I often have conversations with clients about Organisational Design - how to do it and what value it adds. Here are the basics which will help to get you started, and arm you with the information you need to have proactive conversations with senior leaders, way before any recruitment starts. Having the right people, with the right skills, in the right roles, in the right levels within the right part of the business is essentially the solution. It sounds obvious, but it’s not always easy to achieve.

Step 1 is to be clear on the plans and requirements of the business and understanding what needs to be put in place to support that need. Ask the question: is the plan to be sustainable in an ever-changing environment or, to be fast growth penetrating new markets for a future sale?

Step 2 is to gain insight and analyse the effectiveness of the current organisational structure. As part of the investigation, find out if any departments are struggling to achieve their objectives:

• What are the barriers?
• Be prepared to go down into more detail, are there roles that are hard to fill?
• Are you losing key talent?
• Are roles filled, but performance/productivity is questionable?

Step 3 is to challenge the current structure against the aspirational structure. For the sake of brevity, let’s focus on two extreme examples. If the business is all about innovation, then roles that are future looking, researching, developing solutions, planning, establishing how to get there are key to achieving success. For this, you will need roles at the top that are clear on the direction/vision. You will also need expertise and specialists in the middle, who have the understanding and the skills to shape and implement something revolutionary. Roles that ensure operationally that work doesn’t stop are important, but if weighted too much towards ‘business as usual’ then don’t be surprised if nothing fresh and exciting happens.

Conversely, if business objectives are about sustainability and there is too much emphasis on innovation/idea generation, then you will find yourself in a situation of constant change while actual productivity and quality of delivery suffers.

Step 4 is the final analysis and provides the data to confirm the anecdotal evidence. It’s useful and easier to establish the number of roles at each level, through the whole business, if you have an internal levelling system, with consistently valued roles. Delving into the overall picture and picking out problems will provide valuable business intelligence.

At Innecto, we tend to look at the number of roles per level across the whole organisation, within each function or country and also within each department. What you should see is your current OD shape, which when overlaid with your aspirational OD shape, will highlight a misalignment. For example:

• A triangle shape is more aligned to an operational/business delivery structure: this has more action driven roles being overseen and led by a minimal number of leaders.
• A diamond shape has a concentration of middle band professionals: these tend to be your specialists/experts and they typically have one eye on the present and one on the future, making change happen.

Job evaluation is often seen as an operational process with a focus on equality, fairness and transparency, but we use our cloud-based JE software Evaluate with clients to provide the insight needed to look at OD. It supports HR when describing the strengths and weaknesses of the current structure, enabling decision making around talent. That forward thinking, business focussed insight is the stuff that excites senior leaders and provides credibility to HR.

If you need help with your Organisational Design, please get in touch on 020 3457 0894 or email me at sarah.lardner@innecto.com

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