BLOGS

How Healthy is Your Organization?

A healthy organization is efficient, resilient, and supports positive relationships both internally and with its external stakeholders, with all parts operating effectively toward a common goal. Organizational health is a measure of how well a company functions, as well as its long-term viability and potential for growth. Just as symptoms such as dull hair or labored breathing signal poor health

Organizational Change

Organization Change at the Speed of Business

Resource availability is one of the built-in challenges of managing organizational change. For successful change transformation to occur, leaders and teams must learn to work effectively within the constraints of resource limitations. Limiting resources vary from one organization to the next, but the scarcest resource of all for many is time. Time allocation is thus a prevailing challenge for those

Understanding key principles of Organization Design

Agile Organization Design: Understanding Key Principles

Using the key principles of Agile in your organization design work can help you quickly produce customer-centric, flexible results.

Strategic Business Planning

How to Do Strategic Business Planning at the Speed of the Market

Most companies approach the strategic business planning process as an annual ritual starting mid-year and lasting three to four months, to identify how to allocate resources for the coming year. Once they’ve turned in the plan and gotten approval, many leaders set planning aside and turn back to discussions that are more operational in nature. For instance, “How are we

Organizational Change

How to Implement Organizational Change Without Losing Momentum

I’m not a volleyball player, but I did have one memorable experience playing the game in a gym class back in high school. The other team hit the ball high. As it lofted over the net, each one of us tracked its trajectory, tensed for action. We could see where it was headed. We knew what needed to be done.

organization effectiveness

Overcoming the OE Talent Shortage

Over the past few decades, more and more organizations have established internal organization effectiveness (OE) groups and capabilities, with the idea that OE groups can help them restructure, manage change, and optimize business performance. Each OE group approaches the task uniquely. Some provide hands-on consulting services; others build out a standard tool set that enables others inside the company to

Change Management

Change Management in an Agile Organization

More and more companies are adapting Agile methods and principles in the way they work. However, most change management practices have evolved out of linear ways of working (like project management or waterfall development), not from Agile ways of working. So, what happens when an organization begins to operate in Agile ways — do traditional change management approaches and processes

organization diagnosis

When Knowing the “Root Cause” is Not Enough

In our organization diagnostic work we often compare finding the root cause of an organization issue to finding the root cause of an illness. This medical metaphor has recently become even more useful because the medical industry in North America is starting to hold itself responsible for outcomes, rather than just procedures.  As a result, the scope of potential root

Making M&As work with the 3 levels of organizational blending

Making M&As Work: The 3 Levels of Organizational Blending

When Amazon announced that it had acquired Whole Foods Market, reactions from the media and thought leaders were immediate and varied. Some applauded the breakthrough deal as a herald to a new era of online/offline synergies, while other responses amounted to variations on “What were they thinking?” and “How can we let Amazon gobble up another industry?” On paper, the

Organizational Alignment

The Hidden Costs of an Obsolete Structure

“As long as there is a global marketplace and exploding technological progress, the need for formalized and ongoing organization alignment efforts will continue.” Mastering the Cube, Chapter 8 Like the foundation of a house, the structure of your organization is the cornerstone on which every function is based. Does a solid, well-aligned structure in itself guarantee success in all areas? Absolutely