Building the Right Organizational Structures to Execute your Strategy

Organizational design is how people and work are organized to carry out an organization’s
strategy and achieve it’s goals. Organizations operate as whole systems - when adjusting the
structures and accountabilities we must consider the realignment of the other dimensions of the
Operating Model. It’s not only about creating structure charts, but also about creating a map or
blueprint on how each part of the organizational unit will work together to deliver business
outcomes. The structure exists merely to house the work that needs to be done in an
organization to enable delivery of it’s strategy.

Changing an organization structure not only impacts people, but also impacts the informal
organization structure. In our approach we consider other options prior to considering changing
the structure, such as, authorities, decision processes, linking mechanisms, job descriptions,
accountabilities, controls, process and systems, behaviours, rewards, etc.

We have a tried and tested methodology that is scalable for large and / or small organizations
that builds healthy, robust, and sustainable organizations. The step-by-step process
successfully shifts any organizational design project from inception to completion in a short
period of time. During this process, we will build in-house capabilities and practitioners who will
have a solid understanding of a proven organizational design methodology. This allows in-
house practitioners to continually evaluate their organizations, ensuring they are fit for purpose
for the current and future challenges.

Working with many international and country specific organizations around the world, we’ve
helped them achieve their strategic goals through building effective organizational structures.

The methodology used provides a collaborative, simple eight-step process for designing and
implementing changes to the organization set-up. This framework can be applied at all levels of
the organization. At each step there are considerations for how we engage with employees and
other key stakeholders (‘Manage People’). In each of the steps we use a variety of tools and
techniques that give a holistic perspective on how the organization is performing. Our toolkit is
scalable, it is valid for large scale complex redesigns through to simple team-based organization
design. The approach includes some of the following elements:

• Diagnose the current reality for “As Is” organization prior to engaging in any redesign activities. Establish a clear baseline for the current hard (structure, roles, accountabilities, locations, reporting lines, costs..) and soft (people, skills, ways of working) elements of as-is organization.

• Determine what strong performance looks like (what is the aspired impact). This includes determining the critical capabilities of the organizational unit to deliver against its aspiration.

• Analyse the core activities of the current and/or intended activities that will be performed by the ‘to be’ organization, including decisions, how information/ communication flows and how delivery partnerships will work.

• Create the operating model, which is a visual, abstract representation of the core components of an organization and the relationships and flows of information / work between these and how they work together to deliver value to the business and customers.

• Focus on developing the structures and roles that will be required to bring the organization to life.

• Determine the most efficient ways of working, how we work together, behaviours and mindsets that are needed for the new organizational setup to work. Test the organizational design through multiple comprehensive scenario analysis.

• Managing the transition is a pivotal step-we develop a robust project plan for the implementation of the new design to drive through the changes that are required, and to bring people along on the journey (change management plan).