Organization Design: My Consulting Practice By Becky Spears

My practice began its most significant evolution in 2002, when I attended a USC Center for Effective Organiations (CEO) workshop. Although I had previously completed an OD masters from USF, and had consulted with executives on organization design prior to this workshop, I had not yet led a team based design initiative and certainly not with the rigor and effectiveness of my practice today.

After that workshop I had a vision of how to approach this work differently, and an opportunity was right in front of me. My client, the CIO, was planning another organization change. Each previous change had moved the organization toward the transformation he was seeking, but each had also fallen far short. Armed with my new vision of what could be, I set my fear of failure aside, took a deep breath, and met with him to propose a different approach. The resultant engagement far exceeded expectations and began my serious practice in Organization Design.

In this post I'll share my current practice, using a model I initially developed for sharing with coworkers. Today this model is the framework for my sessions as adjunct faculty for the USC Strategic Organization Design Workshop.

The Model

It seems important to start by stating a few things that this model is not.

• It is not an organization design model,
  although organization design theory & concepts are the basis for the work.
• Also it is not a consulting model,
  even though it includes professional consulting practices.
• And, further, it is not a change management model,
  yet following this model is a first step in effective management of the complex changes associated with redesign.

So, here's the model. 

Contracting and Consulting is the beginning and continues throughout the engagement.

Assessments are vital for providing insight into issues and opportunities and then aligning the team as some commonality emerges.

Learning is not a step, but a plan – selecting learning to include considering (a) team knowledge, and (b) relevance of potential models, tools, and information to the business.

Organization Design Success Criteria is the most critical step. This strategic activity provides the direction that differentiates organization design from simply making a change (such as restructuring, or changing leaders or modifying charters).

Organization Design is the brains of the work and depending on the scope it may take months, during which time many brains are better than a few and benefit from coordination and facilitation.

Implementation (and associated change management) is the heart. This step can also last for months, often begins with the assessment and ideally includes measurement.

Here's more detail about how all these work.

Contracting and Consultation

Contracting is the beginning of my consulting partnership, which isn't complete until the engagement is over. That said, the initial contracting is a finite step with 3 major elements:

• Research and preparation before I meet with the client (understanding the business as much as I can – enables quicker connection during the meeting)
• Contracting (and beginning consulting) with the client (getting the client's ideas, assessing whether or not an organization design engagement makes sense, assessing the client's commitment, scoping the work)
• Determining who will be involved in the design
  (Refer to my post Who's On First, August 2009.)

One particularly difficult part of this is defining desired outcomes for the engagement. In this seemingly simple yet complex activity my goals are:

1. Discover information and understand what the client needs, wants, and expects.
2. Begin or further a mutual coaching agreement with a client who has a lot of power and knowledge about the business, and yet who may not understand my work or what is achievable with my methodology.
3. Crisp and clear outcomes that avoid jargon and can be used for planning and measurement of the engagement.

I've found it useful as I work with the client on potential outcomes to divide them into 3 sets. This mental process helps me organize my ideas. The sets are:

• Certain (even predictable) Outcomes
  I'm confident that the process, scope, and the timeline we're using will yield these results.
• Achievable (even anticipated) Outcomes
  These will most likely occur, but there are risks. Examples are the client's role and commitment, potential political infighting, stability of the industry. It is good to explore potential risks, discuss potential actions we could take, and set expectations about the client's role now.
• Ambitious (yet potential) Outcomes
  While we may achieve these, they typically won't fall within the scope we are considering. While it may feel uncomfortable to talk about this now, there will not be a better time. If some of these are critical to the client, the engagement may need redesign. If these are lesser outcomes, then the client's expectations are aligned with mine and success is more likely.

For further information about contracting, refer to Peter Block's Flawless Consulting work, which was particularly helpful to me when I was starting consulting work, and is still a good reference.

Assessment:
Identifying & Understanding Business Performance Needs

The assessment methodology that I use is a subset of assessments in general:

• I conduct interviews – critical to me because I'm meeting and learning about the people in the business. I talk with everyone who will be working on the design, and often with other stakeholders.
• When I'm creating the questions, I start with some that seem obvious from what I've learned about the business and people, then review these against the star model to make sure I'm not missing a vital factor.
  
  
• My report is theme based, as I'm seeking information about key business performance needs, which people may discuss in response to different questions. My most successful interviews are robust discussions.

• For the client, I always preview the report well before the session – part of our partnership and enabling his/her performance.
• For the team, I distribute the report near the beginning of the organization design criteria session, setting aside time for them to read. It keeps them all on the same page in terms of this important content.

Learning:
Matching Theory and Tools to Capabilities and Goals

I look for the best match between:

• what is needed to effectively perform the design work
  
  
• what the team can absorb (related to how much they know and don't know, and their appetite for this type of learning)

I've found it important to find ways to introduce fewer tools when the audience is less sophisticated about organization design. While I think the theory and tools are important, using more than the audience can handle is not effective.

Organization Design Success Criteria:
Driving Design Criteria Creation

The creation and focus on relevant criteria distinguishes organization design from other organization change activities, notably restructuring, and it aids in change management by enabling a solid communications strategy and plan.

Accurate, well-thought and well-formed criteria:

• Provides design direction
• Disables some of the political noise and emotions present in any group
  
• Provides rigor for testing during both design and implementation.
  

During this activity I work closely with the client to help him/her understand their role and to decide on subteam composition. Many clients think independently about which criteria they would select, to test their thinking against the subteam results.

The general process works like this.

1. We divide the design team into 3+ smaller subteams who each work on proposed criteria, which are limited to 5 and must be prioritized.
   
2. The teams come back to the main room and present and discuss their criteria.
3. Then the client works alone to create the final criteria (5, prioritized).
4. The client discusses the final criteria in an interactive session with the design team.
   

This blend of involvement followed by direction works very well.

There is more – ideally two, but minimally one more step:

• If there is a previous organization, we test the criteria by assessing that previous organization's design against the criteria.
  
• I always assign each participant the task of individually creating a top level design based on the criteria. They submit the design with their name on the page. This becomes an input to the design phase, makes sure that no creative ideas are left unsaid, and builds awareness within the team about the difficulty in designing to multiple criteria.

Organization Design:

Driving Design Options

Now the deep level,  difficult work begins. 

We divide the design team into 3+ different subteams. Each subteam creates a design that will be assessed by the other teams, using the design criteria.

Client activities vary during this process. Some float from team to team and observe, but others are concerned that they will inhibit teams and do not.

This process can last a day or a month or even longer, depending on the scope of the design effort, the urgency, and the desired outcomes.

When the teams come back together each team presents their design. The participants from the other teams rate each design before we continue to each new presentation.

After the teams present their designs, most clients prefer to take the session content away for reflection before making a final decision. Yet a few have opted to move forward after only brief reflection. Those few are often motivated by logistics – they brought the team together for this process and they want to take advantage of another full day (or more) to develop more detail related to the chosen design.

Depending on the scope of the change, the client's style, and business factors, the process differs even more-so as the detailed design is developed. Most organizations divide the detailed design among various subteams, using a program manager to oversee the effort. I've seen these detailed final designs take weeks or months before launching the change.

Change Implementation

Implementation of an organization design change that has been created with this process is remarkably smooth (recognizing that a smooth change is an oxymoron).

Often design teams involve many stakeholders as they work on the detail, and almost always the design team communicates periodically with the entire organization.

Some clients have opted to fully inform and involve the organization prior to the launch, while others use the launch to communicate the new direction and expect the details to evolve as part of implementation. Both have been effective – it is important that the solution chosen matches the business realities and the scope of the change.

Even the best, most robust design team will not create a flawless design, and implementation processes need to allow for changes. In addition a check-up survey can be particularly useful, approximately 9 months into the change. These typically show progress and also highlight areas that need attention.

As the engagement ends, I use probing questions to collect feedback that has resulted in constant improvements in my practice.

Summary

Factors that have been the most important for my successful engagements include:

• Starting with realism about commitment (outcomes)
• Using the Star Model as a backbone for assessment
• Ensuring well-developed and prioritized design criteria
• Allowing the group to follow its passion about priorities
• Using re-assessment to drive completion of the remaining work -- graceful persistence!