BLOGS

Leave Sequestering for Juries: Avoid the “Secret Society” in Organization Design

You can avoid making costly decisions for your organization by getting clarity in advance as to the intended benefit of an organization design decision and how the it will be measured.

Preparing for contingencies in change management

Preparing for Contingencies in Change Management

There are many interesting parallels between leadership in the military and corporate America. While not everything that works for the military is suited to corporate change management, there are certain military ideas and practices that, when adapted to corporate use, can strengthen and enhance a company’s strategic planning and execution.

Business Model Innovation

Business Model Innovation for Relevance and Differentiation

Business model innovation is an essential element of success for today’s organizations. To stay competitive in a rapidly changing market, organizations must continually reinvent themselves. At its core, good business model redesign is about finding a novel way to solve a customer need that hasn’t yet been met fully or

Implied Work in Organization Transformation

If you are familiar with the  Cube model of organization design, you know that Work Processes  is one of six elements of an organization that must all align with strategy if the organization is to attain its strategic goals successfully (the others being Structure and Governance, Information and Metrics, People

measuring organization change

How to Measure and Evaluate Organization Transformation Effectiveness

Organization change is a big and complex undertaking. It is easy to get caught up in the process itself, especially when the transformation takes place over the course of months or years. But ultimately, it’s essential to stay focused on the reason for the change. At some point, the time

Corporate Functions

Using Agile Ways of Working to Keep Corporate Functions in Alignment

Functions within an organization can often take on an interesting dynamic. While they have immense capacity to influence the customer experience as well as the general welfare of the company, no one chooses to do business with a company based solely on the work or services of a function.  Whether

Linkages

Fine-tune the Linkages in Your Organization Structure

Formal organization structure gets a lot of attention from leaders and organizations, but an often under emphasized aspect of structure is linkages.  Linkages are the informal mechanisms or structures that facilitate decision making, resource sharing, and work coordination across organizational boundaries. They are often necessary because the formal structure of

Organization Transformation

Ensuring Clean Hand-Offs in Organization Transformation

The idea of “passing the baton” in a relay race is often used as a metaphor for the handoffs that occur as work moves from one person or function of a business to the next. These transitions are critical junctures in organization transformation; being able to manage organization design “baton

Information & Metrics

Information – The Lifeblood of Organizations

Recently, I was with an organization that was doing some benchmarking, and we visited the sites of several companies with strong capabilities in supply chain systems and analytics. As I observed the analytical capabilities and listened to the discussions, I thought about the Information & Metrics side of the organization

Strategy Deployment

Want Execution? Then Facilitate Strategy Deployment

Good strategy is essential for any organization. So is taking action on that strategy, but successful implementation of strategy must be managed appropriately. One of the dynamics we often observe in organizations is that strategy is not always well cascaded through the organization. In too many organizations, it’s common to