Part of the job of consultants is to leave an organization in better shape than they found it. This isn’t exactly a ground-breaking statement, but it’s an important jumping off point for discussing how to sustain the performance improvements of optimizing organization design. Recently, there have been a number of instances where we’ve been brought in by a client that had recently conducted a ‘restructuring’, and were now looking for a more evidence-based approach to improving organization design … [Read more...]
Executives are concerned with the challenge of fostering innovation within their organizations. They say they want to empower employees but often end up creating systems that inhibit employee ingenuity. They say they want to create strong research and development functions but often end up creating research silos. They say they want to be adaptable and agile but often end up becoming slow and bureaucratic. So, how can we design organizations that enable both innovation and rapid scaling of … [Read more...]
As Capelle Associates celebrates our 40th anniversary, we wanted to share something we've learned over the years. Our clients have trusted us to undertake over 100 large scale projects across multiple geographies and industry sectors. Each of these projects came as a result of a unique challenges that the organizations faced, and each resulted in a unique set of opportunities. However, there was one consistent theme across each of the projects, and that was the drive to improve … [Read more...]
We wanted to share with you a recent article Ron wrote for the People + Strategy journal. The theme of the issue was the role of alignment in transforming organizations. Ron described our five organization design alignment factors that have been shown to lead to improved financial performance, customer satisfaction and employee engagement. This approach is based on over 100 large scale projects and 24 research studies. If you, or any of your colleagues, are interested in improving … [Read more...]
Congratulations! You’ve just introduced your new strategic plan. You might be a new executive looking to make a mark in the organization, or maybe you’re a veteran looking to jumpstart lagging results – either way, strategic planning is often the first step in executing significant organizational change. But what if I told you that’s not your issue? Organizations rarely, if ever, fail during the strategic planning process. Where they fail is in the execution. Admittedly, organizations are … [Read more...]
Fundamental to effective organization design is the alignment of positions, people, and tasks. Positions are aligned to a specific organizational level based on the complexity of work required, and people are matched to these positions based on their capability to work at that level. For example, a stratum 2 (or 2nd level) position requires diagnostic capability, and is often characterized as professional or first line management positions. A stratum 1 (or 1st level) position requires the … [Read more...]
On Thursday, September 22nd, as part of the HRPA Continuing Professional Development Meeting Series, Ron Capelle will be providing a workshop presentation titled: Optimizing Organization Design: Key Factors and Methods for Success. The workshop aims to help help HR professionals improve their department’s functions, the performance of the organization, as well as increase their personal impact by learning about proper alignment of positions, accountabilities and … [Read more...]
One management trend that’s caught my attention recently is the Holacracy management system. Holacracy, as defined on their website, is a “complete system for self-organization” that looks to create a replacement for organizing work. Much has been written on the subject, with viewpoints ranging from it's destroying companies (here, here and here) to it being a corporate saviour in a world where hierarchies are killing innovation and stemming employee motivation (here, here and here). A recent … [Read more...]
There's been a lot of discussion centred on how organizations can engage a new generation of workers through developing and articulating a corporate 'Purpose'. Because of this, we thought it'd be a good idea to bring back an article Ron wrote in the People & Strategy journal which discusses how organizations can be designed to enable purpose.
2015 was a difficult year for Canadians – with the price of oil plummeting organizations were forced to significantly downsize their workforce. All told it was estimated that over 100,000 jobs were lost across the Alberta oil fields. On top of this, some of Canada’s largest companies (Bombardier, TD, Scotiabank) undertook major organizational restructuring initiatives. The terms downsizing or restructuring generally refer to organizations reducing their operating costs through … [Read more...]
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