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.
"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...
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.
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”:
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.
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.
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.
Organisation 'transformation' has become somewhat of a leitmotif. Increasingly, our clients are using the word 'transformation' when they talk about planned or ongoing change efforts. We’ve become curious about what they actually mean and are doing.
Bernard Cornwell’s 1981 novel, Sharpe’s Eagle, follows the exploits of Lieutenant Richard Sharpe in a campaign on the Iberian peninsula during the Napoleonic wars. The Sharpe novels were then adapted for UK channel ITV in the early 1990s, with British actor Sean Bean taking the lead role of Richard Sharpe. He’s the one in the middle.
)