by N. Dean Meyer
Your organizational operating model sends signals that guide people day by day. Organizational transformation is a matter of "reprogramming" these signals.
So, where do those signals come from, and what can executives "program" in organizations?
These are all attributes of the organization (not the people currently in it, nor the work they do).
Many leadership frameworks include people and business strategies. While these are very important, not every important issue is an aspect of organizational design.
Organizational systems have three qualities:
- They are stable.
- They are pervasive, and influence everyone's performance.
- They are controllable, and can be deliberately designed.
Talents and skills are certainly a leadership challenge, but not an organizational design issue. People live within the organizational ecosystem, and their work is guided by its signals. But people are not something that leaders can "program." And they take their talents with them when they leave; they're not an attribute of the organizational system that lives on without them.
Strategies are also not an attribute of the organization. Customers' strategies are an input; and the organization's strategies are an output. But neither meaning of the word "strategy" is an aspect of the design of the organization.
In fact, well-designed organization continually align themselves with customers' strategies, and continually define and execute their own strategies.
Why an organization should not be designed around strategies....
This framework of five organizational systems refers to the organizational ecosystem, not the people who live within it or its inputs (e.g., customers' strategies) and outputs (including its own strategies).
These five systems within an organizational operating model are used in two ways:
By redesigning these five organizational systems, leaders can permanently modify the character and performance of an entire organization.
