Shaping your Organization is about making choices in how you organize the collaboration within the organization. It is about developing an effective organizational culture, organizational structures, management practices, workplace design, collaborative processes in teams and projects, etc... in order to turn the strategy into practice and make it into a successful endeavor. It is about building in 'triggers' for learning, initiative, risktaking, transversal collaboration and dialogue in the organization.
At the end, it's not about Strategy, but about execution and results. And execution depends very much on what people do, how they work and communicate with each other, how they learn from each other, whether they are capable of challenging each other, take initiative, give feedback etc...
And that's where SHAPING the ORGANIZATION comes in. It's through the choices you make in your organizational architecture that you create leverage for the right behaviors and for a successful implementation of your strategy.
Our focus is on : "Shaping your organization in order to trigger successful behaviors and sustainable performance?" It's about carefully crafting & moulding the organizational structure, culture, management practices, work places, job content, processes, mechanisms for transversal collaboration and communication, team work, project work, etc... in such a way they reïnforce expected and successful behavior.
Key Questions
Key Questions for Your Organization ?
Organizational Culture (informal organization)
- What about power distance ?
- Is it safe to contradict, to challenge ?
- Do we encourage initiative and risk taking and do we accept mistakes as learning opportunities ?
- Is diversity for us a source of creativity and learning ?
Organizational Structure (formal organization)
- Are we a flexible, network based organization or do we suffer from silos ?
- How do we encourage cross team and department collaboration and communication ?
- Do we focus on departmental objectives or on the contribution of all to the final business result ?
- How do we use teams and projects as sources of innovation & learning ?
Management Practices
- Are managers deciders, controllers and work dispatchers or are they facilitating a learning team and stimulating initiative and autonomy ?
- Is a team a place where people actually work together or do they just happen to report to the same boss ?
- Is feedback and coaching a substantial part of the managerial relationship ?
Work / Job Design
- Are jobs very specialized, focusing on individual objectives or do you have a flexible work allocation in place, that allows for efficient use of people, expertise, experience and enables people to learn new things ?
- Our internal mobility allows for people to do many things, see how the organization operates and allows them to really understand their contribution to the business ?
- How do we involve workers in the 'building' of their own job and workplace (job-crafting) ?
People's Contribution and Involvement
- How to develop a real 'internal customer orientation' where people contribute to the success of their internal customers ?
- Are people involved to the point they can feel an 'intra-preneur' and take ownership for their organization as a whole ?
- How do you organize performance management triggers that focus on people's contribution to the organization and not only the completion of their 'yearly objectives' ?