Designed to Fail?

Incredible minds have written incredible amounts about Organizational Design. Models are not in short supply:

• Galbraith's Star Model (1960's)
• Weisbord Six Box Model ((1970's)
• Nadeler and Tushman's Congruence Model (early 80's)
• McKinsey's 7S Model (1980's)
• Burke-Litwin Model (1992)

These models generally categorize the required harmony between Purpose, Structure, Reward Systems, Formal and Informal Organization, Culture and Leadership. This is heady stuff and well worth the research and the effort to get it all right. It's a lot to take in and easily overwhelming for a small or mid sized organization. For those in larger organizations, it often feels like senior leadership is changing approach or acronyms on a regular calendar.

Implementing one of these or any OD Model is a huge undertaking and fraught with risk even when done well and carefully. Again, it is a worthy task but often one beyond the scope of a small or mid-sized organization in terms of people, processes and time. So does that beg that OD is for the large and operational excellence the language of small?

I will offer that OD is absolutely critical to all businesses but that you can focus on a threshold, and very simple, model to insure that your operations are designed to be successful. As Oliver Wendell Holmes said, " Seek the simplicity on the other side of complexity." Or as Albert Einstein said, "Make things as simple as possible, but not simpler."

So...the threshold formula for OD:

A = C + I

This equation has to hold true for your organization to be designed to win. Alternatively, you are very much designed to fail.

A - Accountability

What are you asking your Operations or Management Team to be accountable for? Their P&L, Bad Debt Expense, Employee Turnover, Customer Satisfaction? Be careful with this list and be sure they are the things that drive your near and long term success.

C - Control & I - Influence

In short, your Operations or Management Team has to have either direct control or persuasive influence over all of the resources they need to deliver the items for which you have made them accountable. This sounds straight forward, but in my experience it takes a great deal of cataloging and daily cultural focus in order to strike the right balance to leverage their jobs (appropriate span of control), to keep them working where their expertise is best utilized, and to have experts do what they do best to create economies of scale without asking your Team to abdicate responsibility for a critical success input.

An orchestra conductor cannot play all the instruments during a performance but certainly needs to understand them, call on them as needed and ultimately have the influence to replace the pieces that are out of harmony. It's a fine line to maintain true domain experts in all the areas your business that can be leveraged but maintain single points of accountability which is the surest determinate of success.

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