Change, transformation, tools, levers and systems
I'm wondering whether the phrase '70% of change efforts fail' is down to not knowing how to get from a design to an implementation – so things stall at the point of a detailed, tested concept design....
View ArticleAccountability: is it a design concern?
We've had several discussions this week on 'single point accountability'. This sounds straightforward as a concept. Like financial accounting, 'accountability is about giving a reckoning of the actions...
View ArticleA busman's holiday
We went walking in the Scottish Highlands last week. The idea was to take a holiday: to get away from organization design stuff, book writing, work pre-occupations, and all the normal business as usual...
View ArticleSkateboards and speed bumps
Roughly a year ago, I facilitated a session on designing organisational culture. One of the slides I showed suggested that there are various methods and tools that aid culture change. I gave some...
View ArticleMorals and ethics in design
My daughter is expecting a baby. I remember when I was expecting her, I was very taken with a Louis MacNeice poem Prayer Before Birth. I read it again last week. The stanzaI am not yet born; O fill...
View ArticleEmpowering: is it a control device?
Someone sent me a note asking 'I wonder if you are interested in writing a blog for the resource pack for the Culture tool? It is missing a few stories about how others 'do things'. I thought of you...
View ArticleAlgorithmic organization design: let's not be greedy
This week I started reading Aurora, a sci-fi novel by Kim Stanley Robinson. I hadn't read anything he'd written before but I got intrigued when I read an interview with him in which he was talking...
View ArticleDigital ecosystems – any thoughts?
Jim sent me an email last week saying: 'I am doing a webinar on ecosystems and with all the hoopla on digital ecosystems in HBR recently I think there is a possible org design perspective on this.'He...
View ArticleDesigning for emergence
I got a request last week 'to explore developing and delivering a Business Change function: how it might be structured, and its milestones and deliverables'. It came at the same point as the question,...
View ArticleDesigning with stories
Story telling seemed to be the natural topic for this week's blog. Why?First, because today (6 August) I've started a one-week residential creative writing course focused on short stories. It's got a...
View ArticleObserving and sense making
We were set a writing task last week to go out and observe, not participate, and then develop a short story from the observation. (I was on a creative writing course). That's a fairly open-ended task...
View ArticleLeading design work
I'm writing the final chapter of my forthcoming book Organization Design: a practitioner's guide. I've got to the bit on business leaders and their role in design work, which I think calls on some...
View ArticleWhile cycling ...
Cycling the Fakenham 50k on Sunday gave me thinking time to work on the rough outline of a blog piece on programme management. Why that topic? Because last week I found myself re-immersed in the world...
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