How many times in total, during your career, has the organisation around you changed? The reporting lines, departmental names? How many times has your organisation moved into functional, to matrix and then back again, talked about project organisation design possibility? How many times has your team become bigger, smaller, flat or self-guiding? How many times has the tribe structure in your tech team changed? How many times has your title or your responsibilities changed? In other words – how many times have you been part of an organisational re-design or organisational change?
Few weeks ago I found myself doing yet another organisation change. We needed to re-design the organisation model to enable future growth in coming years. The Q&A for our teams in regards to what was changing and what was not was fairly easy to do ; the changes were small and I had a great team doing it with me. But as the announcement of the re-alignment of reporting lines and functional restructuring had been done, I started to think how many similar ones had I been leading or been part of throughout the years.
At the time I got to 30 I stopped counting. And no, I am not THAT old. The reality is, regardless of the cliché that it is, change is the only constant. I’ve been part of many large organisations and growth companies and that somewhat explains the big amount of organisational change I’ve been part of during the years – after all, especially in the growth companies, the long-term success needs continues improvement.
Changing the organisation model – why do we bother?
Quite simply, to be able to achieve the company goals long-term and in sustainable way. The strategy, vision and mission are the ones that should determine what is the best possible organisational structure to each team and each company. One size fits all? Definitely not. How we design the organisation should always reflect to what it is that we want to achieve in the long-run. So to put it simply, any organisational structure re-design for future goals should be done now. If the strategy, goals and targets change next year, we need to start to get the teams ready for it today! The decisions what the future will look like are made today, not tomorrow. So effectively, that is what organisational re-design enables; long-term success.
I am joyful that this time I am not doing a reactive organisational re-modelling. Reactive organisational changes that many companies were forced to do during the pandemic are the worst kind. Pandemic for many was exceptional, but there is a strong evidence that when business starts to decline, mitigating actions should be done immediately. However, sometimes the reaction time is too slow. The slow reaction time is especially typical in organisations that are not equip nor used to evolving and changing. It is a bit of egg and chicken situation – in order to avoid reactive changes a company needs to have a strong change readiness and be prepared, accustomed to continued improvement actions. In other words, doing organisation changes to react or mitigate the outside environment or market changes when needed is done better, quicker and more successfully if the company and its people are accustomed to doing proactive changes alike during the times when there is no outside push or pressure for change. It is the reactive change that can take too long and thus ends up being a down-sizing activity. Those are the organizational changes that are the worst kind – that is why the ability to continuously change, continuously improve is at the core of organisational but also individual success.
What organisation model is the best?
Deciding on the best possible organisational model for a company is sometimes obvious but often not.
Organisational design has evolved plenty since my early years in HR – self-guiding, learning organisations, project and team or tribe organisation models have been the newest additions, but most often many organisations still fall under one of the 4 traditional structures ; functional, divisional, hierarchical or matrix structures. At times, in some companies, there is a mix of two or more and depending on the type of the business it can work well, however, without a doubt, a mix of many has a greater danger in pushing the company to operate in silos. Operating in separate silos that do not support each other is always a waste, not tapping on the full potential that a unified processes enables. Having a mix of models also increases the costs of overheads and cost of operations of the supporting functions – financial reporting and talent management solutions for example need to be catered for many different models.
The reality is that it is a very rare occasion that an organisational design is done fully without any constraints of history or expectations or subjective opinions leading the re-modeling. Most senior leaders have experience of more than one organisational design and thus bring with them preferences of how a company should in their opinion be aligned to achieve the company goals. Even in the start-up world, a full-scale, complete organizational re-design is very rare. Often times, the leaders of the start-ups do not consciously decide on one model but rather evolve into something as the business grows. Making a conscious, full scale shift to a completely new, innovative and history free organisation model needs a large investment, massive leadership development, change administration process and a leadership team that is willing to take huge risks.
So what is your current number?
So tell me, how many organisational re-design changes have you been part of? How many do you think you will be part of before retiring? My guess is many and then more.
I stopped counting mine at 30 and started wondering instead how many more. Is this the last organisational re-design and change I am enabling as a HR leader? I certainly hope not! Continuous improvement is what keeps businesses in business and continuous learning is what keeps us people going.
Lot of love, Pirki – pirki@vireadvisors.ai
