This is the final post in a series that will explore a fundamental question: how can a leader be more intentional about connecting company strategy to individual work, individuals to teams, and teams to one another? If you missed the first four posts on Roughly 500 Words On… you can read them here: https://kaleidoscopeadvisory.com/roughly500words/
Chapter 5: Embracing Imperfection – It will Never be Perfect, but it is Going to be Great
Structure, symmetry, and organization bring me happiness. They give me a sense of control and a feeling of calm. Perhaps this desire has drawn me towards organizational design and strategy: it allows me to bring structure, symmetry, and clarity to something endlessly complex.
However, much like life, the reality of organizations is that they are ceaselessly dynamic, rarely logical, and never perfect. Those constraints make organizational design and talent strategy so challenging and make them so valuable to organizations.
Throughout the first four posts of this series, we connected the dots between strategy, organizational capabilities, organizational design, and role design. I shared the unconstrained ideal approach to link each of these elements to the business strategy and one another.
But the ideal is not reality. There are (at least) four realities you will need to embrace when transforming your organizational structure or implementing a new talent strategy:
You will need to Fit Some Square Blocks into Some Round Holes – Rarely does one get the opportunity to build an organization from scratch. Generally, the new organization will result from the transformation of an existing organization or the combination of multiple organizations. In reality, there will be talent, process, or technology decisions that are less than ideal given what you want to achieve. The priority here is to identify those things that are either non-negotiable or may have an outsized impact on results and make sure you don’t make trade-offs on those items.
You will Rarely Have All the Experience and Expertise You Need – As I noted in a previous post, job descriptions are essential but also kind of pointless. We often spend so much time designing the perfect job that we forget that we are hiring imperfect humans with varying strengths and weaknesses. Overlay this with the fact that most changes happen within existing organizations and with incumbent talent. It then becomes clear that you will always be in a transitional period in terms of the skills and expertise you have on hand. That is okay. Use that challenge as an opportunity to develop emerging talent, seek access to a diverse set of outside capabilities, and focus your team’s strengths on clear and achievable priorities.
Non-Structural Components Matter More than you may Realize – Workflow, governance, and technology are the connective tissue that enables effort and outcomes. Some leaders stop at designing the organization and putting names on an org chart. We will dive into this further in the next and final post, but stopping there underestimates the importance of the enabling infrastructure, which is everything necessary to get work done collaboratively and effectively.
You will Never Be Done – Healthy organizations rarely settle for long. Such uncertainty can be unsettling for some, but getting into a mindset of change and evolution is probably the most important outcome. When leaders and teams expect and embrace a dynamic and constantly evolving organization, they become more agile, open to change, and creative in thinking about what is possible.
I hope you have enjoyed this series. While there is far more to cover, it would absolutely require a bit more than Roughly 500 Words… So reach out with questions or to further dive into this topic.
-Paul
