21 May Organisation Design and Development as a strategic weapon

In our OD Café on Wednesday 22^nd May we will be talking about strategy in “monuments and mobiles”. Monuments are our metaphor for massive firms, and mobiles are the smaller organisations. We will share a framework we are developing that explores the strategic options facing various leadership levels in various layers of strategic complexity. This is not just an excuse to create a new 2 x 2 (although we have) – rather it is part of our search for more useful strategic skillsets in current organisational conditions. 

In previous articles we have made the connection between strategy and leadership, arguing that some sort of strategy is a pre-condition for the idea of leadership. When we consider the operational context facing many of our clients, we wonder whether grand strategy classes need to be complemented by grand (and not so grand) design classes. Our argument is that most organisational leaders will rarely (if ever) have an opportunity to execute grand strategy – but are still being asked to lead. To where or what must they lead?

We think that the organisational design skillset may be more important than grand strategy for most organisational leaders. For those who are not familiar with organisation design, it is worth remembering the adage (coined by Chandler in 1962 that “structure follows strategy”. We believe that every grand strategy changes structure, and even tactical strategy changes structure in some or other way.

Without attempting to explain all organisational design in one paragraph, allow us to quickly touch on a few aspects that (when aligned) deliver competitive advantage. Organisation design and development skills include goal setting, process-design (including performance management and enablement processes), capability-building, systems selection and implementation, role-design, job-design, team building, cadence-setting, information flow analysis, meeting design, spatial design, relationship-building, network-expansion – to name a few key aspects of organisation design and development.

As the external environment shifts, the grand strategy may hold but the tactical must adapt – and that adaptation is best learned through the lens of organisation design and development. Organisation design and development asks, “what is the organisation, what does it need to be, and how might it best be configured to meet its purpose?” Organisational configuration and reconfiguration include all aspects of what we think of as the whole organisation and (also) includes the various parts that make up the organisation. If we have leaders at all levels, most of our leaders are leading parts, not the whole.

We wonder whether a significant addition to the general strategy curriculum might be “strategic leadership as the execution of agile organisational design through teams.” The schools of organisational design and development need greater democratisation as “leadership” moves to all levels of the organisation. The grand strategy may hold, but the body of the organisation needs to adapt intelligently and purposefully. Do leaders within the organisation need less “grand strategy” and more “grand design” skills? Please join us on 22^nd May and weigh in on the subject. We would love to hear from you.