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In the way of things someone called me yesterday and in the course of the conversation asked me how much I knew about biomimicry (next to nothing), and today a completely different person, knowing nothing of the conversation, sent me an article on biomimicry that she thought I'd be interested in.

So now I'm learning about biomimicry! The Biomimicry Institute says:

Biomimicry is the science and art of emulating Nature's best biological ideas to solve human problems. Non-toxic adhesives inspired by geckos, energy efficient buildings inspired by termite mounds, and resistance-free antibiotics inspired by red seaweed are examples of biomimicry happening today.

The Institute itself was founded in 2005 by science writer and consultant Janine Benyus, in response to overwhelming interest in the subject following the publication of her book, Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature.

It is a not-for-profit organization that promotes the study and imitation of nature's remarkably efficient designs, bringing together scientists, engineers, architects and innovators who can use those models to create sustainable technologies.

The article on the topic was from Fast Company and is titled Biomimicry Challenge: IDEO Taps Octopi and Flamingos to Reorganize the USGBC. (The US Green Building Council) Although it's an interesting article about thinking about organization design through a bio-mimicry lens, as I was reading it, unfortunately, my scoff reflex kicked in (a peculiarly British trait that I am trying to eradicate now I live in the land of can-do). The reflex was triggered by the sentence "After holding interviews with USGBC stakeholders, the IDEO team quickly uncovered a tenet central to their solution: A hierarchical, top-down approach wasn't working for USGBC". Which organization does it work for? At this point I wondered what the Council was paying for this flash of insight. The article continues:

"We very much identified the idea for a stronger sense of community and connectedness that was more flexible–more about person to person than chapter to national body." McGee then told a biology story about mycorrhiza fungi, which grows in a fungal mat in the ground between the trees that have access to both sun and water, distributing these necessary nutrients between the trees. When McGee drew this system, the designers instantly realized it was a perfect model: What if, instead of a hierarchical relationship, the national body (like the fungi) was in a supportive relationship with chapters (the trees), moving information and resources around as necessary?"

If not rocket science another science.

Then I remembered an article I read by Hinrichs, G. (2009) Organic Organization Design. OD Practitioner, Vol 41, No. 4. She makes the point (but does not call it biomimicry but Org2Design™) that "Nature and adaptation are better models for dynamic organizational environments than the efficient but inflexible machine models" and continues by noting that generally organizations are moving from a mechanistic form to an organic form characterized by being purpose driven, open, whole, locally focus and empowered, distributed/networked, connected, diverse, growing/changing. Her organization model is a mollusk. (I sometimes show this in my training courses and get a variety of responses).

More than fifty years ago Burns and Stalker's work on mechanistic and organic organizations found that 'Like other living things, organic organizations need to adapt to their ever changing circumstances, therefore they have less specialization and formalization and are less hierarchical than mechanistic organizations; they also engage in considerably more lateral communication and co-ordination.' (See Organization Theory, by Hatch and Cunliffe for more on this).

So what have I learned about bio-mimicry in today's brief canter? Well, it's definitely useful for science and technology but, as noted in the Fast Company article, "One challenge the team faced was that they found it difficult to isolate bio-inspired solutions for some of USGBC's organizational needs that were very human indeed". I'm left thinking that the fit isn't that great between bio-mimicry and organization design, even so the language and concepts of bio-mimicry could provide a good vehicle for being innovative on the design, and because the language of bio-mimicry is newer and more seductive and therefore more sellable than the more established language of 'organic organizations' we may see more organic organizations being designed.

Meanwhile I'm waiting for my friend who works at the USGBC to respond to my email asking him for his view on the IDEO/Biomimicry Institute piece of work and the impact it has had on the organization. (Trust but verify).

"One of the most common reasons that redesigns fail is the all too common assumption that the job essentially ends with the announcement of the new design."

This quote is taken from Competing by Design, by David A. Nadler, Michael L. Tushman. Although written a while ago it still holds true. However, I've found that suggesting review meets with resistance. But without reviewing opportunities for improvement are lost and/or things can go disastrously wrong.

There are several good reasons for doing reviews:

• They help you to evaluate your success in achieving your design's objectives.
• They identify anything that is out of alignment that needs work, and surface tasks still to be completed. (These may be things on the list or they may arise out of the review work).
• They identify the impact of change so far – using the measures and metrics, you have in place to track success.
• They provide the opportunity to recognize and reward the achievement of project team members and others involved.
• They enable you and your team to reflect on the organization design process and learn from your experience: reviewing gives you information and knowledge to share with other projects teams and with your stakeholders

What reviews commonly find are that:

• Implementation took more time than originally allocated: If you do a phased transition it is sometimes difficult to know when you have reached a point where it is clear that you have reached the new design.
• Major problems surfaced during implementation that you had not identified beforehand: These can be internal or external and either way will have an adverse impact on implementation. However good your risk analysis you may leave out something that you could not anticipate.
• Co-ordination of implementation activities was not effective enough: This talks to project and program management abilities. You must have a governance structure that keeps clear over-sight of all project work streams provides a coherent framework for them to operate within.
• You do not define key implementation tasks and activities in enough detail: The cliché 'the devil is in the detail' holds true in redesign projects. However, the trick is to get enough detail without becoming bureaucratic and prescriptive.

• Competing activities and crises distracted attention from implementing this decision: Day to day running of the business has to happen even through the redesign process. People's tendency is to work on the urgent rather than the important. Design work usually falls into their 'important' category.
• Capabilities of employees involved were not enough: Where people move to new roles or responsibilities they must have the skills to deliver quickly in these. Too often people try to do new things without adequate preparation and instruction.
• Training and instruction given to lower level employees was not adequate: Remember front-line staff are the people delivering your business. Unfortunately, they often come last in the pecking order of communication, training, and support in new processes.

• Leadership and direction provided by departmental managers was not adequate: Leading a redesign is a difficult task and before you embark on it take thorough stock of your skills and abilities to lead and manage through the long haul. (See John Chambers, CEO Cisco, talking about this aspect on You Tube)
• Information systems used to monitor implementation were not adequate: Use systems that are quick, simple, and transparent to monitor implementation. A balanced scorecard or dashboard approach works well. Getting all the information on one sheet weekly and paying attention to this week's progress compared with last week's is helpful.
• People resist the change, try to shift the burden, and/or become accidental adversaries: The people issues that reviews uncover are often significant. Traditional operational metrics do not monitor people's responses to change. However, these usually untracked responses act against the project.

So all ammunition in the recommendation that an organizational design review is worth the investment – if you knew you were going to be reviewed would you take more steps to mitigate the risks of failure than if you knew that a review was unlikely?

Yesterday I was talking to the UK office of a search firm who are looking for a UK Head of Organizational Design for "a highly successful global consumer lifestyle business". The company is a fast-growing FTSE 100 company with operations in Europe, the Americas and Asia (under 10,000 employees and turnover of around £2bn); they are in the market to recruit a Head of Organisational Design to be based at their head office in London. The recruiter said that this "is quite a meaty role that will have tremendous influence at the highest levels within the business."

Fleetingly I wondered if I should put my hat in the ring but instead offered a few pointers on where to look. Apart from naming individuals to contact there are several avenues:

The Organization Design Forum circulates job opportunities to its members. (They are just changing websites to make one that is much more interactive and alluring than the current one). The membership base is largely US but at the conference last week in Denver there were several people who'd come from Africa and Europe.

There is an organization development network in London, ODiN, which attracts a range of people interested in organization design and which also posts job openings.

The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) run an organization design two day training program (which I lead). It's aimed as an introduction to the field but I've found that participants may have lots of experience in organization design work, but have not got a systematic or consistent approach to it. Each time it runs there are around 16 participants. I never have mentioned job openings to people on it and neither have they asked but having a discussion on what types of jobs are available in the field and what companies are looking for might be an interesting discussion.

The CIPD's People Management magazine posts jobs both on its website and in its paper version. Currently there are a few listed with the title 'organization design' for example: "Our client is a major blue-chip global retailer with an excellent name in the HR field. They are currently going through an exciting time of structural redesign.

Your role will be to support 10 countries across Europe and Asia to implement organisation structure design as a result of changes to the Operating Model. You will work with Function Heads and Directors to design and implement new affordable structures. Using the blueprint and keeping it up to date, you will develop various toolkits to support capability building ,making changes to put the right people in the right jobs, whilst managing headcount and owning the routines around performance management."

Organization design seems to be gaining ground as a technical specialism – the CIPD has included it as a separate competence in its HR profession map. But it's a losing battle putting across the point that design is NOT about structure, by which people tend to mean the organization charts, but about the relationships between the various elements of the enterprise – both hard and soft.

On a wall in a community center in Newcastle on Tyne there's a mural sized (ie whole wall) proclamation about structures which I find fascinating, not least because there's no information about why it's there or who painted it on the wall. It reads:

• One can work within any structure
• Once one can worth within any structure some structures are more efficient than others
• There is no one structure that is universally appropriate
• Commitment to an aim within an inappropriate structure will give rise to the creation of an appropriate structure
• Apathy, i.e. passive commitment within an appropriate structure will effect its collapse
• Dogmatic attachment to the supposed merits of a particular structure hinders the search for an appropriate structure
• There will be difficulty in defining the appropriate structure because it will always be mobile, i.e. in process
• Within any structure it is always essential to act with responsibility and consider the impact of the structure on people, their minds, and other living things.

This seems to point exactly to the nub of the matter that the structure is only one element of an enterprise. Design is less about structure and more about how work gets done in a humane and effective way. It would be good to see that stance reflected in job postings, and then in the way the organization design jobs are done.

Science Daily posted a research report last week titled Consumer Remorse: Difficult Choices Can Lead to Second-Guessing.

This found that "Consumers who choose between two good product options build a "positivity bubble" to justify their choices. But according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research, that bubble is easy to burst."

"From routine cereal-aisle shopping to expensive big-ticket purchases, consumers are often free to choose among many similarly attractive options," write authors Ab Litt and Zakary L. Tormala (Stanford University). "In these contexts, it can be difficult to resolve one's preferences to arrive at a purchasing decision."

When decisions are difficult because the choices are equally appealing, people often become more positive in their attitudes and behaviors toward their chosen option after they choose it. But the authors found that this enhancement of a product is surprisingly fragile, and collapses easily in the face of even minor negative information about it.

"We show that the process is more like inflating a 'positivity bubble,' where there's an appearance of strong positive attitudes, but which masks a heightened vulnerability to ultimately collapsing," the authors write.

Reading this I wondered if there is any carry over of the effect into job choices. If someone is offered two jobs (unlikely in these times but not impossible) that have a relatively equal weighting of perceived pros and cons, then following the euphoria of landing a job does the positivity bubble burst once they are in post?

This might help explain why people frequently leave a new job after only a few months. But, if it is understood that a 'positivity bubble' is vulnerable then actions could be taken to mitigate the risk of it bursting. Of course a) I am extrapolating a lot from one small piece of research and b) some companies do have an ongoing mentoring/buddying system that carries people through the first few months.

There is a lot of work going on at the moment in the field of 'positive psychology'. The University of Pennsylvania has a useful list of readings that includes videos, articles, and books. There's also a Journal of Positive Psychology issued six times a year from 2009 (more times than in 2008 which I'm guessing indicates increasing interest in the topic). You can get a free sample e-copy of the journal. Mine had an article on Feeling good and open-minded: The impact of positive affect on cross cultural empathic responding, by Donna Webster Nelson at the Department of Psychology, Winthrop University, SC, USA.

She was researching the effect of positive thinking on cross cultural relations, opening her paper saying:

… in the workplace, positive affect has been linked to enhanced cooperation
(e.g., Baron, 1990) and intentions to perform organizational citizenship behaviors (Williams & Shiaw, 1999). In sum, there is quite a bit of evidence from diverse sources that positive affect has the potential to exert an array of beneficial psychological, cognitive and social effects.

And concluding with her findings that:

Calling on positive emotions when facing unfamiliar social exchanges may help individuals with different backgrounds to respond to one another with tolerance and compassion. This will serve the important function of promoting the construction of cooperative as opposed to oppositional relationships, helping individuals and societies function in an adaptive and harmonious way.

These findings are consistent with the notion that positive emotion promotes a greater tendency toward holistic, open minded processing and this can translate into important social-cognitive effects.

So what I'm now wondering is whether workplaces should pay more attention than they do it taking conscious action to foster positive thinking, and helping to maintain and enlarge positivity bubbles where they exist.

At the conference I was at yesterday Traci Entel, from Booz, presented on 'The Power of the Coherence Premium'. She talked about a revised 'palette' of organizational elements which combined the forma (F) and informal (I) of the organization.

Structure (F) and networks (I)
Decision rights/management information (F) and behaviors (I)
Motivators (F) and identity (I)
Information (F) and beliefs (I)

She told us that organizations must decide what capability they are trying to compete on. Having done this ensuring 'coherence' amongst and between the palette elements in a way that delivers the capability is the route to success.

This is not a new tack for Booz, In one of their articles 2010 Media Industry Perspective the author observes that

Our recent research has demonstrated that companies with greater portfolio coherence (that is, those whose business units have mutually reinforcing capabilities that distinguish the company as a whole) outperform their peers in terms of operating margin. …. We expect smart, strategic buyers to focus primarily on acquiring coherent capabilities, rather than on portfolio diversification or cost synergies.

This is because, as exlained in another (2008) article, How to Win by Changing the Game) Booz authors point out:

A true capabilities driven strategy is the most reliable way for a company to thrive when the of game for its industry are in flux .

Entel gave several examples of organizations that have done this successfully – Starbucks, for example, decided to compete on the 'coffee experience' capability (The 2008 article gives several others).
Their 'palette' is 'coherent' in support of this. Listening to this I was struck by the language of it all – I remembered a book The Power of Alignment: how great companies stay centered and accomplish extraordinary things. which seemed to be saying much the same thing about coherence and capability but thirteen years ago and in a slightly different language. So does 'new' language act to re-energize something? Does it enable a slightly different perspective that would open new opportunities to act? What is the difference between ensuring organizational element 'coherence' and organizational element 'alignment'?

Later that day I was reviewing the work of a class I am teaching in organization theory. The student task this week is to study three different theoretical perspectives of organizations and then discuss the topic of "Each theoretical perspective examines organizations and their perceived relationships to the environment differently. For this discussion, describe these differences. What are some of the enacted features of your organization's environment and the ways these features are displayed or perceived that might be consistent with one of the perspectives?" Again, the language of this struck me. Basically the theory is also asking questions about what makes an organization capable of responding successfully to a competitive environment

One of the learners had picked up on the film/media industry and how the environment in which it operates is forcing companies in that industry to rethink their capabilities and where/how they can stay competitive. Two recent articles in the Economist look at this one reports on the television industry. "Television is adapting better to technological change than any other media business". The other on the film industry (Hollywood) "The sign is still there, but the film crews increasingly aren't". Both articles discuss each industry's response to the changing environment and the capabilities they need to develop to stay competitive and what they need to do to get the organizational coherence or alignment behind this. (And in academic terms which theoretical perspective are they adopting which will foster the alignment/coherence?)

The language of the Booz and Economist articles was strikingly different (maybe because of different audiences), and each is different again from the academic language. I'm still wondering about the language to use in helping organizations compete successfully.

Background:

Multicultural team members tend to have different cultural rules for relationship building and communication. This leads them to have to collectively find a way of giving themselves a vehicle for exploring rules of own social orders. (To create a new culture)

This exercise asks team members to suspend their cultural assumptions in order to build a team culture of trust. A culture of trust will foster relationships where good and effective communication can happen and a person's value is affirmed: where the value she/he places on him/herself is ratified and confirmed through a process of mutual reinforcement. (Society built around relationships of sustaining each other and compliments are one vehicle that give people 'face').

This exercise imposes new norms in which to create relationships by creating a cultural island. We will need new norms because

• Tasks are getting more complex
• We work in multiple occupational cultures
• There are multiple macrocultures
• There is increasing complexity of organizational missions
• We play cultural scripts as if they were reality but they are just scripts. (For example, who says we have to 'reach out to each other'
• Organizations have shorthand and acronyms addiction, people think there is mutual understanding of a concept but often there isn't and neither is there knowledge on how to operationalise what we're talking about e.g. how do we getr a 'culture of collaboration'?

Purpose of the exercise

To build a dialogic process for creating a relationship

Method
Sit in a circle facing the center of the table with an object e.g. a bowl of candy in the middle of it (the campfire).
Keeping your eyes on only the campfire i.e. do not make eye contact with anyone, in turn and without interruption speak/think out loud about one or two task relevant questions for example:

• Why you are here and what you want out of this meeting.
• In your home organization what would you do or have you done when your boss is about to make a costly mistake.
• In your culture how do you decide whether on not you can trust a colleague, boss or subordinate?

Give yourself the experience. Don't worry about the others. This requires suspension of your assumptions about the others in the group and a focus on yourself. Be sincere).

• One speaks after the other.
• You must keep looking at and talking to the campfire
• When everyone is finished you can react but only to the campfire.

Notes:
o The process to be used must be a structured dialogue around concrete questions
o Exercise has to be personal, specific and build relationships around the working group.
o Do not make comments about other cultures e.g. Japanese do not look people in the eye
o Look for opportunities for people to get the 'campfire' opportunity without labeling it as 'dialogue' or whatever. There are opportunities to disrupt the cultural norms. For example: Get everyone's opinion on a topic, option, or point before you begin discussion of it, as in "Of these three options who thinks option one will work?"
o This is not a touchy feely process stick to task relevant information

Recommendation: Do not advocate good communication. Advocate good relationships to get the task agreed, the task process determined and the optimum structure established.

Edgar Schein presented the opening session of the 2010 Organization Design Forum Conference, currently running in Denver. His topic was the structure/process dilemma in organization design. Refreshingly he started off by saying that when he was thinking about his presentation he asked himself the question: "What are my biases that might be of some use to people thinking about this topic?"

It turns out that he is biased towards thinking about process first and structure more or less last in an organization design: a view that I share but have yet to find the majority of line managers sharing. All too often (a blanket generalization) they equate organization design with fiddling with the boxes on an organization chart.

His argument for process first begins with three questions around the work. In order to do the work:

• Who needs to connect, coordinate, collaborate with whom?
• What kind of connection is needed?
• What kind of communication process should be designed?

He then gave a brief history on why these questions and the work process first approach make sense, citing the Bavelas and Leavitt communication experiments which aim to establish the link between structures and communication efficiency/effectiveness. "Given that there are many ways to organize an organization, the question arises how the pattern of communications within the organization affects the performance of the organization — it's ability to sell products, reduce costs, adapt to changes in environment, etc" (Quote from Stephen P. Borgatti Communication Structure and its Effects on Task Performance). Schein then went on to consider the notion of structured dialogues and the work of Bill Isaacs.

This historical perspective led Schein to observe that the process has to fit the task and the structure has to fit the process. So, all members of a work group have to collectively know, understand, and agree what there task is, figure out the process for achieving the task, and design the structure that allows the process to flow. Schein noted that this may involve upsetting cultural norms and establishing new norms for that workgroup which can be done on what he described as a 'cultural island'.

The point about the 'cultural island' is – going back to the three original questions – that to get work done requires connection, collaboration, and coordination, which in turn means communicating effectively.

Communicating effectively requires a relationship and relationships have to be built.
Because each culture has different rules for authority and intimacy management, the initial relationship building has to be on a cultural island in which the rules are temporarily suspended for the purposes of learning how to communicate in a trusting relationship. This he explained as:

• A relationship is some degree of mutual affirmation of what each member claims as his/her value in the situation 'face'
• The social order in all cultures requires that interaction be reciprocal, fair and balanced – social economics
• The rules of the social order specify the proper roles and proprieties of situations that involve authority and intimacy – social theater
• Trust is that I can say something about myself and that someone else will not take negative advantage of it.

What followed in the session was a practical exercise (tomorrow's blog) to illustrate the points about building trusting relationships for good communication and the need to suspend cultural norms in order to do the building. In summing up Schein reiterated that;

• Task effectiveness requires coordination and collaboration.
• That requires task relevant open communication. For example: If a nurse sees a surgeon about to cut off the wrong limb she should speak up.
• Open communication requires mutual trust, understanding and empathy. The nurse speaking up requires the conditions for speaking up.
• That requires building relationships of trust because to speak up you need a relationship which you feel is sustaining and will confirm your (positive) sense of self. See Erving Goffman's book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life on this topic.

One time I was talking to a leadership development specialist about the skills leaders needed to do well. His response was that the single thing they needed more than anything else was curiosity and it's a very difficult thing to develop in people. His remarks stuck in my mind so when someone emailed me the article The Power of Curiosity (adapted from a book Curious? Discover the Missing Ingredient to a Fulfilling Life by Todd Kashdan) I was interested to see what it said. (Sidebar: the article was printed in a magazine, Experience Life, that I'd not come across so I looked at the website – it has tabs for healthy eating, fit body, health and wellness, worthy goods. I see it is available in print version too so I'll look out for it.)

Unlike the leadership development colleague who thinks curiosity is difficult to develop Kashdan, thinks it can be developed with practice (maybe that's the same as being difficult to develop?). He says:

Curiosity is something that can be nurtured and developed. With practice, we can harness the power of curiosity to transform everyday tasks into interesting and enjoyable experiences. We can also use curiosity to intentionally create wonder, intrigue and play out of almost any situation or interaction we encounter.
It all starts with wanting to know more.

Of course, that supposes that people want to know more and see the benefit in asking open questions, being alert to other ways of looking at things, and being willing to have assumptions challenged. To help on this Kashdan 'sells the benefits' of curiosity. He discusses five of them:

1 Health: he cites some studies showing that curious people age more healthily than incurious.
2 Intelligence: apparently 'some studies' (not cited) show that 'high levels of curiosity in adults are connected to greater analytic ability, problem-solving skills and overall intelligence. All of which suggests that cultivating more curiosity in your daily life is likely to make you smarter.
3 Social relationships: curious people say they have more satisfying social relationships than others who appear less curious. (I don't know if that extends into social media. My curiosity about many of the Tweets and Facebook comments is why anyone should want to post them and then why anyone would be the remotest bit interested).
4 Happiness: A Gallup Poll identified two factors that had the strongest influence on how much enjoyment a person experienced in a given day: "being able to count on someone for help" and "learned something yesterday." Both of which the author attributes to curiosity. He also mentions the book Stumbling on Happiness, and the 24 basic human strengths identified by Martin Seligman and Chris Petersen both of which tie happiness to curiosity.
5 Meaning: the observation on this is that curiosity is the entry point to many of life's greatest sources of meaning and satisfaction: our interests, hobbies and passions.

To develop curiosity there are several suggestions:
 When waking: Look with "fresh eyes." Choose to see some things in your home, partner or family that you may have overlooked before.
 When talking: Strive to remain open to whatever transpires – without assuming, categorizing, judging or reacting. Ask more questions and listen with care.
 When driving: Instead of zoning out on a daily commute, make a point of actively anticipating what the drivers around you are likely to do next. Stay aware of what's ahead and on the horizon.
 When working: Look for opportunities to challenge and apply yourself in ways that spark your interest and produce great results. Ask questions like: What's interesting here? How can I make this more fun?
 When exercising: Instead of going through the motions, put your attention on the intricacies and sensations of your own movement and on whatever sights, sounds and smells are within range.

And then another section on 'Develop Your Inner Sherlock' which has some fun ideas.

The one I've found very helpful (which I found in a life-coaching book, but don't remember which one) was to start the day with "I wonder what today will bring? Who will I speak to? What will I say? What will I do?" . Like the leadership development colleague I feel that curiosity is a skill managers need, and like Kashdan think it is one that they can and should cultivate.

The New York Times today has an article about an incubator company Betaworks . It "has guided some entrepreneurs to lucrative sales and helped others raise cash from notable New York and Silicon Valley investment firms".

What's notable about Betaworks is that it has an unconventional business model. The founders, John Borthwick and Andrew Weissman, "spent nine months deliberating over how to structure their company before settling on a hybrid of an investment firm and an incubator. " Borthwick says that "our goal is to create a network of companies with lots of connections between them that increases the likelihood of success between all of them."

The author of the article writes: "It's not hard to see that spirit at work. The two dozen companies under Betaworks' umbrella make a point of using one another's creations and often incorporate them into their own services. At a recent meeting at Betaworks, about three dozen employees of Betaworks and its portfolio of companies crowded into a room, trading feedback, updates and the occasional good-natured zinger about their various products. "

So here is one example of a thought-through organization design that is focused on collaboration, for mutual benefit, amongst a number of companies. The 'hub' being Betaworks. (Side note: I noticed that no people with traditionally female names are listed as Betaworks' team members or advisors. Possibly Alex? It seems to be a male dominated organization – where does richness from diversity fit in the business model, I wonder?).

Anyway, the article caught my eye because yesterday I'd been reading an article Interdependence, coordination, and structure in complex organizations: implications for organization design, by Prescott C Ensign, in the The Mid – Atlantic Journal of Business; Mar 1998; 34, 1. In it Ensign argues that 'to achieve competitive advantage, the firm needs structural mechanisms and processes that emphasis lateral rather than vertical relationships.' Clearly, he was writing before the advent of social media and the internet which both work on lateral relationships. But the parallels between the unitary organization he had in mind and the hub organization that is Betworks are striking.

In the paper interdependence is examined and "it is proposed: 1) that an organization needs to develop potential interdependence as well as manage existing interdependence 2) structural barriers must be overcome in order to manage interdependence more efficiently and effectively. He defines structural barriers as 1) part-whole or sub system-system relationships – the way tasks and activities are organized into groups; and 2) authority, power, and influence patterns – the way groups are organized to achieve integration and coordination among groups."

What I wondered was whether the theories presented in the 1998 paper with one type of organization in mind would still hold good for the new type of organization typified by Betaworks. On the surface the potential issues and opportunities are the same – how to help people collaborate for their mutual benefit without getting overly involved in power plays and politics.

Assuming that Betaworks, and the companies it is supporting, are successful – what could other organizations learn from their experience? It might mean much easier and more productive relationships between the various stakeholders in an organization, for example, unions, suppliers, regulatory bodies, and contractors because it develops the notion of lateral relationships and interdependence that extend or span the boundaries of a traditional organization.

This was a concept explored in the book The Boundaryless Organization: Breaking the Chains of Organization Structure by Ron Ashkenas, Dave Ulrich. Todd Jick, Steve Kerr. Originally published in 1995 but in 2002 revised and updated. (Side note: the foreword is written by C. K. Prahalad who died on April 16 2010. There's a lovely obituary in the Economist, April 22. )

Unfortunately, many established organizations are still focused on hierarchical structure and how to 're-organize' them. Thus they miss the possibilities and benefits of thinking of lateral collaboration and interdependence.

An MBA student emailed me about entering the field of organization design. She wrote:

To give you a bit of context, I'm very interested in human capital management, in particular how organizations manage and communicate change and how companies can structure themselves to maximize creativity/innovation and reduce silo-based, political decision-making.

My experience working as a special assistant to members of the C-suite of the company I was with pre-MBA gave me interesting perspective on the way talent was managed at the top and the trickle down effects those practices had on the organization as a whole.

I'd enjoy talking to you and getting your guidance on what to read, companies to think of as leaders in managing talent, and your general thoughts on what it means to work on HR issues in today's workplace.

In the phone conversation that followed she asked me a number of questions:

Q. What do you read/do to keep up to date?

A. I read The Economist, Fast Company, strategy+business, McKinsey Quarterly both on line and hard-copies (I subscribe to these). I also listen to the weekly HBR ideacast , and get daily email bulletins from the Financial Times, Washington Post, New York Times, World Futures Institute, Science Daily http://www.sciencedaily.com/, and Accenture's My Outlook.

Q. What companies are good at managing talent?

A. Very few that I know of. In my view they focus on the wrong thing, for example career tracks that promote good technical people into management roles because there are few technical career tracks, and succession plans that assume workforce (and work) stability. Additionally they have, and work to, traditional views of 'leadership' that don't hold up in today's organizational contexts.

I did hear a podcast last week on How to Make HR Relevant with Susan Cantrell, fellow at the Accenture Institute for High Performance and coauthor of Workforce of One: Revolutionizing Talent Management Through Customization. She mentioned Best Buy as a company good at managing talent. Best Buy is a company I am interested in. They have just entered the UK in a partnership with Carphone Warehouse. They also have an interesting dual brand strategy in both Canada and China, and are doing very well with this.

Q. What are some trends to watch in organization design and human capital?

A. I've been wondering what the impact some of the new business models, particularly those from emerging markets, will have on organization designs and human capital management. It seems to me that these new models will demand different ways of thinking about people who work in them. For example, raising the question can the workforce 'be managed' in any of the established western company ways? It'll be interesting to see how HR practitioners respond to the challenge.

Q. What skills does an organization design consultant need?

A. An unrestrained, and non-judgmental curiosity: much as an ethnographer or anthropologist has. Organizations are not what they seem or present to outsiders – the public picture does not reveal any of the complexities of working there. (As anyone who has joined an organization discovers – rarely does the reality of the job match the expectation presented).

Following the observation, using an analytical capability that can synthesize information, interpret situations, and offer ways of solving problems or seizing opportunities.

Then a resilience and persistence in working to challenge existing perceptions and assumptions, encouraging people to try out new things, and to keep up with the changes going on outside the organization. Someone in one of my corporate organization development roles called me 'the grit in the oyster' – getting under people's skin yet helping to make good things happen is the role.

Q. How should I find out more about it?

A. Aim to find out by shadowing, talking to other people, and trying out job placements whether you are more interested in an internal/corporate or an external consulting role or do you want a specialist role, for example 'talent manager'? It's just by experimentation and active research that you'll find out where your interests lie. Take some courses directly relevant to the organization design/development field. (American University's NTL program is worth looking at). Read the writings of Edgar Schein for a refreshing view on the field.

Thank you.