This week I got these questions:
- What are you noticing about the practice of organization design recently? What are the implications?
- How would you best design a corporate centre for a new organisation which doesn't have 100% clarity on what its delivery arms will be specifically doing yet?
I'd already given a bit of thought to the question 'What am I noticing about the practice of organisation design?' in prep for a conversation over the weekend with Organization Design Forum colleagues on it and their views both changed and added to mine. I'm noticing:
a) An accelerating desire to learn about organisation design i.e. there seems to be recognition that it's more than re-jigging the traditional organisation chart. I mentioned in an earlier blog that Deloitte in its Human Capital Trends 2016 has organisation design as its top trend. (But think through why you want to follow a trend). People are looking for skilled organisation designers. I first started facilitating organisation design programmes for the CIPD in 2007. That year we ran 1 course and it was undersubscribed. When I stopped teaching it in 2014 there were 5 or 6 courses running per year, all fully-subscribed. That may not count as evidence of accelerating interest in the topic but it is an indicator.