My favorite re-org tool

by

I do a fair number of reorganizations, usually in the IT or technology organization space, and many of my other projects involve some level of organizational design. The stories I hear about why the organization is designed the way it is, which are often told apologetically, are usually amusing and rarely surprising (anymore). And of course some of the real stories take a couple of weeks to come to the surface. You’ve probably heard a few of them in your halls: “The marketing business unit refuses to work with anyone but Mike so we have one decentralized application development group that he runs. They don’t really report into IT which is fine since the CMO and the CIO don’t speak anyway.” And “Well, what really happened is that Jen threatened to quit so we promoted her to VP and gave her the rest of Chad’s organization.” Or “Yeah, about Dmitri. He doesn’t have a team because no one will work for him, or any clients because no one will work with him, but he knows so much about the technology we went ahead and made him CTO.” Most organizations don’t have all these situations, but almost all have one or two that just make you go “hmmm”.

The leadership often knows how ridiculous these situations are but not what to do about it. Or sometimes they know exactly what the right answer is but do not have the political power or will to make the transition. That’s where my favorite re-org tool comes in …

It goes something like this: First, divert attention. Trying to engage in conversation related to the stories above, while sometimes entertaining, is not the fastest way to the appropriate outcome. Next, infuse some good, old-fashioned logic, a medicine most do not want to swallow. Finally, sit back, facilitate a little and watch the magic happen. Consulting witchcraft? Not really, it is actually quite simple intellectually, just takes a little thought and a bit of perseverance to pull off. The secret sauce is to transition thinking from organizational structure to a process model (or value streams, or delivery model, or many other names, but something that explains what the organization does on one page). I’ve seen some organizations go “ah-hah” as soon as they create the model. The rest is a breeze. Some fight through the assessment, but once they agree to the current state issues related to that delivery model, they have to be intellectually honest about what to do about it. And some hold on till the bitter end, fighting issue after issue through the new organization design. But this same model helps facilitate that issue resolution process. The key is to get organizations out of their silo’d thinking and story-telling. Over and over again, I’ve seen the process model approach turn organizations 180 degrees from political to productive.

READ MORE

The Magic of Mortals

The Magic of Mortals

Daily we wake up to new developments in automation, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Machine Learning (ML). Across sectors and industries, automated solutions prove highly successful in surpassing the capacity of the human brain for certain tasks, improving...

read more
Leveling Up: How to Hone Your Skills at Home

Leveling Up: How to Hone Your Skills at Home

Leaders have been trying to crack the code on talent development for years. Recent studies have shown, however, that strength-focused leadership [read: intentionally elevating the qualities that already come naturally to us] is the clear winner for developing talent...

read more
Fake Case Study: Jack of all trades vs. Master of One

Fake Case Study: Jack of all trades vs. Master of One

  Listen to any earnings call or executive presentation and you will likely hear the terms “top line” and “bottom line.” These are words used to describe a business’s performance. According to Investopedia, the words are defined as follows: Top line refers to the...

read more
Your Personality Is Showing

Your Personality Is Showing

There I was, minding my own business one evening, digging into my organization's SEO performance (as one does), when I came across something interesting. Search terms related to "MBTI" — or the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, developed by Katherine Cook Briggs and Isabel...

read more
Lessons From a Change Manager Who Hates Change

Lessons From a Change Manager Who Hates Change

Hello. My name is Monique, and I’m a change manager who hates change.   After years of receiving “consulting therapy” from various mentors, I am now able to say these words out loud and proudly. But for a long time, it felt more like an admission of guilt. I mean, who...

read more
Creativity as a Cure

Creativity as a Cure

The topic of creative solutioning has been front and center these days as we talk more and more about organizational adaptability in the face of dynamic and uncertain times. For example, I recently read about a project that got me thinking about specific priorities...

read more
Thought Ensemble, a Pariveda Company — Why Now?

Thought Ensemble, a Pariveda Company — Why Now?

Big news over here as we close out the year - we have been acquired by Pariveda, a 750-person consulting firm in 12 markets across North America! We are now “Thought Ensemble, a Pariveda Company” and I’ll be serving as the Managing Vice President continuing to lead...

read more
Thought Ensemble Joins Pariveda Solutions!

Thought Ensemble Joins Pariveda Solutions!

Dallas, December 9, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Pariveda, a leader specializing in solving complex technology and business problems, announces the acquisition of Thought Ensemble. With the addition of Thought Ensemble, Pariveda now provides holistic business strategy,...

read more
Thoughts on Colorado’s Equal Pay for Equal Work Act

Thoughts on Colorado’s Equal Pay for Equal Work Act

It was about a year ago that we first started hearing about Colorado’s Equal Pay for Equal Work Act (SB19-085) and I knew it was going to be national news. We’d just gotten past the “Rocky Mountain High” jokes, and our lovely state was trying to break new ground...

read more