Why Restructuring Fails Without Lateral Connections — And 12 Ways to Build Them
Organization fabric needs both vertical and lateral threads. This post offers both structural and social options for the lateral connections.
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Cost-Cutting Without Losing Critical Capability: The RADASC Framework
I don’t eat meat, having developed a sense that “I shouldn’t” as a spotty teenager with an emerging and sometimes confused sense of ethics and justice. 40 years later I am an avid questioner...
From Intention to “In-Tension”. Report on First Session of “Bringing Missions to Life: A Co-Inquiry”
This report summarises an event convened to help sensemaking on emerging thinking and practice on applying the Missions Leadership concept in practice.
Dancing in the triangle: consulting relationships in complex transformation and organisational development projects
Complex organisation development projects that require strategic, structural and cultural change in large systems usually involve internal staff teams working with external consultants. The success of the work rests upon the internal and external consulting teams working together to establish a helping relationship with the client system. In this article we explore some of the challenges inherent in the internal- external partnership, and ways in which they can be set up to be successful.
Hybrid Working in Matrix Organisations: Why It’s So Hard and How to Make It Work
In the post covid era the world of work continues to evolve, leaving leaders and managers asking themselves, and each other, how to achieve organisational goals whilst getting the best out of – and doing the best for – their employees.
Mission-Oriented Leadership: How to Organise for Grand Challenges and Avoid the Common Pitfalls
What does it take to organize for purpose-driven, mission-focused “grand challenges”? This question arose during our research on participative strategy. In this article, we draw on our experience working with large-scale systems change and complex organisational design to illuminate the challenges of implementing Mission Leadership.
How to Facilitate Better Meetings and Workshops: The Five-Stage Framework That Actually Works
Conversations that flow well typically move through five key stages. This blog shares some thoughts on these stages for those who regularly facilitate conversations.
Snookered again? ‘Game playing’ in Transformation and Change Consulting
In change processes, ‘gamesʼ are often played between issue holders who have some authority in the client system (‘clientsʼ), ‘helpersʼ (often internal or external consultants or staff representatives such as HR or Strategy) and those affected by changes. Games can only be played out if all parties are complicit at some level. The upshot of game playing is that one or all parties find themselves set up to fail in their attempts to bring about a desired change. Games either come to a healthy, or somewhat healthy, resolution or end in an unhealthy manner. Snookered again....
Why HR and OD Leaders Get Sidelined in Strategy and Organisation Design — And How to Change That
Beginning in June 2023, we ran a series of sessions to investigate the separation between ‘suits’ (strategy and organisation design) and ‘cardigans’ (organisation development and change). What are the implications of this separation for HR professionals? These leaders all too often get relegated to doing the three Cs: comms, culture and clearing up.
Optimal Team Size: What the Research Says and How to Apply It to Your Organisation
Over the years we have been asked to coach leadership teams that are not performing or living up to their potential. It’s not uncommon to find that the team is simply too large. What is required is not (just) team coaching but team design. But …. how small is too small and how big is too big? Well, it depends! An annoying answer we know, but it happens to be true in this case. We thought it would be helpful in this post to say more than “it depends”, and to offer practitioners a way of thinking about a possible response
Bring the “suits” and “cardigans” together from the start…
Have you ever looked at what was going on in your organisation and thought it just wasn’t working well enough? Performance not where it needs to be, targets not met, staff survey results getting worse,...
Matrix Organisation Design: 7 Questions Every Leader Must Answer Before Going Live
Designing a project matrix organization requires clarity and agreement on key management roles. This post offers 7 questions to help develop clarity and agreement.
Starting an Organisation Redesign? Here’s Who to Interview, What to Ask and Why It Matters
So, you've decided to embark on an organisation re-design – what next? Well, you are going to need to decide on a design team to create a design, and they will need data, input and perspectives to work with. So you although you, like many of our clients, might like to jump straight to the answer, you will need an inquiry/discovery process, which involves asking people for their perspectives and input into the current state and what could be improved. In this blog we explain why you need to interview people, who and how many to speak to, and what you should ask them.
How did we get back here, again?
The anthropologist Gregory Bateson’s phrase “the difference that makes a difference” has a powerful and intuitive resonance. He was talking about how a ‘difference’ can represent information that helps us see a situation from a different angle. This can reveal new possibilities for understanding or acting. Bateson’s idea draws attention to how in a complex system a small change or shift can have a ripple effect, bringing about other shifts and changes. Even subtle differences or changes can lead to profound shifts.
Thinking partners and the art of micro-interventions
As we all continue to come to terms with ‘hybrid’ ways of working, it inevitably means that we should adapt the way we enable transformation and change in organisational life. Getting colleagues – who have become even more dispersed and time poor - to collaborate across role and departmental boundaries has become even more challenging. In our experience, it has profound implications too for the role of consultants.
Can you NOT communicate?
I recently re-read Paul Watzlawick’s classic book Pragmatics of Human Communication. For those of you who don’t know his work, many of his ideas have influenced paradoxical theories of change and family systems theory. In the book he outlines a number of principles of human communication. We can argue that much of what happens in organisations is communication. Underneath the labels such of ‘leadership’, ‘strategy’, ‘change’, ‘structure’, ‘culture’ are in fact patterns of communication.
Why Co-Design With Users Is the Key to Sustainable Organisational Change
It started with Bella. Bella cleans the toilets and public areas in a hotel that is undergoing prolonged refurbishment and where I was fortunate to stay recently.
Leading Strategic Change When People Are Resistant: How to Work With Ambivalence Rather Than Against It
We were witnessing a scenario where an executive team had decided on a change of strategic direction that would affect every division. For many it meant a change of priorities and a need to reset budgets. What needed to happen, and the key communication messages were summarised before the meeting closed.
The Most Common Organisation Design Mistakes Leaders Make — And How to Avoid Them
Many of us have experienced organisation re-design processes that have destroyed trust and value in the organisations in which we work (some of us have even been responsible for them). When things go wrong, it’s often down to misguided assumptions about what’s needed.
What Makes Senior Leadership Teams Effective? Insights From Our Research Into Executive Team Experience
We all have opinions about our leaders. Be it on what they are doing effectively, ineffectively, or not doing at all. Some of these views are based on first-hand experience and thought-through judgements whilst others reflect projections, prejudices, or unrealistic ideals.
Why Culture Change Programmes Fail: Research-Based Lessons From Leaders and OD Practitioners
Most of our clients are engaged in attempts to develop or change their culture in some way, shape or form. They tend however to tell us they find such initiatives to be tricky, demanding and, ultimately, disappointing. To understand why this is the case, we have been inquiring with leaders and OD practitioners into their experience of trying to change culture.
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