Organisational Transformation Archives | Metalogue | Organisation Design Consultants

Starting your Re-design Process? Ask the Audience!

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.

Designing with users – are you flushed with success or going down the pan?

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.

Culture change – lessons from the field

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.

What’s the story of Orgwith?

"I know you can do organization re-design in face-to-face workshops but our team is locked down on two sides of the Atlantic and we’re in a hurry. Can you still help us with this?" Gulp…Keep calm. In the few seconds we have to answer, the following thoughts go through our heads...

“We’re having an organization design, and you’re invited!”

Our house parties are always difficult to plan for. I'm not that keen on parties but my partner is. When backed into a corner I sometimes foolishly agree to a party... but then there are the tricky questions of how many people do we want to come and who should be on the list.

Thinking about restructuring?

It is by no means business as usual for anyone during this crisis period. While the impact varies from individual to individual, we are all living with less certainty, often more anxiety, and questioning some of the taken for granted in our lives.

Starting an organisation re-structure? 10 ways to get it right.

It is still by no means business as usual. While the impact of the pandemic has varied from individual to individual, we are all living with less certainty, often more anxiety and questioning some of the taken for granted in our lives.

How do we find new ways to make sense of Organisational Culture?

Finding new possibilities for how to enable cultural change and transformation. In our last blog, we talked about applying “a liberal dose of science and an equal measure of art” when exploring organisational culture and change. As practitioners, one frame we find helpful comes from John Heron and Peter Reason (2008), who talk about there being 4 “ways of knowing”:

What words should we use?

In our work with culture and transformation, we often talk about the importance of narrative and metaphor. In fact we wrote a report about this just recently. So it’s always pleasing when what we say is illustrated by others – in this case by Greta Thunberg in particular. If you managed to miss her speech to the UK parliament here it is.

Designing organisations and creating culture – two sides of the same coin

As part of our research into the practice of designing organisations, we spoke to leaders and practitioners about their experience and reflections on organisation design projects. Most of them acknowledged that, with the benefit of hindsight, they had not given sufficient attention to how changes would be brought to life.

From organisation design to designing

Throughout 2020, we conducted an action research project with our clients into the practice of designing organisations. One observation we made is that most organisations are in a constant process of redesigning themselves as they adapt to ever-increasing levels of uncertainty and complexity. Because of this, organisations are becoming more fluid and structures more transitory.

Is Cultural Change really that controllable?

We have been working in and around organisations long enough to have noticed a cyclical obsession with changing culture as a panacea for transformation and renewal. But is it helpful to describe this kind of change as if it is something we can master by applying some kind of cause and effect approach?

Organisation Transformation Research: ‘Fateful Framings’

Over the past year, we have been researching the practice of transformation in organisations. A brief summary of our findings follows. If you would like to read our findings in more depth, then you can download a copy of the report by clicking on the link at the end of this blog.

Organisational Transformation: are you a leader walking backwards into the future?

The “T” word is everywhere – it’s hard to find an organisation that isn’t undergoing some kind of transformation. At an event last week to launch our Metalogue research on the subject, one group worked on the question “How do we help leaders hold their nerve during transformation.”

Putting our insights to good use, our bite-sized blogs give leaders our latest thinking on strategy, organisation design, executive team development and culture change as well as other musings.