Organisational design and change
What is Change Management?
Planned, top down change treating the organisation as a machine and assumes that change can be efficiently engineered to achieve predictable outcomes. Change Management to be successful requires people to adjust their beliefs, values and assumptions to ensure appropriate patterns of behaviour to implement a pre-prescribed goal.
Change Management is usually treated as a project with pre-defined start middle and end that aligns to a formal change model. The model enables a co-ordinated approach to address both the mechanisms of change process and human aspects of Change. A well-known ‘8 step’ change framework of John Kotter (2006) is widely used in Change Management:
- Establish a sense of urgency
- Form a powerful guiding coalition
- Create a vision to direct the change effort
- Communicate the vision
- Empower others to act on the vision
- Plan for, and create short-term wins
- Consolidate improvements and produce more change
- Institutionalise the new approach
What is Organisational Design
‘Design is a plan for arranging elements in such a way as best to accomplish a particular purpose’ Charles Eames (1969)
The purpose of organisational design is to organise people in the best way possible to deliver value. This is achieved through enabling and optimising the development and deployment of people. Organisational designs activities are driven by the need to respond to today’s unstable and ambiguous environment. The focus of organisational design is the internal capabilities- the organisation structures, talents, business models, management styles and other intangibles which need to be flexed to respond to the external market changes be they threat and/or opportunity.
(Sources - Organisational Development: Mee- Yan Cheung- Judge & Linda Holbeche and Organisational Design: Naomi Stanford)