Author: naomiorgdesign

Two books caught my attention during June: Rapt: attention and the focused life by Winifred Gallagher and Sherry Turkle's new book Alone Together: why we expect more from technology and less from each other. Gallagher's is concerned with individual well-being, and Turkle's is more concerned with organizational well-being. But the themes are complementary. Both describe the problems and issues that attention fragmentation and multi-tasking bring, and both argue for focused attention on 'what matters'.

Gallagher takes the reader through a discussion of various researchers' findings – and there is a very good reference list of these – noting that the overarching evidence suggests that your life is the creation of what you choose to focus on and pay attention to. Early on in the book she mentions one of the maxims of William James – a pioneering psychologist. He was of the view that 'The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.' Thus the book came at just the right moment for me as I've been spending an unaccustomed few weeks with my mother: a stressful time as she was having medical treatment.

Reading on I discovered that Gallagher's thesis is that 'your experience largely depends on the material objects and mental subjects that you choose to pay attention to or ignore'. She observes that the 'things that you don't attend to in a sense don't exist' and the book is a fascinating study in the science of controlling your well-being through conscious and mindful focusing on 'this' rather than 'that'.

The mere fact of learning that attention is selective, and that different people pay attention to different things and thus experience ostensibly the same situation from very different perspectives – although blindingly obvious – I found very helpful in the hospital experience. All of the players – nurses, radiologists, ambulance drivers, patients, and supporters – had different goals and perspectives. They may all have been trying to get to the same end point of patient recovery but things each was paying attention to different things in the situation.

There are plenty of things to feel negative about in a hospital situation – the waiting in reception areas, the uncertainty about the outcome of the treatment, the discomfort of the treatment itself, having the illness in the first place, and so on. But Gallagher's discussion of Barbara Fredrickson's work – among others – reveals that 'paying attention to positive emotions literally expands your world, while focusing on negative feelings shrinks it'. Much of the evidence presented confirms the benefits – emotional, mental, and physical of shifting your attention away from the dispiriting and towards the productive, and life-enhancing.
So over the month or so I've been diligently practicing the various techniques Gallagher writes about including:

• Choosing carefully what to pay attention to and what to focus on (consciously directing my attention)
• Concentrating on one thing at a time
• Replacing negative thoughts and emotions with positive ones
• Savoring small pleasures
• Recognizing that my reality is not even close to my mother's or anyone else's reality
• Being aware that my feelings can affect what I am paying attention to and vice versa
• Maintaining a curious and wide angled perspective on life – I love the quote from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi "be surprised by something every day"
• Spending time doing things that demand concentrated effort but that are both 'enjoyable and challenging enough to be manageable'. My mother is delighted that I've almost finished making her a pair of crochet mittens.
• Staying focused in the moment and using the moment to do more of what's satisfying and less of what isn't. Carping about the lateness of the bus is not rewarding, but chatting about the lovely lavender outside the window to a keen gardener who I happen to be sitting beside is.

The key message for me is the point – surfacing several times in the book – that 'remembering your life is the sum of what you focus on helps to bring clarity to choices about where to spend that valuable mental money.' This is a maxim that is absolutely as applicable in organizational life as it is in personal life.

Sherry Turkle's book Alone Together: why we expect more from technology and less from each other takes a similar line – she is very against multi-tasking observing that it leads to a degradation in individual and organizational performance because we're too busy communicating through technology to think and create in ways that matter. She remarks that receiving 200 – 1000 communications a day through a multiplicity of channels changes what people 'do' from work to communication not only because the senders of the communication want an instant response from the recipients but also because just keeping up with the flow demands keeping track of multiple channels.

We've all been in meetings where none of this is going on, where people are texting and tweeting as the meeting progresses rather than being with each other. We've seen the same thing in restaurants – why go to dinner with someone and talk with someone else on your cellphone?

Turkle makes the point that the 'volume and velocity' of electronic communication means that we dumb down our responses and she is very concerned that text only responses don't give room for the nuanced conversations that facilitate creativity and relationship building. Her recommendation is that people and organizations give space -real and figurative – to have meaningful conversations which we are able to focus, concentrate, demonstrate human values, constructively collaborate, think, deliberate, and connect about the things that matter.

Realistically Turkle says that technology should not be described, as it often in, in the metaphor of 'addiction' but more as a substance that we need – like food – but with which we need to learn how to have a healthy relationship. Unfortunately given the difficulty many, many people in the US have 'relating' to food it seems that developing a healthy relationship to communications technologies could be an uphill task. But a third book – one that I talked about in an earlier blog – We have met the enemy: self control in an age of excess by Daniel Akst offers several tips on that score.

For the last two weeks I've been in the UK. My mother, aged 94, is having outpatient hospital treatment which means she has to go to the Churchill Hospital, Oxford each Monday – Friday for three weeks. (Fifteen treatments all told). I go with her. It's a fascinating exercise in trying to guess the organizational design alignment (or not) behind the scenes.

The service is run by South Central Ambulance Service NHS Trust (SCAS) . From their website I learned that they "signed a two-year contract, with NHS Oxfordshire to manage Oxfordshire patients' eligibility for non emergency transport by the ambulance service from 1 June 2010. In April 2010 SCAS undertook 24,053 patient transport journeys. SCAS' Patient Transport Service regularly receives around 4,000 telephone calls a week" And from another NHS Oxfordshire website I found out that:

"The service is free and is provided to enable patients to get to appointments in out patient departments or for minor treatments or investigations. It is available for patients registered within NHS Oxfordshire travelling within the areas of Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Berkshire.

The patient transport service costs the NHS in Oxfordshire over £3 million a year and in the last financial year we spent £350,000 of this on patients who were able to use 'walk on' transport. That is patients who could travel by car and need no assistance in getting in and out of a vehicle. We think that we can save as much as £200,000 by tightening up on who can use this service."

On the NHS "Have your say" website members of the public are invited to "Influence change in your local NHS – Tell us what you think about the patient transport service." Good enough so here goes.

Scheduling: In the 20 – 10 out and 10 back – trips we have made (19 together, once I went by bus for reasons I will explain in a moment) we have had the same driver out/back only once, and a second driver twice so that means we have had 18 different drivers. Some come with a second driver and some don't. I haven't found out why this is yet. Drivers work a shift pattern – and are deployed from any one of several depots in the area. They get their work schedule for the day when they report to work each morning.

Scheduling involves not just routes and pick-ups but also patient mobility considerations – some are on stretchers, some need a wheelchair from their door to the vehicle, some are in electric wheelchairs of their own, and some (my mother included) can walk to the vehicle themselves. Someone, somewhere is working out who and how many can fit onto each vehicle by pick up on what one driver described as the 'back of an envelope' IT system.

Suggestions:

• Split off the regularly transported patients from the one-off transported for scheduling purposes. This could mean more efficient route planning and less patient wait time.
• Schedule by geographic proximity of patient to patient – this seems obvious but doesn't happen consistently.
• Have different interior designs for vehicles to have a flexibility of use. All the vehicles I've been in have had the same layout.

Pick up window: We have been told to expect a pick up from the house anytime between 8:30 and 11:00 for a 10:00 appointment. That's ok except my mother grimly noted having waited till close on 11:00 one morning and angsting madly about missing her 10:00 appointment that "it certainly is patient transport. I've never had to be so patient!" On the other hand on Friday the pick up came – for the first time ever – at 8:30 before my mother was quite ready. Thinking quickly she both rang me (I am staying nearby) to tell me she was setting off, and threw her toothbrush and toothpaste into her purse in order to clean her teeth when she got to the hospital. In fact I got to her place while she was walking to the vehicle so we went together.

Suggestion:

• Send text alerts to patients to tell them where the vehicle is and how long they can expect to wait. Airlines, taxis, and buses can all do this – so could the SCAS' Patient Transport Service. (Twice the drivers have telephoned to let us know when they will arrive. This is great service).

Routes: Because of the vagaries of Oxford City Council taxis and buses are allowed down the High Street but other vehicles (including SCAS' Patient Transport Service ones) are not. Some drivers ignore this regulation – noticeably mainly the women drivers – and go down the High Street, saving time and gas. Others comply meaning a long trip around the ring road.

In fact in the 19 trips I have been in the vehicle I think we have done 16 different routes from A to B. I am getting to know the city quite well, and learning my own form of patience when my mother comments at every junction and turning: "No driver in their right mind would take this route. It's ridiculous." I did in fact run up one last Saturday from her house to the hospital to check the distance. It is 2.45 miles but I estimate that we usually drive between 6 and 10 to get there from her house. I asked drivers if they have GPS systems for route planning but they don't

Suggestions:

• Lobby Oxford City Council to allow NHS Patient Transport to use the High Street. It seems odd that a vehicle carrying several patients does not fall under the same regulations as a bus or taxi. (My mother and I are going to write to the Council on this).
• Work out how much would be saved in gas costs by taking the High Street route through the city. Make this part of the business case.
• Get GPS systems for vehicles and encourage the shortest route from A to B to save as much gas as possible.

Qualifying patients: I think the service is right in saying that people seriously capable of taking a bus or car should not be eligible to use the service. However, some caveats. There is no bus service to the Churchill departments that many patients go to – it has just been axed. Car parking is very expensive not very available, and a good walk from the hospital building (much as airport parking but without the shuttle buses). So people who can walk but have limited mobility would find this very hard. Having to take more than one bus would make it very difficult for some people, so the qualifying statement about 'walking' needs to be refined and thought through. (The money could be saved by gas savings on smarter routes and planning)

I did think of renting a car to take my mother to the hospital to avoid using the Transport Service but I discovered that if I dropped her off at the right entrance and went to park the car she could not easily find her way to the right reception area. If we parked and walked together it was too long a walk for her. I don't think I need to be with her in the vehicle as I could bike there and back and be at both A and B points before the vehicle even setting off at the same time. (See routes comment above).

However, my mother asked for an escort and although the Day 1 people said it was not on their manifest sheet they allowed me out but not back. So on day two the outward journey I went by bus, but on the return and on subsequent days all had me on the manifest sheet, saying I was allowed because of my mother's age – even though one of the drivers did describe her as 'spritely' and she utterly refuses to use their wheelchair to get from the house to the vehicle.

Suggestions:

• Set up some form of SCAS' Patient Transport Service car-pool website where people could ask for rides from others who were driving in. Much as a commuter car-pool operates.
• Charge people the same as they would pay if they did go by bus to their appointment. It may not be a lot of money but it would help some. (If the political outcry could be managed when this was suggested).
• Work out the cost/benefit of shuttle buses from the car parking areas – would this mean fewer people asking for Patient Transport?

So a week to go on this, meanwhile my mother is bearing up extremely well all things considered. And despite my suggestions I am tremendously impressed with the Patient Transport service, the professionalism and friendliness of the drivers, and the fact that it actually works well most of the time.

I got the following email from someone who'd just read my book Corporate Culture: Getting it Right (in the UK published as Organisation Culture: Getting it Right).

"Something is wearing on me, something I can't get around. I am calling it the Walmart paradox. If indeed we believe (almost religiously) in the culture / business model connection, and that organizational success is in partly predicated on the tightly woven alignment between the two, how can we explain Walmart success? I mean the almost flagrant and overt inconsistency between Wal-Mart business practices and the so-called "respect for the individual" (one of three) core value is hard to reconcile. And I mention this because I am trying to do more transformational consulting and I espouse everything you put forth, and just wondering what do I say when someone says in a meeting, "what about Wal-Mart?"

I know you mention that one must consider the complexity of Wal-Mart's environment and all of the trade offs involved … and that determining cause and effect is a futile endeavor. But isn't that inconsistency between culture and behavior ultimately unsustainable? That's the kind of irreconcilable stuff that incite revolutions and over throws governments, yet Wal-Mart's been at it for decades – and thriving!!!! Naomi help!"

Initially I passed the buck on answering and got the following response from a colleague:

"Isn't Walmart's success down to the fact that it is a very well-run and organized business, and that in its own weird way it does get high levels of loyalty and commitment. My view is that a lot of people are quite happy not to have to think for themselves so long as they feel secure in their job and that they are not treated unfairly vis-a-vis their colleagues, and I suspect Walmart is rigid in its "fairness" but that its round holes are unsuited to square pegs. "

But today I was in Lush, Oxford, UK and started chatting to one of the store supervisors. She told me that the store was active in many kinds of local community support, they had an allotment (vegetable patch) where they composted unsold products, they minimized packaging, part of her role was to suggest and introduce green/sustainable practices, and so on. She was clearly committed and engaged in what Lush culture and business model were about and in her descriptions they appeared to be aligned.

Hearing her talk reminded me that I hadn't tackled the Walmart paradox myself. So here goes. I think there are three critical things at play when it comes to lining up culture, behavior, and the business model.

1 Whether the company is publicly or privately owned. Privately owned companies (as Lush) have a lot more leeway to make choices and demonstrably live their values without fear of repercussion from shareholders. Privately owned Lush, claims to be "a campaigning company that takes direct action … we demonstrate ethics at work, getting our hands dirty." I wonder what Walmart's individual and collective shareholders would say if, in pursuit of the "Respect for the Individual" basic value that they eschew the company visibly and actively supported something like the No One Is Illegal Campaign that Lush supports with money, activity, and a 'World Passport' that "gives all the information anyone should need, to confirm that you are indeed a human being, not an alien, or a business corporation, nor a figment of some racist's imagination."

2 What the customer base is. Walmart generally targets low income families, and/or those conscious of cash outlay. When individual customers are making a trade-off between the amount of money they have available to buy necessities and the ethical/behavioral stance of the company they are more likely to ignore the latter. Walmart's second value "Service to our customers" is to "offer quality merchandise at the lowest prices, and we do it with the best customer service possible." However, this can compromise spend on employee wages, paying fair prices to suppliers, and give rise to other potentially damaging practicesrelated to maintaining low prices. In this model customer loyalty is determined more on price point than brand.

Lush, however, does not target customers interested in 'lowest prices'. They target customers who go along with Lush's beliefs in "long candlelit baths, sharing showers, massage, filling the world with perfume and in the right to make mistakes, lose everything and start again," combined with "making effective products from fresh organic fruit and vegetables, the finest essential oils and safe synthetics." Neither of these beliefs comes cheaply. But they do make for a very defined brand-loyal customer who Lush is skilled at keeping, in part by demonstrating alignment to business model, values, and behaviors.

3 Competition and the drive for growth. Any publicly traded company strives for growth in order to meet shareholder demands. But often this compromises the alignment of business model, culture and behaviors (read Daniel Vasella, CEO of Novartis, comments on this topic). Walmart – not content with being the largest global retailer despite operating in only 15 countries – continuously strives for growth.

Whether it lives up to its third value "Striving for Excellence", in doing so is a matter for debate. Currently, the company has no presence in Washington DC but is trying to open four stores against fairly strong local opposition. What does one make of the fact that during the last fiscal year "Walmart provided more than $2.4 million to charitable organizations in Washington DC". Is that striving for excellence or currying good press to counter the bad press? Would Walmart's presence in the District demonstrate "the passion we have for our business, for our customers and for our communities"? Or would it put local retailers like Yes Organic out of business?

Lush's niche market inventing, making and selling their own brand products and fragrances, "using little or no preservative or packaging, and only vegetarian ingredients" enables it to grow without same threat of competition or loss of customer loyalty that Walmart battles. Lush has strong single brand identity, quirky approach, loyal customer base and epitomizes many of the best practices suggested by the Centre for Integrated Marketing (CFIM).

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So is the Walmart approach of what I'll call value compromise unsustainable? Probably not, because business model is more focused on quarter by quarter financial growth, as demanded by shareholders, achieved more by low prices to mass market customers, and less on brand reputation and alignment to values, niche products and services, and loyal customers. That is the trade off that Walmart leaders make. That doesn't mean that Walmart itself has a sustainable model: other behemoths have collapsed (think Enron, Arthur Andersen, Lehmann, etc).

It does seem that privately traded companies are better able to align business models, values, and behaviors whilst still without sacrificing growth. (Think Zappos – before being bought by Amazon, Mercadona – a Spanish retailier, and W.H. Gore).

Whether this answers the original question to the reader's satisfaction I don't know (yet). What are your views?

Yesterday I arrived in London from Washington DC on United Airlines flight 918. In May 2010 United announced that it was going to buy Continental and at the time the NY Times commented:

"Combining Continental and United would also create a global behemoth. Continental would bring its strong presence in Latin America and Europe, while United has strong positions in Asia, including China and Japan."

Nevertheless in August last year the deal won approval and was completed in October 2010.
I've flown a few times on United since then and been looking for any signs of the acquisition from a passenger standpoint. The first obvious thing is the logo change, and the adverts that assure us that that things are going well. What other things have I noticed?

Well there's now a feature for having your boarding pass delivered to your cell phone which happened earlier this year, but it's difficult to tell if that's part of the acquisition process or was in the works before that. I was amused when I went to drop off a bag on Saturday, having shown the agent my cell phone pass, that he printed me off one saying that 'United doesn't realize that there's no cell phone reception when you get down to the security lines. People get sent back up for a printed pass.' But with my mobile pass and my paper pass all was well.

I was slightly nervous when the same check in agent told me that my bag was too heavy to be put on the belt but if I left it in front of his desk someone would come and collect it. (No mention from him of unattended bags).

OK so I got to gate D7 for my 18.04 departure and we all boarded. Some hold up because of 'weather' but after only a 15 minute delay we set off down the runway. Getting about 100 yards we stopped and hung around. Finally the pilot said there was a mechanical problem and he'd made the decision not to take the plane out.

To cut a long story short we ultimately de-planed were told to go to a different terminal (from D to C), and the flight finally took off 4 hours later than scheduled.

However, I was fairly impressed by United's
a) finding another plane ready to go with the same passenger load
b) dealing with re-seating the passengers
c) getting the meals from one aircraft to another (I assume that's what happened), at any rate I got my specially ordered meal
d) getting the bags to the new aircraft
e) the civil tone of the various agents I was watching as they dealt with very irate passengers, several of whom missed connecting flights.

But I noticed that they did seem to be getting information on how they would get connections, and on arrival several service agents met the flight to give information – in fact it was rather tempting to say that I was going on to Casablanca or Istanbul just to see what happened next – but I didn't and went instead to see if my baggage had arrived – I wasn't fully expecting it.

However, there it was along with a tumble of others. (I noticed that although in most airports there are baggage handlers who organize the bags coming down the shute, in London the bags just avalanche with a baggage handler watching while talking into his cell phone.)

While still in the baggage hall I received an email from United that read:

On behalf of all of us here at United, I want to express my sincere apologies for the experience you had on Flight 918 on June 11, 2011.

At United, we take pride in being a reliable part of your travel plans. Your satisfaction and business mean a great deal to me, I would like to invite you to visit the following website to select a token of our appreciation.

http://www.united.com/appreciation

Please have your flight information handy when you visit the site.

Family members who traveled together using the same email address should access
the site individually.

Thank you for your time. Your satisfaction is important to us and we look forward
to serving you better in the near future.

Sincerely,

Nancy Skiles
United Airlines
Customer Care

So I clicked on the link and found three possibilities of 'appreciation' – 9000 bonus miles, an $200 voucher or a 10% flight reduction, together with another letter.

Bearing in mind what must have been going on behind the scenes to resolve this situation as best as possible it seems to me that things are on the right track for success, maybe lessons described in 'From Worst to First' Gordon Bethune's story of Continental in the 1990s are being integrated effectively and Continental's experience will take United beyond the behemoth into excellent service.

For more on how United and Continental are 'working together to streamline your travel' look at their regular updates pages, here.

In my mailbox this week came two similar questions.

The first was about my blog (March 14 2011) Position Management vs. Organization Design. This correspondent asked:

 Could you please clarify how you "Identify manpower flows"
 What is the rationale for suggesting identifying a possible flow for each scenario – will they be different?
 Isn't it an expensive endeavor to identify flows for each possible redesign scenario?
 And, what methods do organizations/consultants typically use to do so?

The second person asked "if you come across any linkage or material regarding OD and Strategic workforce planning, let me know. It's the puzzle I can't figure out right now. OD and then SWP or SWP and then OD…or is it a combined process?

The questions are similar. They are both asking what the relationship is between strategic workforce planning and organization design and in what situations do you need to consider the relationship.

To illustrate the relationship let's take a situation of the merger of two departments – one of fifteen people and one of twenty-five people. Over the last year several staff have left from both departments and because of a headcount freeze have not been replaced. The intended outcome of the merger is to design the new organization to deliver high performance without increasing headcount.

The sponsor of this project has said that people currently in roles may not have the same role in the new organization, that the work flow may be very different in the merged organization, that the drive will be to develop new services without adding to headcount and with the maintenance of employee motivation and engagement.

So assume you have mapped the new workflow, come up with two or three options for the design, tested that the work will flow through the design – how will you know which is the better one to pick?

It's at this point that you need to have a good grasp of what your workforce 'looks like'. This means using HR data of various kinds to identifying the characteristics and flows of people: how many do you have? What are their skills and capabilities? What are their roles? What are their stay/leave intentions? How frequently do they change jobs within the organization? What are their career paths, promotion rates? How engaged are they? etc. In the example of the merger of two departments you need to know of the 40 people who and what you have to draw on.

You need this because your organization design options although each capable of handing the same business process, usually require different work content, roles and accountabilities, decision authority, interfaces and communication, and performance metrics. In their SHRM article How to drive performance in the new economic reality Michael Norman, and J.P. Elliott, of Sibson Consulting discuss this in more detail.

Think about it. A design around a networked structure, for example will need different workforce capability from a design around a customer segment or geography structure. You need to know what people you have in order to use them in the most effective and efficient way. If one of your designs requires a mix of skill/capability that isn't a ready match to what you have available you can make a decision on cost/benefit grounds on whether to pursue it.

The question about whether it is expensive to look at each scenario in relation to the workforce is better framed as 'what are the risks of not doing a high level assessment of talent needed against talent available'?

John Boudreau's book Retooling HR is very helpful in showing the power of HR analytics and strategic workforce planning to inform business strategy, and by implication the design of the organization. It also starts to address how consultants approach the task of collecting, collating, and interpreting workforce data – something that when I work on organization design projects I work with HR analysts to get the picture.

In answer to the second question posed – strategic workforce planning or organization design first? The better question is how does each support the other in order to deliver the business strategy in the most effective and efficient way?

The Rollo May quote came to mind this week: "Human freedom involves our capacity to pause between the stimulus and response and, in that pause, to choose the one response toward which we wish to throw our weight. The capacity to create ourselves, based upon this freedom, is inseparable from consciousness or self-awareness. (in The Courage to Create) .

I thought of it because I was on several telephone conference calls where there was little leadership agreement behind the 'one response toward which to throw our weight'. Each leader felt the stimulus and was irritated by having to pause and choose, rather than just take the individual knee-jerk reaction he/she wanted to but when the pause situation was engineered the differences between the team members became evident. With this came the realization that the team had to stop, think, decide more in concert than individually.

When I looked at a report on Project Oxygen, Google's approach to determining how to make more successful managers that someone sent me during the week I noticed that this too had the suggestion of stopping to pause between stimulus and response and also to align an individual's thinking with the wider interests of the organization:

"The traps [of unsuccessful management] can show up in areas like hiring. Managers often want to hire people who seem just like them. So Google compiles elaborate dossiers on candidates from the interview process, and hiring decisions are made by a group. "We do everything to minimize the authority and power of the manager in making a hiring decision," Mr. Bock [VP People Operations] explains.

A person with an opening on her team, for instance, may have short-term needs that aren't aligned with the company's long-term interests. "The metaphor is, if you need an administrative assistant, you're going to be really picky the first week, and at six months, you're going to take anyone you can get," Mr. Bock says. "

So what is it that prevents leaders and managers a) stopping to think, and b) acting more in the interests of the organization than in self-interest? The discussion had originally arisen when I was facilitating an organization design program early in the week. Participants wanted to know why managers had a tendency to hand them (the OD consultant) a structure (organization) chart and say "I want my organization to have this structure instead of the current one, make it happen and quickly."

In this particular recurring case it's because managers don't necessarily know that different structures have different capabilities, and different pro and cons. For example, a network structure is good for a volatile environment, while a functional structure is good for a stable environment. Additionally when they think about structure they are generally thinking about 'their' organization and not the interrelationships their departments have with other parts of the organization and with external entities. To be effective the structural choices made in one part of the organization must recognize the consequences both in that part and also in other parts of the wider system.

I've found that managers can be encouraged to pause between stimulus (need to change the structure) and response (it must look like this) if you ask them a series of questions related to the following points:

1. The structure must demonstratively deliver the strategic goals of the organisation
– How does the structure enable the required combination of products, services and customer relationships to be delivered?
– How does the structure minimise costs?
– How does the structure enable the organisation to create added value (e.g. combinations) ?
2. Dept accountabilities must be clear
– Each element has clearly articulated responsibilities, accountabilities and performance measures
– Are there strategic deliverables which do not have a clear owner?
– Where there is shared ownership for a strategic deliverable, how will the structure maximise coordination?
3. Structures should be as flat as possible
– Structures are designed to a minimum number of organisation levels, e.g. how can the number of layers be reduced and what would be the impact?
– Spans of control guidelines
4. Avoid unnecessary duplication
– Do other parts of the company perform this service? Could it be combined?
– Activities are located together to create economies of scale and centres of expertise
– Expertise and resource is located where it has optimal impact
– How much duplication do customers (external or internal) experience?
– Are activities that most need to be coordinated located together?
5 Structures should be flexible and responsive to change
– Structures are designed to cope with workload fluctuations and variations in customer demand
– Consideration of contract staff to cope with peaks
– In what ways can the structure support predicted future growth and innovation?
6. Structure demonstrates appropriate governance and risk standards
– The organisation complies with the regulatory and financial governance framework within which it operates
– Are there clearly documented risk and governance accountabilities?
– How fast can issues be escalated?
7. Structures will support the development of key capabilities
– The business critical career paths are clearly visible within the structure
– How are the capability gaps created by the new structures to be resolved (build/buy)?
8. Organisation design process should be consistent between departments
– Consider roles not people

Let me know if you are able to change a manager's immediate response to structure change by encouraging him/her to pause to consider the choices he/she is making and the consequences of those choices by facilitating a discussion around these points. Note that they are all explained further in my book. Organization Design: creating high performing and adaptable enterprises. In that book you'll also find information about the differences between the various types of organization structures.

Which of these groups of names sound more familiar to you?

Group 1: Chris Arygris, Herbert Shepard, Warner Burke, Larry Greiner, Harry Kolb, Kurt Lewin, Ronald Lippitt, Ralph White, Richard Beckhard, Warren Bennis, Robert Blake, Paul Lawrence, Jay Lorsch, Douglas McGregor, Edgar Schein, Fred Emery, Reg Revans, Eric Trist, Elliott Jaques, Abraham Maslow, B. F. Skinner, Carl Jung, Roberto Assagioli,

Group 2:Margaret Mead, Karen Horney, Mary Parker Follett, Mary Gilson, Jane Addams, Jane Mouton, Margaret Wheatley, Edie Seashore, Elizabeth Bott Spillius, Isabel Menzies Lyth.

I've just been writing a chapter of a book on organization development and one of my reviewers pointed out in relation to my section headed 'founding fathers' of OD that there were, in fact, some women founders of the field, and I had not mentioned any of them.

This was a useful comment, causing me to a) do some research, and b) wonder what it was/is that makes women less noticeable than men in many fields. It echoed the point made just last week about the technology field by one of the participants at the event I was speaking at. She was addressing her question to Jaron Lanier, a technologist (and father of a 4.5 year old daughter). His response was that women were often the 'side-kicks' to the men, the women did the heavy lifting in many instances, but lacked the self-publicist bent of men partly, in his view, because women were socialized into being less public about their endeavors.

At the same time I was reading Cathedrals of Science: the Personalities and Rivalries that Made Modern Chemistry, by Patrick Coffey. Guess what? Virtually no women. Marie Curie peers out of a sea of male faces in one photograph. Other women mentioned are shadowy lab assistants or else long suffering wives (some in both categories) sacrificing their own potential careers for that of the male chemist in their lives.

It's no surprise that women are over-shadowed by men in the early history of behavioral sciences, and chemistry – the social mores and legal infrastructures of the time made it almost impossible for women to receive an equal education and/or similarl career opportunities as men. For example at Oxford University, "women could attend lectures from about 1880 but it was only in 1920 that Oxford awarded degrees to female students for the first time. Oxford appointed its first female professor in 1948."

What's odd is that because now organization development is associated with HR departments – which are women dominated – the courses that I teach are heavily stacked with women participants. You might expect to see women 'names' in the field. Yet you don't. There are very few big-name women 'gurus' in OD. Would Mary Jo Hatch qualify, or Linda Gratton, or ….? (I've blanked out on further women at this point!)

Why is it that so few women, even now, are well-known or eminent in the field of organisation development (or indeed in the field of management generally). I wonder what differences might a more diverse group of theorists and practitioners in the early days of OD have made to the workforce today?

Just in case you want to know more about some of the women mentioned in Group 2 above, here is a sentence on each (in alphabetical order of given/first names).

Edie Seashore: She has been consulting in the OD field for over forty years, and has been President of the NTL Institute for Applied Behavioral Science, and founded the American University/NTL Masters Program in Organizational Development.

Elizabeth Bott Spillius: An anthropologist who joined the London School of Economics from the US in the late 1940s, moving a few years later to the Tavistock Institute. Author of (among other books) Family and Social Network.

Isabel Menzies Lyth: Described in her obituary in the Independent as "that rare combination, a distinguished psychoanalyst and social scientist, and a pioneering figure among the founding group of the Tavistock Institute.

Jane Addams: the first American woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize noted as a "public philosopher" with "an unwavering commitment to social improvement through co-operative effort".

Jane Mouton: maybe you've heard of her as the other half as in "Blake and Mouton" . Wikipedia's sentence says it all "Blake became famous and Mouton was seemingly allowed to ride on his coat-tails" (note the statement that the Managerial Grid was "composed of Mouton's creation and Blake's name").

Karen Horney: "A pioneering theorist in personality, psychoanalysis, and feminine psychology"

Margaret Mead: A cultural anthropologist and probably one of those you have heard of if only because of her phrase now on fridge magnets everywhere: "A small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."

Margaret Wheatley speaker, consultant and writer since 1973.

Mary Gilson: An economist at the University of Chicago, and a specialist in industrial relations.

Mary Parker Follett: "A visionary and pioneering individual in the field of human relations"

So now you know. Would a book on women in OD be worth writing? Would you be more likely to read it if it were by Naomi Stanford or by Stan Ford?

Last week was one of surveys and tests. I'm involved in a review of a telework pilot project involving a survey and also the implementation of a survey on work style and work practices. Plus that week a couple of the dissertation students I am working with are planning their research design which involves selecting a survey instrument and devising methods of using it effectively. Additionally I got an email saying I had to take a mandatory training and pass an end test on this. I found myself doing lots of thinking around getting the most from tests and surveys, and having some interesting discussions on this.

On the telework pilot project we're going to take multiple approaches to data gathering. So we spent a full day working out the time lines, the methods (including: survey, 1:1 interviews, focus groups with randomly selected participants, review of measurement data collected e.g. sickness and absenteeism rates, customer satisfaction scores, etc. and review of the communications strategies and materials) so it will be a labor intensive next few weeks on this. What we're hoping is that we will get information that we can use to develop best practice guides for others who want to introduce or extend teleworking practices.

On the work styles and work practices survey we're aiming to find out whether people think of themselves as 'desk bound', internally mobile, or externally mobile and within these three categories whether they feel their work is interactive or concentrative. So, someone who writes policy papers which demands desk research and then sitting at a computer screen composing, might describe himself as 'deskbound concentrative': he is not interacting very much with other people, and not spending much time away from his desk at meetings or events.

Interestingly the UK Office of Government Commerce has come up with a similar six categories of workstyle albeit slight different language described in their booklet Working Beyond Walls,
Obviously the categories are indicators only. The policy paper writer might initially have to do interviews, go to other locations to do research and so on. In the course of planning and writing the paper he may feel he could describe himself as any one of the six types of workers. What we're looking can never be exact – it's a subjective data point – which in my view is the key limitation of survey responses, unfortunately they are often taken to be objective and decisions made on the basis of them.

But we're hoping that this survey information when combined with the follow-up will give us enough information to think about space in innovative ways and save on corporate real estate, carbon emissions, and so on. Some of the innovative thinking and ways of saving are described in the US Government's General Services Administration booklet Leveraging Mobility, Managing Place which provides a good comparison to the UK booklet I just mentioned.

The other limitations of this survey are again that of all surveys – will the respondents be truthful, are the questions the right ones, will we learn anything useful, will we get enough responses to make an adequate sample? We're going to run some face to face focus groups to try and get more data but in this instance a further limitation is that respondents are being asked about current work styles which may not help that much as we are building an office design for three – five years out.

The students working on their dissertations struggle with the survey aspect. They often want to design their own not realizing that you need to be very skilled to construct something that yields good data (hence some of my reservations on the workplace survey I described). I find I spend a good amount of effort to encourage them to use something that has been well used and validated by others. A good text on survey design is Floyd Fowler's book Survey Research Methods that covers a lot of ground and demonstrates to students that survey design is not just about thinking up some questions. I must reread it before starting to design the telework survey.

The mandatory training, that involved an end test, I didn't do for reasons you'll see was, I thought, a prime example of a poorly designed approach. Because I did not have time to work through the information/education element (the point of the whole thing) I went straight to the end test and passed never having read a word of the training material. So someone is going to check the box on people having taken the training (as evidenced by the end test completion) which says nothing about the application of the training, the value of the investment in developing the whole program, the quality of my application of anything I should have learned, etc.

I mentioned to a colleague that I thought going straight to the end test and passing was a missed opportunity for me to learn something that might be useful, interesting, or worthwhile. But her view differed from mine. She thought if I could pass the end test without working through the material then why bother? I must have enough knowledge of the topic to feel confident in my abilities.

What are your views on survey designs and end tests?

Last week I was sitting in a 'finish concepts' meeting with a group of architects and designers looking at floor tiles, color swatches for wall coverings, and so on. There were five concepts presented. Each one with an accompanying photo of something from nature – flower, rock, etc – than inspired the concept.

This was all interesting to me as I haven't been in one of those types of meetings before, and it was fascinating to see the way the participants handled the samples, discussed the pros and cons, and went into all kinds of details like how would you join carpeting and tile in a 'designed' way?

What they didn't talk about was what effect the color and finish combinations might have on worker productivity. I was pretty sure I've read articles on that topic and surely in designing office space (as we were) worker productivity and motivation should be part of that discussion.

I ventured a question on the topic and was not shot down instantly. In fact one person remembered an article he'd read in graduate school written by someone in the 1950s. I think I've tracked this down to be by Robert Barclay Fetter, How color can increase your productivity (Business information bulletin). School of Business, Indiana University, 1950. The normally helpful Amazon could not give me more than that merely stating that it was 'out of print – limited availability'. So if anyone has a copy I'd be interested in seeing it as further searches got me nowhere on this.

However, I did come across some interesting info. One that particularly intrigued me was an article called Effect of Light Intensity and Color on Worker Productivity and Parasite Detection Efficiency During Candling of Cod Fillets, I have no idea what "candling of cod fillets" is and the abstract was not enlightening, telling me that:

"The effects of light intensity and color on worker productivity and parasite detection efficiency during candling of cod fillets were studied. Light intensity and color had pronounced effects on worker productivity. Productivity was improved by increasing the intensity of white light. Altering the lighting conditions during candle did not change parasite detection efficiency. "

More usefully, what I did discover was that Nancy Kwallek at the University of Texas at Austin is somewhat of an authority on the topic of the impact of color on worker performance. One of her articles Effect of color schemes and environmental sensitivity on job satisfaction and perceived performance
is summarized as follows:

Effects of interior office color and individual stimulus screening ability, i.e., instinctive perceptual filtering of irrelevant stimuli, on perceived performance and job satisfaction were examined on various outcome measures over a 4-day work week in a laboratory setting. Workers performed specific tasks and worked regular hours for 4 consecutive days in the same office. They were separated into three groups according to their ability to ignore irrelevant stimuli in the interior space. Those in the white and predominantly blue-green offices reported higher perceived job performance and satisfaction than those in the predominantly red office regardless of stimulus screening ability. Workers with high to moderate stimulus screening ability indicated greater perceived performance and job satisfaction than did workers with low stimulus screening ability. Results for color schemes are discussed in terms of preference and social expectations."

Another of hers Work week productivity, visual complexity, and individual environmental sensitivity in three offices of different color interiors notes that "The findings suggested that the influences of interior colors on worker productivity were dependent upon individuals' stimulus screening ability and time of exposure to interior colors."

There are a couple more articles of hers and others on a website called Informe Design and another which I couldn't find on their website but which is in their journal. The article is called Color in Office Environments and is available to download this study's findings " suggest that that color scheme alone may impact mood. Surprisingly, though, mood and productivity were not related to each other, suggesting that the impact of colors and stimulus screening on both mood and productivity are independent. No link was found between worker mood and worker performance. Positive mood characteristics did not lead to higher productivity."

A less academic article Grand Designs boldly states that " 81% f of workers claim to be more productive in a more colourful environment". While another article printed in the The Star Phoenix (Saskatoon, Saskatchewan), July 20, 2002 Saturday Final Edition, written by Stephanie Whittaker, quotes Linda Miller a color and design consultant as saying "colour is often an afterthought in many environments. But it's critical to offices with computers because people have to stare at their screens for so long. The human eye isn't designed for that. It's meant for distance viewing as well. So people end up with tired eye muscles. Using colour in a workplace can relieve eye fatigue, Colour can energize workers, relieve boredom or cause anxiety or depression."

Ross Wigham in Personnel Today quotes Justin Palmer (of the now dissolved Principio Facilities Management company) as saying:

"Colour is an important part of our lives and influences our behaviour and mood. Despite widespread use of colour to enhance the home environment, most employers completely lack imagination when it comes to workspace."

Your views on the topic of color and workplace productivity welcome.

The Center for Policy on Emerging Technologies here in Washington DC, has been running a series of roundtable discussions on various aspects of technology and innovation. Last week I was one of the panelists at the discussion on policy and innovation.

Since I'm not a policy wonk and nor a technology nerd ("A PolicyWonk is related to the Technology Nerd, but understands people" according to Policywonk.com). I was a bit baffled about how to contribute effectively, however, once I got the email telling me that I was to provide an overview of my point of view, to go in the participant info pack and reminding me that I also had to speak to for ten minutes on this, I knew I had to get my act together.

It was good to find that actually I did have a point of view: reminding me of the phrase that I enjoy "when I hear what I say, I'll know what I think" . Policies are part and parcel of any organization design and can work in favor or against innovation. However, it's not that simple.

Policies are just one aspect of what I think of as the 'red tape structure'. Explicit red tape includes formal rules, regulations, policies, executive orders, guidelines, frameworks, and so on. Some of this red tape is legally binding and some isn't. Organizations and their members generally have to comply with a mass of both internally and externally generated formal red tape. Think of health and safety regulations as a case in point – there are government impositions and usually additional company requirements on health and safety.

Beyond the formal red tape structures are all the informal ones – the implicit cultural red tape that guides the way people in organizations do things. You hear this coming out in phrases like: "That's what we do", "We've always done it that way", "I'll have to ask my supervisor" , "It's more than my job's worth ….", "It's our policy …" , "It's against the rules …." The Agatha Christie story illustrating this is one I tell in Chapter 5 of my book on Organisation Culture. Whether or not it is true it is a fun example of the type of informal red tape story that people encounter everyday.

Agatha Christie (a thriller writer) was the guest of honour at a Foyle's literary luncheon. The doorman asked her for her invitation and refused to admit her when she couldn't produce it. She didn't make any fuss but just went home.

This is an example of someone who feels that the thing he is being held accountable for is more important than taking responsibility, showing initiative, or even acting sensibly. For the doorman it is more than his job is worth to take the risk of being penalized for contravening the rules and expectations of his employment i.e. to only allow people into the event who can produce their invitation.

My line is that both formal and informal red tape is far more likely to stifle innovation and creative thinking than to generate it. (I'm not going to define 'innovation' which none of us participating in the roundtable attempted). To mitigate that risk it's important to ask a number of questions first when thinking about initiating or introducing a piece of red tape, and second when reviewing its efficacy. Sadly, more often than not the initiating questions are glossed over, and it's very rare that systematic organizational reviews of red tape ever take place. However, let's assume that people wanted red tape to foster rather than restrict innovation. Here are the questions to ask when introducing it:

• What do we want it to do?
• Why is it needed?
• When does it work well?
• How will we know?
• Who will monitor and track its efficacy?
• Where is the other organizational infrastructure support for it?

Peter Drucker, called for the systematic review and then 'planned abandonment' of things like out of date policies, business processes and so on. But before getting to that point we need to be clear that reviewing is necessary by asking:

• Why don't we review?
• What are the benefits of reviewing?
• How can reviews be instigated?
• Who would do the reviews?
• When should they happen (time frame)?
• Where should review accountability lie?

Once we are clear we need to review then we can go on to the planned abandonment phase.

Sometimes reviews and abandonment come quickly on the heels of introducing a policy. As, rather than stifling innovation, people are very inventive in doing red tape workarounds. Take the example of the London bus drivers who when asked to get their buses to the destination at the time indicated on the schedule or lose their performance related pay, responded by not stopping to pick up passengers as that ran the risk of not getting back in time!

I like the fact that both President Obama and Prime Minister David Cameron have taken up the cudgels against red tape. Cameron issuing both a letter on it and setting up the 'red tape challenge' and Obama issuing an executive order on the topic.

Most organizations would do well to take up Cameron's injunction – posed in relation to specific sets of regulations:

Tell us what you think should happen to these regulations and why, being specific where possible:

Should they be scrapped altogether?
Can they be merged with existing regulations?
Can we simplify them – or reduce the bureaucracy associated with them?
Have you got any ideas to make these regulations better?
Do you think they should be left as they are?

Let me know if your organization regularly reviews its formal and informal red tape.