Disruptive times: How to redesign your organization for high performance

According to the Gallup polling firm, only 13 percent of the global workforce is “highly engaged.” Upwards of half the workforce would not recommend their employer to their peers.

Recent studies all around the world indicates that business executives have made the redesigning and restructuring of their organisations a top priority. The shift in technology, corporate life style and interest has changed what it means to be called a business organisation today. It is not possible to operate a business today the same way it was in the industrial age and be successful.

As organizations become more digital, business leaders face a growing imperative to redesign their organizations to move faster, adapt more quickly, facilitate rapid learning, and embrace the dynamic career demands of their people.

In the past commercial patterns were predictable, so organisations were designed for efficiency and effectiveness. Today commercial patterns is quite unpredictable, rather than just efficiency, organisations must be designed for agility, adaptability and speed so that they can thrive in today’s highly disruptive environment. Being operationally effective today will first of all require an organisation structured for speed, agility and adaptability.

Part of designing for adaptability is structuring a team-centric organisation rather than the traditional hierarchical organisation. The reason is team is a natural way for humans to work. In fact Sociologist Robert Dunbar proved that the optimum number of persons a one can know well and communicate with is 150.

In his book Team of Teams, General Stanley McChrystal describes how the US military’s hierarchical command and control structure hindered operational success during the early stages of the Iraqi war. After watching Al-Qaeda disrupt his army and win battles, McChrystal’s created a solution, He decentralize authority to highly trained and empowered teams and developed a real-time information and operations group to centralize information and provide all teams with real-time, accurate data about war activities everywhere. McChrystal did not change the formal structure of the military. Rather, he created a new structure that allowed for dynamism and flexibility within the overall organizational structure. This new structure enabled officers to quickly move from their administrative positions to mission-oriented projects for a set purpose, knowing that they would once again have a home to return to within the larger organizational structure after the mission was completed.

Hierarchical structure is not suitable for today’s business world. Leading companies are designed as a network of teams. Top companies are built around systems that encourage teams and individuals to meet each other, share information transparently, and move from team to team depending on the issue to be addressed. Different networks can have different specialties, such as innovation or getting to market quickly, but the principle is the same.

Nestlé is a classic example of this principle. A digital information center brings together social network, TV, and news information about all of Nestlé’s food brands around the world to help product businesses see where a brand is succeeding or failing to gain traction. Corporate headquarters in Switzerland serves as a clearinghouse and strategic planning center, distributing information everywhere and empowering the businesses to growFor a company to stay agile, teams must be formed and disbanded quickly. High-performing companies today may build a “digital customer experience” group, select individuals for the team, and ask them to design and build a new product or service in a year or two. Afterward, the team disperses as team members move on to new projects. This ability to move between teams without risk is a critical attribute of today’s high-performing companies.

But while networked organisations promote agility and speed, it also increases the need to coordinate teams and can lead to an overwhelming number of meetings, emails, and communications channels. Cognitive overload can seriously impede productivity. New organizational models also require a new approach to leadership. Leaders of networked teams in agile organizations require skills such as negotiation, resilience, and systems thinking. In some cases, the most experienced leaders and business unit heads may be the wrong people to take charge of digital, agile, networked teams. Effective leaders in a networked environment must have a high degree of network intelligence, getting to know what’s going on throughout their company, throughout their industry, and throughout the customer marketplace.

As networked organizations continue to emerge, new tools are starting to make collaboration easier. Facebook’s Workplace, Slack, Google Team Drive and hundreds of others are helping to facilitate the transition to networks of teams.

 

Brian Reuben

Brian Reuben is a business and leadership consultant @brianoreuben