Organisational Design - Everything is Retrievable
What have we been doing?
Recently we had a workshop on Organisational Design-- which resonated with a lot of innate work the participants have been doing over the course of the programme. Whilst the group have different things they are seeking support with, a common thread is how this relates to their organisational health and sustainability. It also brought up challenges which the participants reflected on. The group reflected on the balance between the people and the organisations they represent.
Naomi Stanford facilitated the workshop and gave lots of advice and assurance to the group around navigating organisational design.
We introduced coaches to the programme, and over the last few weeks they have been working with the organisations taking part. There are five coaches supporting the organisations currently. Meeting with individuals or sub-groups to provide support on their defined organisational challenges-- as well as advising on where organisations taking part are still defining what it is that would best support their organisational health.
We had our first Coaching Group meeting-- convening as a group to share what we're hoping to learn and what we're hoping to support through the Design Lab.
The workshop came at a time where coaches and participants have been having conversations about what kind of support they think they need. The coaches providing a new perspective on this, and forming a trusted relationship with the participants.
We are at a point now where organisations are considering both their current needs around stability-- and hearing about opportunities for thinking about future design.
What have we been learning?
We need to be clear about what we mean by "organisational growth". Asking the question, what do we consider growth?
Growth, in this context, could mean many different things. It could reflect financial growth, audience or customer growth or something else. Importantly, the context in which lots of organisations find themselves doing this is very fluid. It can be difficult to follow a set path when undertaking organisational design. Naomi talked with the group as well, about an extra complexity where technology is now outpacing societies ability to understand it's implications. In this new context, Emerging Infrastructure organisations face added complexity in looking to their organisational futures.
The fluidity of this process can come with positives and negatives. For some, it can bring clarity for organisations before embarking on their journey. For others, organisational design practices can help to make sense of what has gone before and improve their organisational health.
From Naomi, the message was a positive one. Despite its chaotic nature, it is always retrievable for an organisation to go back to their design. It is a process in which teams can and should share their organisational story with one another to be able to think about the future.
Intentionality
Another important message from the workshop centred on "intentionality". When thinking about the fundamentals of an organisations infrastructure, an important place to start is with the purpose of the activities and endeavours that organisation undertakes.
In several of our workshops now-- the facilitators have always stressed the intentionality around thinking through the purpose of designing, or putting into practise the subjects they have presented on. In accessibility and data privacy & safeguarding workshops-- both also reflected on the need to define the terms across an organisational team of what it is they are trying to achieve by doing this.
Strategy amid uncertainty
The group reflected on their previous experience of making strategic decisions about their organisations. This came up when discussing strategy & execution.
Many have been through this process-- but many in the group talked about stages they felt they had "missed". Or what they had not gone through as forensically as they had wished. Most of this was due to time and capacity, the relative size of their organisations. Also, some reflected on working in a natural way through strategic thinking-- which was different to the model which Naomi presented during the talk.
Becoming more sustainable means being strategic about things which they find often out of their control or difficult to predict in the environment around them. They know they're there, it's often the case though that there are competing demands for teams to adequately see these journeys through.
The infrastructural “needs” to be sustainable are many. Our participants can see, even if they're not following outlined methodologies, they are following more innate journeys to reflect on their organisational health. Going back to the aims of the group-- working towards feeling steady and stable (meaning becoming more sustainable organisations), necessitates thinking about doing things differently. The constraints are more often not "gaps" in knowledge, but more contextual challenges around time or clarity of purpose.
Naomi talked about how following the "operating model" shown in the presentation is hard to do in reality. Particularly with those contextual constraints in mind. The group however, fed back in discussion how they felt that had done some elements of this without necessarily realising they were following a conscious process of organisational design.
The model Naomi talked through with the group appears as a logical, or mechanistic approach to organising a mission or group of people. At its heart though, the material from which a good organisational design could be drawn is based on symbols, rituals and routines, and most importantly the stories within an organisation. For example, "what do I like about being in this organisation" is a very important story for teams to talk about-- when following the path to embed a healthy organisational structure.
In this uncertainty, the main message though was not to worry. It's a chaotic process in reality, but it is also retrievable. The group reflected on how you can always go back through this process to support organisational growth and health.
Digital transformation programmes can focus a lot of attention on addressing deficits where participants may be “consciously unskilled” in digital ways of working; over the course of the workshop I heard more examples of where the group are more "skilled” than perhaps they realise in navigating this complexity. It helped us to reflect on the space and means through which we provide support to Emerging Infrastructure organisations in future.
Experimentation
As with other workshops, the importance of experimentation emerged as a necessity for working within organisations and contextual constraints.
Similar to other workshops as well, the group talked about and were shown through the workshop the importance of experimentation. Especially as there are always "unknowns". Given the chaotic nature of wrestling back a shared perspective on organisational futures, the process Naomi described involved stages such as design, assessment, transition and review. A process intended to support safely making changes to the infrastructure within an organisation.
Iterative loops of assessment, review and implementation paralleled with the exploration in the Human Learning Systems workshops. Some in the group, through their coaching interactions have discussed this already, and are seeking advice on how they can "experiment" with their goals or the challenges they have brought into the Lab.
This feels like a change from earlier interactions within the programme. At times, the group discussed in different forums how they needed support to fix immediate problems. In recent interactions the focus has also included how to understand and respond differently to them.
It's also important to note that many in the group identified with the steps outlined in exploring org design. From a Lab perspective, when facilitating a programme like this, it feels important to reflect on being aware of where participants may be unconsciously skilled. As well as providing content that addresses the areas where participants feel they are more "consciously unskilled".
Roles or People First?
One of the areas where there was a clearer distinction between the methodology Naomi introduced on organisational design and the group's instincts and experience on this, was around whether to design an organisation around the people or the infrastructure.
Traditionally and culturally, many in the group felt that they were more people-led in their thinking around organisational design. The rebuttal to designing around people was the danger of them leaving-- and how designing around them was a danger to organisational health.
Starting organisational charts with roles, meant that you could fit the right person into it. Yet, it's a risk either way-- as organisations transition or grow, there is often pressure for a leader or organisation to fulfil the “wishes and needs” of those people growing with the organisation.
One thing we learnt from this discussion is that it's a tricky place for a leader to be in. The message here was "don't do it yourself-- do it with people”. Any thinking or decisions around organisational design centred on allowing a team to share their stories.
Whilst talking through organisation design is a really useful subject to explore from an organisational health perspective. It's clear that this is a sensitive and challenging area for an Emerging Infrastructure organisation to explore. As it involves at times making tough decisions about people, or holding difficult conversations between the people they work with.
An upside though, is that going through this process can often unearth new skills within existing teams that weren't visible before. There are ways in which the people can grow as the organisation does.
At the end of the workshop, I reflected that support for organisations involves a similar balance. Supporting through providing resource for making strategic decisions. But also, the space for feeling resilient enough to hold the impact of those strategic decisions.
Culturally, many of the staff in these smaller infrastructure organisations "grow up" with the organisation itself. Having to put the roles first might make sense, but can be a difficult decision to undertake for an Emerging Infrastructure leader.
What would we do differently?
We've had, in the workshop and in other forums, lots of talk about conversations & communications over the last few weeks. A way to frame this was shared in the workshop.
Thinking about how different facets of a programme, an organisation or system interface with one another is vital to the overall health and success of that system.
Where there are challenges, it gives confidence that as with org design, you can always revisit this, and it is a retrievable element. Reflecting on the communication needs across the programme is something we want to build in more for the second half of the programme to ensure the different parts of the programme feel connected to one another. In some regards, it’s something we might learn more about and react to consistently over the course of the programme. As with organisational design, the feeling was that these processes are continuous ones, and are vulnerable to failure if only ever done in isolation and not revisited.
One way we're already doing this is taking the various channels for communication and connection and centralising it on one Notion programme page.
The aim of moving resources, updates to this page is to support participants, coaches and others to find what they need from the programme easily and know what's coming up on the programme.
In the Lab we've also talked about complexity in different facets of infrastructure development and growth. Also, reflecting on the potential "unintended consequences" of introducing new technology or processes into an organisation. Some of these platforms have positives to help us overcome some of the challenges of running a virtual Design Lab-- others may be getting in the way of effective communication across the group.
"When it's a relatively small organisation, some of these considerations [Organisational Design] might not be explicit but have probably been covered" [Lab Participant]
It's important again to remember, as Naomi has said, that most processes are retrievable, and we or the organisations shouldn't get too dispirited if they learn something new from experience and realise they could have followed a methodology such as organisational design.
Giving ourselves more permission to acknowledge that we can retrieve and learn from experience to move forward is a mindset that supports working towards sustainability.
A lot of reactions to elements of the workshop involved that visible intake of breath where there is a perception of having done something wrong-- however, this can override the attention that should be paid to what has been done right. Looking at both, and building on both elements contributes to the overall goal of working towards more sustainable organisational health.
What are we doing next?
In the run up to Christmas we will be continuing the theme of introducing different digital ways of working or design/user centred thinking which the organisations can take back into their coaching/mentoring activities to try out.
We will also be convening as a "coaching group" to reflect on what is being learnt around supporting Emerging Infrastructure organisations. This will be our first "experiment" and review of how it's gone-- as well as what we can improve.
The mantra of the coaching group for the first series of interactions has been to "see how it goes", and then review the process together and share our learning from an overall perspective on the coaching process.
We're looking forward to sharing what we're learning from coaching interactions.
On Organisational Design
In the workshop and after-- Naomi shared a few resources which were interesting to read through and think about in relation to Emerging Infrastructure.
Have a look here: