An Organization Redesign Process

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When redesigning an organization if you make a change in one area it has an impact on other areas. Simple analogy: if you put mag wheels on a car and do nothing to adjust the steering, braking and suspension of the car it will not perform to it's optimum.

It is the same with an organization. If you do something - e.g. implement a bonus system you need to look at other areas in the business that will need to change to make the bonus work e.g. information, training, recognition etc.

TThe important thing to note from the model is that every choice you make in your business inexorably relates back to the performance outcomes that you achieve.

Changing an organization through an organization redesign process is a journey - and as noted before often a long - but generally very exciting and rewarding journey.Here's a summary of the steps that you would take in an organization re-design process using a socio-technical approach.

1. Identify people who are responsible for the various roles:
a. Organisation Leader - names and commissions the Steering Committee

b. Strategic Level - The senior management who have a focus on setting the direction of the change process

c. Steering Committee - Generally consists of the Strategic level and if applicable union officials. They name and commission the Design Team and provide sanction for the Design Team to do their work. They provide resources as required

d. Design Team: Typically consists of employees - half from the employee level and half from the management level. Their role is to do the work of re-designing the organization. (Generally no more than 6-12 people on the team)

2. Commission and Train the Strategic, Steering and Design Teams. (The Design Team training is in far greater depth helping them to understand and learn the tools to be used during the re-design process
3. Environmental Scan: Become aware of the needs and expectations of the external environment: Customers (current and potential), Stakeholders (shareowners and their representatives), Influencers (regulators, suppliers, government etc.), Competitors and Best-in-class organizations
4. Develop Vision & Mission Statements: These statements describe what you want to create, why your organization exists and your distinctive competence
5. Success Criteria: Nominate the outcomes desired in these four categories: Customer, Stakeholder, People, Community
6. Culture: Identify the behaviours, skills and characteristics that the people working within the business must have, along with the guiding principles that encourage people to use these behaviours and skills, in order to achieve the vision and mission
7. Strategies to Influence: these are strategies that you create to manage and reduce variability and demands from the external environment. This enables you to meet both the requirements of the external environment as well achieve your desired outcomes
8. Key Performance Indicators: Carefully selected KPI's will deliver the business performance required along with inspiring the behaviours and characteristics articulated in the culture
9. Technical System: Analyse and Re-design in terms of Tasks, Technologies and Buildings/Facilities
10. Social System: Analyse Organisational structure, Job Design, Reward Systems, Communication Systems, Skills, Membership)
11. Structural System: Design the structure for each of the three teams: Operating, Strategic and Resource so that they foster the culture required to deliver high performance
12. Decision-Making & Information System: Review: what, where, how decisions are made, what information is needed to make those decisions and how it is stored and captured.
13. People System: Review: Competencies, Selection, Induction/Orientation, Training, Performance Contracting, Career Development
14. Reward System: Here we review how people's contributions are recognised and rewarded. Read more on rewarding employees
15. Renewal System: Now you design how you will regularly review your business and make any design changes needed to ensure continuing optimum performance
16. Develop an Implementation Plan: This identifies who is responsible for implementation, time-lines, resources required, potential bottlenecks and contingency plans
17. Execute the Plan: Here's where the rubber hits the road in your organization redesign process. If this part fails then the rest of the process has been for naught. Implementing the changes can be a challenge - which is why before you begin the design process you must ensure that there is deep commitment to the changes by the leadership team.

An organization redesign process like this can take anywhere between one and five years. It all depends upon the culture of your workplace at the start of the process and the commitment of the leadership team to the process.