I must admit I was slightly taken aback with the response to my post last week about organising creatively, it certainly seems like there is an appetite to rethink the way we are organised. To pinch a phrase from TED there is an energy to ‘build back better.’
I have been increasingly involved in organisational redesign in recent years as organisations have tried to explore ways to do things differently. To their credit they haven’t just wanted to replace like for like as roles change and people leave. Sadly, the temporary closure of so many cultural organisations due to the Covid-19 pandemic means a lot more organisations are having to rethink their designs going forward because of a radical shift in their financial models.
Maybe this is an opportunity to do things better, and to really re-invent our cultural organisations, where this is needed. An opportunity to take a hard look at ourselves and critically reflect on our shortcomings, including our biases and discrimination as well as our successes.
Why am I talking about design rather than structure? Because the way we are organised should remain flexible and adaptable. Too often structures become solidified and unyielding, structure is ‘weighty.’ Design is more dynamic and is not just about structure, it also includes processes, systems and culture.
Key to any redesign is deciding the criteria you want to apply – this might be a single criterion like cost reduction, or it might be more complex in terms of building innovation or improving communication.
Research suggests there are three levers of design:
- Groupings – how teams are organised
- Authority structures and hierarchy – how decisions are made and information flows
- Linkages – how the decisions and groupings are connected
When thinking about your future design you might want to consider where you want to focus in relation to the following characteristics:
| Limits dialogue | Facilitates dialogue | ||||||
| Focuses on a few senior perspectives | Encourages diverse perspectives | ||||||
| Prefers passive thinking | Develops critical thinking | ||||||
| Teams/Depts are siloed | Connects teams/Depts. | ||||||
| Low individual autonomy | High degree of individual autonomy | ||||||
| Roles and training focus on a single area | Supports multi-disciplinary roles and training | ||||||
| Low levels of perceived trust | High levels of perceived trust | ||||||
| Improves existing capabilities and routines – doing things better | Develops new capabilities, focus on doing new things | ||||||
| Limits use of intuition | Allows use of intuition | ||||||
| Has set ways of doing things | Questions long held assumptions | ||||||
| Responsive to changes in the external environment | Proactive in imagining potential changes to the external environment | ||||||
| Hides or punishes failures | Learns from failures | ||||||
| Prefers established rules and routines | Seeks new ways of doing things | ||||||
| Focus on simple improvements | Seeks radical innovation | ||||||
| Low risk taking
|
High risk taking |
You might also want to think about the above in terms of your model pre-lockdown, this will help to give you a sense of where you want to make changes. Be as honest as you can and try not to make assumptions – if you think your organisation facilitates dialogue, for example, what evidence do you have for that? Would all your team (if you have one) give the same rating?
Options for design range from hierarchical and traditional structures (sometimes referred to as mechanistic) to those that are more organic and fluid. Neither is right or wrong, it is more about appropriateness and awareness of the kind of design you want to create.
How might you ask your team, your stakeholders, and beneficiaries/audiences what sort of organisation they’d like you to be?
I want to find a way to open this conversation up and am thinking about organising a webinar or two with Susan to discuss how we might organise differently. If this would be of interest to you do let us know.