The Monthly Organizational Structure Tuning: Organizational Structure and Design Nov. 2019

Digital makes a significant impact on every aspect of the business from people, process to technology, both horizontally and vertically. Digital becomes the very fabric of high performing business, being outside-in and customer-centric is the new mantra for forward-looking and high mature digital organizations today. From an organizational structure perspective, how can you fine-tune the digital dimensions of your organizational development to harness innovation?  

 Organizational Structure and Design
Leverage Design Thinking to Strategic Alignment and Organizational Structural Tuning Compared to the mechanical nature of the industrial organization, digital organizations are like the living systems that can self-adapt and self-renew in thriving as the high-performance business. Traditional organizations are process-driven, but digital organizations are people-centric; they are complex enough to act intelligently and nimble enough to adapt to changes promptly. Design Thinking needs to be a discipline for enforcing strategic alignment and tuning organizational structure in order to improve organizational maturity from functioning to delight.

Performance Management vs. Digital Organizational Design Performances are not just numbers with metrics, they are numbers in context, results related to your business goals both at the strategic and operational level. Measuring and managing performance means setting performance metrics, making objective assessments, understanding results, adjusting plans & structures, and making decisions to ensure great business results. The reality in most organizations though is the performance which is forcibly jammed within an existing organizational structure with silo functions and overly rigid hierarchy, and very few companies are truly leveraging organizational development (OD) resources wisely. But due to the digital nature of hyperconnectivity and interdependence, more often, the successful performance improvement initiatives should have representation and input from organizational structure management. Organizational Design vs. Performance Management: How to take an integrated approach, fine-tune OD and improve performance management effectiveness and maturity?

Digital Shift: People Centric Organization One of the key characteristics of digital organizations is customer-centricity. When companies adopt customer-centric strategies, customers become the primary drivers of “what” work should be done, “how” work should be done, and “who” should do it. Being customer-centric also needs to have more organic structure than a mechanic one, to empower than control, to engage than command and being more dynamic than static.

Digital Organizational Design vs. Business Changeability The very characteristics of digital are the increasing speed of change and hyper-connectivity. Digital makes a significant impact on every aspect of the business both horizontally and vertically. Forward-looking organizations leverage the latest technologies to fine tune the organizational structure and improve the business changeability. Organization design is the vehicle through which the business strategy is executed and defines the business environment in which the digital organization can reduce the organizational culture friction, improve the business changeability, maturity, and unleash its full potential.

Design for Adaptability Digital means fast-paced changes, continuous disruptions, overwhelming growth of information, and shortened business life cycle. Companies need to have an in-depth understanding of organizational design and development to improve business maturity. Compared to the traditional organizations with an overly rigid hierarchy or strictly pyramidal structure, digital organizations today are flatter, hybrid and more responsive to changes. Organizational adaptation is the ability to be highly responsive to the fast-changing business environment. High mature companies are designed for change and designed for innovating.

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