Strategic Human Capital Insights

Disrupt the Irrelevant: Time to Evaluate Your Organizational Structure


If you dislike change, you will enjoy irrelevancy even less!
 

We are sitting at the crossroads of two different worlds of work.  We all know this intellectually. Everyone talks about it. Then why is it taking us so long to change things?  Our present organizations are often disconnected and misaligned.  This disconnect between the new reality and blind adherence to old operating structures is creating an organization operating chasm that can and will have serious strategic implications. 


Past Organizations 

The old work paradigms of the past focus on:

  • BAU – Business as usual
  • Maintaining the routine
  • Sustainability
  • Planned growth
  • Global expansion – unlimited green fields
  • The emergence of the age of the Knowledge Worker
  • Legacy organizational structures and practices rooted in the past 


Today’s Organizations

Today, however, we are finally recognizing that the world of work has significantly changed and the nature of our workforce has changed with it.  Today, our work environment is defined by:

  • Hyper Change as the norm
  • Technology driving all aspects of work and strategy 
  • The VUCA environment is here to stay - Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity & Ambiguity
  • Growth based on discontinuous change
  • Increased competition without limitless green fields
  • Evolving organizational roles that have yet to be defined
  • Need for new organizational structures and practices
  • Different workforce
     

Why Try to Fit a Square Peg into a Round Hole? (And why should you still be trying?)


We are no longer emerging into this new work environment – we are right in the middle of it.  Let’s finally recognize and accept that this new world of work requires a deep, honest and critical evaluation of existing work structures and processes. It is strategically critical to ensure that to stay competitive, our organizations must be aligned and stay aligned. This alignment assessment is not a one-off event but a continual organizational process.  All too often, I see organizations either trying to ignore or deny that they need to reevaluate EVERYTHING.  We are trying to justify legacy organizational structures and process because they are comfortable and familiar.  But are they relevant? 


Thank you, Accenture.  FINALLY!
 

Accenture publicly announced that they were going to abandon their traditional Performance Review process – letting go of 90% of their old practices. Why is this so important? It represents a massive internal revolution from old to new.  They have finally acknowledged what we all have been thinking for years. This is what they are going to let go:

  • Forced rankings
  • Once-a-year evaluations
  • The time, effort and expense relative to anticipated outcomes


Why is this so important?

This shift does not just affect the Performance Review process, in isolation, but has far broader organizational reach. Here are all the other parts of the organization that will be impacted by this robust future-focused shift:

  • Business Strategy - people will be forwardly aligned to business goals
  • Culture - will be developmental and individual focused
  • Assessments - continual, future focused, timely and relevant
  • Human Capital Planning - present to future focused
  • Hiring - done in anticipation versus reactive
  • Role Definition - future focused
  • Competency Benchmarking - relative to the now and future needs

Since there are many questions and lots of thinking on these topics, we invite you to join our LinkedIn group so we can all participate in the discussion. 


Recent global survey data focuses on the readiness levels of global and domestic corporations for the talent demands of Workfit. How do your preconceived ideas of the workforce compare with this recent data? Test your assumptions and take our complimentary Workfit 2020 Organization Stress Test today.

Take the Workfit Organizational Stress Test

 

 

Topics: Leadership, Organizational Alignment & Effectiveness

Posted by Joanne Flynn

Joanne Flynn

Joanne T. Flynn heads up the human capital advisory group, Phoenix Strategic Performance, Inc. Previously, she was a Managing Director with Phoenix Group International and was Vice President / Director of Global Learning and Development at Goldman, Sachs for nine years. Joanne works with organizations as they face global growth and competitive challenges. She works with her clients to be both externally focused and internally responsive. With her unique background, she aligns competitive strategic efforts with related internal organizational leadership challenges. With the benefit of her career-long focus, Joanne contributes the unique insight of aligning strategy to internal organizational structure and process. She focuses on human capital relative to strategic initiatives, accelerated business growth, value creation, and business development. Joanne holds a Master of Arts degree in Business Management from the University of Oklahoma. In addition, she holds a double degree major in History and German from St. Elizabeth University, as well as certificates from a variety of leading universities and professional training and development organizations. Joanne has recently published her latest book, Accelerating Business Success, The Human Asset Management Strategy.

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