This is the first 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 my Roughly 500 Words On… introductory post, you can read it here: https://kaleidoscopeadvisory.com/roughly500words/
Chapter 1: Connecting Strategy, Organization, and Talent – Your Organizational Structure and Talent are Probably Undermining your Strategy
Who doesn’t love a good strategy? A good strategy` creatively and compellingly connects an organization’s vision, aspirations, and capabilities to market opportunities. A good strategy helps an organization win in the marketplace. A good strategy aligns leaders, inspires employees, and scares competitors.
But a good strategy is still just a strategy. It isn’t orders fulfilled or services rendered. That is execution, and it takes good organizational design and talented people to execute.
Strategy is best executed when we minimize frictions that slow idea generation, collaboration, and decision-making. Those frictions are often organizational issues: structure, functional integration, reporting lines, and capabilities, among other things. The all-too-common problem is that most leaders ask their people to execute strategies while working in a legacy organizational structure that has morphed organically and doesn’t reflect the current business needs.
Let’s illuminate this idea with an analogy. We can think about the organization as a symphony orchestra. It is a collection of highly talented individuals, organized by instrument and instrument section (e.g., brass, woodwinds, percussion), all with a singular goal of playing incredible music. The strategy is to play music, bring joy to the audience, and shower prestige on the orchestra. But doing so: attracting the right talent, organizing them effectively, selecting the right musical arrangement, practicing (a lot), and then performing…is the work.
However, frictions may arise. Instrument sections may be poorly organized, too big, or too small. Individuals may not be set up to succeed, either in placement or capabilities. For a symphony orchestra, those frictions undermine harmony, cohesion, and the goal to play music that moves people. Ultimately, it takes exemplary structure, talent, and effort. It also takes an enlightened and talented leader to bring this group together to achieve its aspirations.
Whether you are part of a symphony orchestra, selling widgets, or delivering a service, it is essential to design an organization that encourages collaboration, creative problem-solving, swift decision-making, and harmony between the individual and the collective.
How do you even know if your organizational structure is undermining your strategy? Here are three common symptoms of a potential disconnect between organizational structure and strategy:
- Symptom: Disjointed activities and outcomes seem to be the norm rather than cohesive effort and solutions
- Potential Cause: The structure of teams and individuals cause unnecessary organizational friction, which disrupts collaboration, problem-solving, and outcomes
- Symptom: Strategy execution is languishing as the required capabilities, collaboration, and problem-solving seem to continue as they had in the past
- Potential Cause: The individual and organizational capabilities weren’t reassessed and aligned with the needs of the new strategy
- Symptom: Lots of work is happening, but most of it doesn’t help execute strategy
- Potential Cause: Individual and team efforts have not been re-scoped or re-calibrated to support the work required to execute the strategy
Leaders can do a lot to solve these issues. One way, which I will cover in the next post, is understanding the relationship between Organizational Capabilities and Individual Capabilities. Think of this the same way you would about the relationship between all woodwinds, just the clarinets, and an individual clarinetist. They are not the same, but it takes intentional organizational design and talent management to get the most out of the organization, team, and individual.
Hopefully, this post spurred some thinking, questions, and perhaps some action. Please let me know your thoughts on this series or topics you would like me to cover in the future.
-Paul