?????? OD110: Dimensions of a Transformation Office ??

Curated resources on Strategy ? Org Design ? Org Development ? Adjacent fields

Starters

1 of 4 / Adam Thompson: Restructures as the equivalent of surgery

Powerful org design and org development analogies in a short post.

”So what's an alternate to surgery?

Physio, massage, nutrition, exercise.

(…) Sometimes surgery is necessary. But check with someone who is not a surgeon before you go through that pain.”

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2 of 4 / Geoff Marlow: Mind your metaphors

Multiple lenses for looking at organizations, along with useful ideas for applied systems thinking in organizational contexts.

”There are four dominant metaphors that bias, colour, and constrain how people tend to see, think, and act in organisational contexts. (…)

1. Organisations as armies — revealed in language such as strategies, reporting lines, command and control, recruitment, headquarters, front line staff, tactics, logistics, etc;
2. Organisations as politics — with notions of power, control, interests, conflicts, policies, political correctness, etc;
3. Organisations as machines — a hugely dominant metaphor for more than a century, leading to often unquestioned axioms such as organisations must be designed, structured, measured, governed, re-engineered, consist of replaceable parts (e.g. humans treated as cogs), and process resources (including humans, hence “HR”) etc;
4. Organisations as teams — with playbooks, coaches, managers, game plans, positions, teamwork, team spirit, etc. (…) by learning to see culture as the prevailing system of mindsets you recognise that culture change is systems change. (…) Shift the mindsets of influential people, and they begin acting and interacting in new ways that, in turn, influence the mindsets, attitudes, and behaviours of others.”

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3 of 4 / John Cutler: Build roundabouts, not intersections

Analogy for the flow of work. What are the roads and the cars, who are the pedestrians, the drivers and the traffic engineers, when coming back to the world of work?

”Vehicles move more slowly in a roundabout (safer), but move more continuously (increased flow).

There are fewer “conflict points”—points where vehicles cross paths.

Drivers have no lights to run which limits high-speed collisions.

When collisions happen they are at slower speeds and have a reduced angle of impact.”

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4 of 4 / Roger Martin: The relevance of management models

Good piece about not blindly using any management model - highlights ours. Useful counter for people who have fallen in love with certain (especially deprecated) models.

”In management education, you are taught tools and the context for using them. In design schools, however, you're taught to create tools that don't exist. (…) The modern business world reveres specialization and quantitative analysis. Peter Drucker once said that there are no marketing problems, tax problems, or accounting problems – just business problems.

(…) it is very important to write down immediately what you think the results of the model are going to be so that when it happens, you have something to reference against. If it is the dominant model – and unless you come up with some awesome argument to explain why it's a bad idea – try it, but predict the results. If it doesn't work for you, try again. If it doesn't work for you again, ask yourself: Is this a good model?”

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Main

Dimensions of a Transformation Office ??

The new How to Create a Transformation That Lasts article from BCG covers useful aspects for running strategic programs, even if your company doesn’t have a Transformation Office.

We’ve picked the section about the dimensions of a Transformation Office (TO), as the ideas can be applied at lower levels (program or project teams) as well.

”Strategy and Scope (…) Successful transformations start with a big ambition, which the company then translates into a set of priority initiatives. The company needs to define and agree on what that ambition will be.

Governance and Organization

(…) pinpointing different leaders’ decision rights (…) The organization must decide whether to use existing staff or build up resources to run the TO.

Roles Within the Transformation Office

(…) making decisions about staff size and skill sets. Roles to fill include workstream liaisons, as well as staff to handle communications, finance, human resources, analytics, and digital and technology. The TO must also define its actual change delivery approach.

Activities and Processes

In every transformation, it’s crucial to implement common working rhythms, routines, and processes.

(…) People are assigned responsibility for the different units of work (workstreams, initiatives, projects, milestones), and—through a set of processes that the TO runs—begin to make progress toward agreed upon transformation goals.”

”Tools and Data

The fifth dimension of a successful TO involves the use of software and online tools. (…) digital impact-assessment center, for faster access to data and more holistic decision making.”

The article contains business memes such as “70% of transformations fail to achieve their initial goals”, so it has some entertainment value as well.

15 min read

Dessert

1 of 2 / Quanta Magazine: How did altruism evolve?

Good food for thought for altruism in the world of work.

”(…) we’re part of a social species, which depends upon altruism to help us stay coordinated and bring us all the benefits that we need to make it through this life.”

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2 of 2 / Dimitri Glazkov: AI Baklava

Layers of abstraction - highly relevant for organizational leaders, strategists, org designers, software engineers and knowledge workers in general (including the upcoming synthetic workers).

”A reasonable question might be: why layer at all? Why not just connect the means and aims directly? This is where another interesting part of the story comes in. It appears that we humans have limits to the level of complexity of mental models we can reasonably contain in our minds.”

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Bon appétit!

Menu created for people who lead organizations and for those who help them do this in a better way, by learning chefs ? Raluca and Bülent Duagi ??.

As the Sense & Change team, we’re working as Strategy & Org Design advisers and facilitators for leadership teams of mid and large ???? Tech companies.

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