Organisational Design and Development

Done well, organisation design can enhance business performance by aligning a business' structure and people to its strategy. Coaching For Change helps our clients implement effective organisation design to improve their long term success.

Organisational design is not about playing around with an org chart and putting names in boxes. It is about being revolutionary, getting a breakthrough in performance you never thought possible. Thinking functions and value rather than department and people.

We help clients re-shape their organisation to drive out waste and improve performance. We match up value stream with functions using our unique, robust and logical methodology. This challenges the culture and traditional thinking by focusing on "functional value", in other words, what is the total cost of our function and how does it support the end to end value stream? What are the key inputs and outputs at each stage, how do we measure, make the performance transparent and drive it through robust governance?

Results orientated leaders, interested in organisation design and functional value, have an edge. They believe the organisation behaves the way it does because of its design. The characteristics of a poor design will be:

• Evidence of duplication and waste
• Silo mentality
• Lack of customer focus
• Lack of ownership
• Misaligned values / unwanted behaviours
• Delays in decision making
• Mistrust between leaders and workers

Leaders believing that design matters will act on five principles:

1. Design is driven by business strategy
2. Design needs holistic thinking - Investors in People framework for example looks across systems, people, structures, measures, processes, cultures and operational aspects.
3. Design for the future is better than design for now.
4. Design must not be taken lightly - It is resource intensive and relies upon a dedicated and strong change leadership acumen.
5. Design is a fundamental process not a quick fix. Relies on strong governance and project management disciplines.

Our approach to organisation design can help you to:

• Enhance business performance by aligning your structure and people to your strategy, looking at your organisation and understanding what changes would make it perform better – and then delivering those changes
• Strip out unnecessary organisational complexity, role ambiguity, and simplify your work processes to develop more effective organisation units, improve cross-functional working, and reduce costs
• Streamline your decision making processes to clarify accountability and improve responsiveness and agility
• Apply our experience in project, talent, and change management to support the transition to your new organisation, or

Embed organisation design capability within your team through knowledge transfer and the design of a fit for purpose approach

We will review your organisational structure and resources to see how well geared they are towards delivering what you need to achieve, either for your current operation or if you’re looking to acquire or grow.

Once we have reviewed everything with you, we will help you define the right organisational design to best suit your overall business goals and strategy, how it will influence your culture, people and business, and what is needed to get everything in place.

We will guide you through the business change and help you determine which parts of the organisational plan to focus on and implement first (e.g. structure, systems and processes, management practices, staff competencies and performance, training needs) – so that your business can start delivering better results.

Organisational change and the fear of the unknown often unnerve staff, so keeping everyone informed and onside is crucial to achieving a good outcome. We’ll help keep people in the loop throughout the process, make complex legislation more user-friendly and ensure that the process runs smoothly.

Network Rail engaged Coaching For Change to develop its internal team of Technical Engineers, Project Managers and Team Leaders in the areas of continuous Improvement so delivering sustainable and effective savings for the business.

Network Rail Continuous Improvement