To remain competitive in a changing market, organizations must continually strive to deliver more value at less cost. While incremental changes are often necessary and can be very helpful, a company will usually not make great leaps ahead without some measure of breakthrough innovation. But, how does one build innovation
The world today is experiencing a faster rate of change than ever before. Technological advancement is happening at lightning speed, and this is causing ripple effects throughout organizations, talent, culture, and nearly all aspects of organizational life. As leaders respond to and anticipate in this level of change, they often
An organization’s culture is a powerful thing. Culture significantly influences the way people think, behave, and relate to one another within an organization, as well as how they relate to customers and vendors. Because of this, its culture directly impacts every aspect of an organization—including its productivity and profitability. The
In the fast-moving business world, organizations are constantly strategizing to keep ahead of a crowded field of competitors. Time is always a commodity and decisions that take too much of it can cost an organization money, positioning and other setbacks. As a result, there is a tremendous amount of pressure
To fully benefit from an Agile organization design effort, you need effective teams and means of engaging stakeholders and customers. True to Agile principles, your team should be customer-centric, flexible enough to respond to market changes, and capable of producing design “products” that you can test and implement immediately. But,
The world is moving fast. Today’s most successful businesses employ agile practices and processes that enable them to keep pace with rapidly changing markets, customer trends, global events and economic shifts. That level of flexibility requires ongoing assessment, analysis and realignment—a willingness to implement work process changes when necessary to
HR, finance, and other functions play a vital supportive role in every organization. Like the air conditioning in a car, it isn’t essential to getting from point A to point B, but it sure makes the journey much more comfortable. Just as air conditioning with no engine or chassis or
A colleague once told me a story about an acquaintance of his who was asked to take over management of a failing manufacturing plant in the hopes that he could turn it around. All he did for the first month or two was walk around observing: listening, watching, and learning.
In our previous blog, we discussed how organizational strategy impacts the design choices organization leaders must make. We also touched on the concept of organization alignment with strategy using our Cube model of organization design, which equates the organization systems (work processes, structure, information and metrics, etc.) of a business
There is a tendency among organizations to equate strategy with goal setting: what we want to become, where we want to go, what we want to achieve. These goals are often set from a financial or operational performance perspective. For example, targeting revenue goals, achieving a market leadership position, or