France's Olivier Giroud celebrates progressing to the Fifa World Cup final. Photo / Photosport
France's Olivier Giroud celebrates progressing to the Fifa World Cup final. Photo / Photosport
Organisational design is a passion of mine. It is a body of knowledge about shaping businesses, in terms of their structure, information flow and people. In my view, it puts organisations in the best position to be successful.
As a discipline it spans all aspects of business structure from governance to strategy to operations. I also see it as a key component of another passion — continuous improvement and the maximisation of value by building effective process and eliminating waste.
A key aspect of organisational design is your team. Questions that we should all ask ourselves are "do we have the right team to achieve our goals?" and "are we using them effectively in the right structure?" And "team" can mean one, two or 200 people.
Take the French football team, for example (I am currently watching a summary of the 2018 Football World Cup). They are world champions for a reason.
Their achievements are an example of each of the component parts coming together to produce magnificent, efficient and highly effective football.
The players selected, the positions they played, and how they communicate is an exercise in organisational design.
This becomes evident when you watch them play. The "board of directors" (the coaches and manager Didier Deschamps) develop, define and articulate a strategy and game plan built on the foundation of teamwork and the structure of the team. This was particularly evident in the final against Croatia.
The managers (the senior leaders of the team) articulate the vision on the field and direct play.
There is room for individual innovation and brilliance, but the over-arching impression is that they achieve exceptional results through a cohesive team effort.
When you watch replays of the 2018 World Cup, you see that a strategy was formed, based on the lessons of the past, and it incorporated the strengths of the team and accounted for any weaknesses together with the challenges presented by different opposition and the qualities of the opposing players.
We all know the result, but France remain worthy world champs because everyone of the team bought into the vision 100 per cent.
Russell Bell
Each player was assigned a specific task to accomplish and they had a plan to cope with the slings and arrows of competition (remember, early in the tournament, they struggled to beat Australia).
I am also sure, even though we never see it on TV, that there is also a formal review process to evaluate each performance and make changes required to be even more successful — another key component of good business practice.
Just as you wouldn't put out a football team of Paul Pogbas to face the opposition, so too should every business structure itself by understanding the necessary "position" skill sets required to be successful and have a game plan or strategy to make the best use of resources available to achieve success.
Effective organisational design — matching the structure of the business to the strategy — brings in the right people and processes to achieve business goals and will help ensure you leave the field with a great result.
Balance Consulting is a Whanganui consultancy specialising in business strategy, process excellence and leadership mentoring — contact Russell on 021 2442421 or John Taylor on 027 4995872.
