Like many organisations intent on using new (digital) technologies to improve business performance, we've got a strapline running that 'Transformation is a team sport'. The 'rules' of the sport include three that are particularly relevant to organisation design:
1. Working across silos: 'knowing that your customers care less about the different lines-of-business within your company; they simply care about a consistent user experience'. To get to this means structure, systems, process and measurement changes, not to mention associated cultural changes.
2. Leadership evolving to accompany transformation: this can be a stretch when leaders see nothing as 'broken', but have yet to be convinced that what they do see is anachronistic. To help leaders evolve means steering a careful course that avoids the sensitivities that something is 'wrong' instead offering a low risk suggestion that opportunities are being missed. It requires sets of subtle approaches and not a big bang transformation approach.
3. Recognising that 'business transformation is not just about use of mobile, social, cloud and analytics solutions, but also about the entire ecosystem of connections (systems and people), starting with employees'. This means involving employees in the transformation work a 'movement not mandate' approach that is counter-cultural in many organisations.
During the week I was working with a group discussing how we could act on the strapline and three questions each related to one of the rules above arose: