If politicians were forced to stick to their mandate
• If politicians did not lie and were accountable for what they say
• A legally binding agreement that they must adhere to their promises or be executed
• If non-conformance to the manifesto were made an offence punishable with long jail sentence
• What you say is what you will do.

This all came to mind this weekend when I read the Conservative party manifesto. It's 84 pages and the word 'will' as in 'We will cut a further £10 bn of red tape …' (p19) appears 817 times if the analysis by City a.m. is believable. Maybe I'm wrong in thinking that every instance of the word 'will' is attached to a pledge but a quick glance back to check suggests that it is. If we say that the manifesto is 74 pages because there are several pages of photos and that there are a number of occurrences of 'will' that are not attached to pledges that still leaves a lot that are.

So now I am curious to know whether and how these will be carried through on, or whether a future survey – say in 2019 would show a similar level of frustration with empty promises. It's of interest to me, now I'm a Civil Servant, because, as the Manifesto states (p 47) 'Government is the servant of the British people, not their master.' And the Civil Service exists as 'an integral and key part of the government of the United Kingdom. It supports the government of the day in developing and implementing its policies, and in delivering public services.'

John Manzoni, CEO, Civil Service, gave an insight (May 14 FDA union address) into how he expects the Civil Service to deliver on what the government has pledged. CSW reports him as saying there was now "a dawning recognition" that "the modus operandi of the last five years won't get us where we want to be … I know we can be more efficient; the question is how do we mobilise the organisation in getting there?" He went on to say "If the civil service is being tasked with delivering 21st century public services with pre-war resources, then the government needs to demonstrate that valuing civil servants, ensuring that they have the right skills, paying them fairly, matching commitments to resources and genuinely engaging with them are the critical elements of the new deal that needs to be struck with civil servants."

It seems that Manzoni is saying that to deliver the Manifesto pledges a new deal must be struck with Civil Servants. Will this happen? It's another question I'm curious about.

It's end of year performance appraisal time in my organisation. So we're each wondering whether we'll get a must improve, achieved or exceeded rating. Yes, we have a ranking system.

Given this, I decided to run a personal appraisal on my ability to become a Civil Servant. This was a performance objective which I gave myself in January 2015. It's not 'end of year' on this objective, and not even 6-months but I think 5 months more or less qualifies as ok for a 'mid-year performance review'.

I started by aiming to get a grounding in UK politics. This seems a pre-requisite to be a Civil Servant, but I didn't realise this until I joined the Civil Service and found that everything I knew about how to get things done in organisations, and I've worked in many, didn't seem to work, or did but not in the intended way.

So I participated in 15 Wednesday evenings of a Birkbeck College politics course in the company of 25 or so others, all at least 2 decades younger than me – a learning in itself – who represented views from at least 15 different countries. The first question the lecturer threw at us was 'Does the National Health Service suffer from a scarcity of resource?' Energetic debate and shouting at each other led to him yelling 'Hey, this isn't the House of Commons, you know'. So within the first hour I was getting insight into UK politics from a number of perspectives.

During the 5 months I've read books, watched videos, been to events, and stayed alert to various aspects of politics. My Twitter account @curiouscivilserv follows UK politicos (people and organisations). I've attended a Select Committee Hearing, sat in on a Ministerial briefing, and shadowed a policy colleague for a day. So I've been active.

However, I'm now looking at myself over my glasses. I've got the phrase 'Never mistake activity for achievement' in my mind. What have I achieved towards becoming a Civil Servant? Where would I rank in the system proposed by Francis Maude (previously Cabinet Office minister) who thinks the CS 'should move from a system where managers categorise set proportions of staff as performing well, acceptably and poorly to one where employees are individually ranked best to worst'.

I've achieved getting really hooked into the giant puzzle of what will make the Civil Service transform, I've achieved understanding that I need to continue my education into the interdependencies of the political systems and their supporting Civil Service. I've achieved a healthy respect for the resilience, fortitude, change capacity, knowledge and goodwill of my fellow, but generally much longer serving, Civil Servants in the face of constant battering from all sides. Does this count as achievement? I think so, but there's room for improvement too.

So, next thing read the book I've just ordered Comparative Civil Service Systems in the 21st Century and if that is all too academic I'll turn to an episode of Yes Minister, or The Thick of It, I may learn as much!

Meanwhile, I'll hold off ranking myself and continue to keep curious and ask questions.

This is my last weekly blog for the moment on organisation design. Simply counting up the number posts, about 450 (early on I wrote more than one a week), since I started in September 2008 doesn't yield much in the way of information. It shows I've been reasonably disciplined and productive to keep at it.

So I've just spent an hour or so cruising my own website and getting distracted by stuff that once caught my attention and has totally slipped from my memory. I'm intrigued by some of the titles and content. I've just sent off for another copy of the article 'organisational horseholding' that I mentioned back in 2008. The URL is defunct and I can't find my copy. I think I picked it up before I had a Dropbox account so it is probably on one of my external hard drives. (Dropbox was established in 2007).

I haven't paid any attention whatsoever to any site analytics but today I just checked. I have been getting around 1100 visits per month over the last year and between a third and a half are repeat visitors. When I said a couple of weeks ago that I was going to stop writing at the end of the year I was surprised by how many people contacted me to say how much they'd enjoyed it and it had given them useful information. That gave me pause for thought and I wondered if I should a) say I was taking a sabbatical and would be back 'soon' or b) say I'd changed my mind and would continue. But I'm not going to do either. I'm going to do something different.

Someone asked what I'd gained from the blogging experience. I imagined myself filling in a performance review or personal development form on the topic and giving some narrative on what goals I'd met or success criteria I'd achieved in the course of the 5+ years. But my blogging has not been about 'performance' (and most of my readers will know that I am not a fan of performance management systems), it's been about my enjoyment of writing and my curiosity on stuff related to organisation design. So why am I giving up on it?

Recently, I read a great sentence in the novel Americanah. The main character, Ifemelu, is a blog writer who reflects that 'the more she wrote, the less sure she became. Each post scraped off yet one more scale of self until she felt naked and false'.

Like Ifemelu I've used the blog for observations on what I see going on. In doing this I've discovered that the main value of it is to develop my own thinking through writing. For me it's a powerful learning tool that I thoroughly enjoy – why else the books, articles, and papers?

Over the five years I've been writing it I was mainly an external consultant working with a variety of organisations. Now I have a permanent role as a UK Civil Servant – still in the organisation design field but within a sector I know not much about – not least because I've lived so long in the US – and one of the things I'm rapidly learning is that government is a sector very different from the private sector.

This is where I'm discovering that what I've known about organisation design from past experience isn't sufficient in current experience. I don't feel 'naked and false' like Ifemelu but I do feel that to do the job effectively I must accelerate my learning about government. It's not enough to read Civil Service World, the Gov.Uk blogs, and The Economist sections on Britain and hope to soak things up. I haven't got time for this kind of approach. I need to study UK government in a more intense and systematic way, and this is what I'll be doing instead of writing the blog.

I have managed to overcome my instinct to enrol for a 2-year part-time MSc in politics. Instead, I've enrolled in a term of weekly evening classes which I hope I take more seriously than the last set of evening classes I did which was GCSE Maths. (I also hope that I understand politics more than I understand maths). And I'll supplement this with the London School of Economics series (free) on British Government.

My question is – can I reinvent myself as a civil servant who successfully helps re-design government? How would you set about this task? Should I blog about the re-invention experience? Let me know.