#organizationdesign

Michelle Holliday, the author of The Age of Thrivability, describes it thus:

Thrivability is a worldview, a global movement, and an active practice. Guided by what we know about living systems, it is a continual and purposeful drive to create the fertile conditions for life to thrive at the levels of the individual, the organization, the community and the biosphere. Profoundly practical, it is distinguished by a deep understanding of how life works – and by intentional participation in that pattern. The thrivability movement recognizes that only by aligning with life in the spirit of learning, compassion, contribution and play can we find the motivation and the means to collaborate and innovate at the levels required.

Kate Raworth, in her stellar Ted Talk titled A healthy economy should be designed to thrive, not grow, asks us to reimagine the shape of progress.

Humanity’s 21st Century challenge is clear – to meet the needs of all people within the means of this extraordinarily unique living planet so that we, and the rest of nature can thrive.

I believe organizations that embrace thriving over growth have the power to become healing forces. They will be built on wiser assumptions about human possibility and planetary boundaries. They will be free to make life-affirming choices. 

Given this context, what qualities would a healing organization founded on the principles of Thrivability look like? But first, why am I focusing on organizations? Because, I believe:

Organizations are uniquely placed to have a massive impact toward building “a more beautiful world.” Because they are platforms of convergence where individuals come together, the Narratives, Metaphors, and Purpose that drive organizations can have tremendous influence on how people connect, collaborate, and co-create.

These unseen and intangible influences create the field which drives organizational behavior. Thus, to reinvent organizations, we need to re-imagine these underlying constructs — new narratives, new metaphors, and a shared Evolutionary Purpose.…

To become a conscious organization is a deliberate choice, which then leads to many small, thoughtfully undertaken actions and decisions over a period of time. These have a cumulative and a gradually percolating effect that can shift the trajectory of an organization.

Peoplewiz caters Organization Design Consulting and HR services

Design of an Organization is not an exact science. Our approach is to define design criteria, create guiding principles, propose options and facilitate consensus amongst stakeholders

Organization Design (OD) defines the design and implementation of the organization’s structure, governance, roles, competencies and skills that are required to support strategic, business and transformational goals. Instead of merely addressing the organization structure, PeopleWiz treats it as one element of a comprehensive OD approach that includes alignment between vision, strategy, structure, people, competencies, processes, rewards and culture. Our OD process is a hybrid of both a topdown view that is driven by the business vision and strategy, while focusing on a high-level structure and governance, and a bottom-up view that is driven by day-to-day operational processes and refers to the alignment of operating roles, work units, control and coordination.

PeopleWiz 5D Engagement Approach

Diagnosis: In this first phase, we evaluate the organizational capability to support your strategy for growth. Through stakeholder interviews, workshops and collection of organizational data, a review of your current people management practices including organization structure; decision-making and performance management will be carried out to analyze their effectiveness. Business benefits that can be derived by improving your organizational processes will be plotted and understood.

Design: After gaining an understanding of your long-term strategic objective, short-term business goals, current business context and ground realities, we will define the scope of the changes to organization design, which are needed to transform the organization. This covers organization structure, performance management system, people practices, governance mechanisms and reward mechanisms. To gain a broader perspective while designing your own organization, PeopleWiz consultants will research on successful operating models in your industry and key learning from them.

Develop: A successful implementation requires that the new design has been sufficiently developed to suit every function or unit in the organization. This involves developing tools, content, formats, templates & success measures for the proposed changes that can be smoothly implemented at different layers in the organization.

Deploy: The right blend of planning and execution skills with a formal approach to change management is used during the deploy phase. Engaging key stakeholders, ample internal communication and other change management techniques are utilized during the implementation to ensure that the all the initiatives are a success.

Drive: Measuring success and satisfaction of the employees is carried out so that the initiative remains on track and the promised benefits can be realized. Experienced Change management consultants drive the monitoring and tracking to ensure that the organization design changes are institutionalized.

 Do you need Organization Design?

OD might be something to consider if you are facing one of the following business challenges:

• You are starting up a new company or division

• You want to execute aggressive growth plans

• Your business strategy has changed

• Your organization is not delivering the expected performance

• You are entering new markets or exiting some others - or need to improve your position in current markets

• You need to reduce some of the barriers to working regionally/globally/cross-sector/ function/department etc.

• You can’t afford your current organization

• There has been a major change in the external environment – new competitors, new technologies or new regulations

 Why us?

Well-rounded Expertise: Our consultants have gained experience globally with companies like Thermax, TCS, Siemens, University of Oxford, Patni Computers & Citigroup. Having performed roles in Process Consulting, Corporate HR and Line HR, we bring process design expertise coupled with rigorous execution experience.

Experience in Organization Design: PeopleWiz Consulting specializes in Organization design as a unique offering. Our consultants have gained global experience in managing business transformation through introduction of renewed organization design.

Research Capability: To ensure that our clients benefit from the latest global trends in people management, we have a dedicated research team headed by a Research Scholar from Case Western Reserve University. We maintain a repository of modern operating models applicable in various sectors for providing reference to our design recommendations. For carrying out primary research in the industry, our team of analysts in equipped with the latest data collection and analysis techniques.

Fascinating article from @theatlantic! Reading with an OD lens a number of tings pop out at me:

- Idea generation: They use the POP (purpose, outcome, process) formula! “ “First, it must address a huge problem; second, it must propose a radical solution; third, it must employ a relatively feasible technology.“

- Creating and nurturing an intentional organizational culture facilitates the mission: “Psychological safety. I initially winced when I heard the term, which sounded like New Age fluff. But it turns out to be an important element of X’s culture, the engineering of which has been nearly as deliberate as that of, say, Loon’s balloons.”

- Structuring your rewards so that they encourage behavior that you want to see more of:  “Because the latter possibility is high, the company has also created financial rewards for team members who shut down projects that are likely to fail.“