Pillars of Organisational Health - Structure

Have you encountered that before? Your organisation has clear values around trust and agility. And then you compare this with internal processes like your expense reporting which manifest the opposite: expected fraud and bureaucracy.

This year I have developed an additional pillar for organisational health. In order to reduce confusion, increase productivity and address attrition, developing the right skills, mindsets and behaviours might not be enough. Adapting the organisational structure to the goals and values of the organisation is vital.

After reading a few books that highlight how we can overcome toxic behaviour and create more clarity with implementing the right amount and form of structure, this Corporate Rebels article summarises the topic very nicely. Beside the right capabilities and attitude, we need to master the 'operating rhythms'.

Why is this important? In order to achieve organisational health, we want to increase cohesion and clarity. This also comes with delegation of decision-making and providing more autonomy. Though, some people argue that might lead to chaos and complacency. And this is where structure comes in. We want to maintain a high level of clarity and strong bonding within teams and the organisation.

And what does that mean in practice? We recently created an operating handbook for a client and this nicely illustrates how this works. The handbook covers topics like the setup of the team network, goal setting & tracking, performance management, hiring & onboarding, etc. A description of different activities and processes with the aim to align them to the company's values.

Here are some concrete examples:

• Many people argue they are sitting in too many meetings that create little value; structuring meetings has two aspects: first, we want to ensure meetings have defined goals and agendas - this will make them more focused; second, establishing a defined cadence of different meetings (e.g. goal review, project related) enables the organisation to minimise ad-hoc meetings and creates a habitual rhythm; plus, the cadence includes informal catch-ups which allows the team to get to know each other better
• As described at the start, the expense reporting process was cumbersome for all the people involved and was based on the assumption that people cheat and exploit; this is the opposite of the company's values which include trust and agility; technology can support to balance the different requirements: keep it simple and address misuse.
• In many companies, performance management has become a behemoth of bureaucracy disliked by everyone; in that evolution, the main goal was lost: we want to develop people. With our client we brought this focus back and established guidelines that review achievements and promote learning conversations; and yes, this cannot happen only once or twice a year.

Establishing a structure for organisational health then leads to strong alignment with teams and across the entire organisation (and even ecosystem). As a result we have seamless collaboration and high team effectiveness. Riding the wave instead of getting lost in chaos.
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Source: Mastering Operating Rhythms: Boost Team Efficiency and Achieve Goals, Corporate Rebels, July 2024

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