Our mission, vision and ambition in action
Structure and culture tackled together - that's what organisational design is about.
Organisational design is the choice of how you divide work: which units exist, which complete work packages each of them can deliver, and where decisions are made. Dividing work into functions also divides every change across the whole house. Organising it around whole flows lets a change land in one place. That approach is called innovative work organisation, or sociotechnical design, after the work of Ulbo De Sitter.
Modern sociotechnical design is kept alive by the Ulbo de Sitter Kennisinstituut in the Netherlands and Flanders.
Do you strive for a workplace where flow and collaboration are the norm? Do you find that it doesn't always come naturally, and that serving customers takes more effort? Then it's time to look through a design lens and address the weaving flaws in your organisational structure.
Organisational structure goes beyond org charts and procedures. It determines how work is divided and shared. A complex structure hampers agility and reduces engagement.
Imagine an organisation splitting its work processes into many tasks and responsibilities. With every new subdivision, interdependence between team members grows. That means more communication and coordination are needed to keep everything running smoothly.
As task division grows, interactions grow exponentially. Divide work into 25 pieces and you have 300 alignment possibilities. Into 59 pieces and you have 1,172. A greater subdivision often leads to overcrowded agendas, endless meetings and frustration - putting efficiency at risk.
It's essential to design and manage task division carefully, with an eye on the growing system complexity and the need for effective collaboration.
An appropriate structure forms the foundation for workable work and contributes to better-performing organisations. We embrace the principles of Innovative Organisation (Re)design (IAO): initiatives that improve organisational performance by facilitating sustainable collaboration. Also known as Workplace Innovation and High Performance Work Systems (HPWS).
Our design process is rooted in socio-technical systems theory and validated by decades of research. We redesign both structure and teamwork so the organisation and its people function better as a whole.
We integrate Robert Karasek's ideas on job design: key to predicting work stress and creating healthy work environments. Evidence-based and recognised by leading institutions in occupational health.
Based on Karasek's model, you get four job types. Regulatory capacity and workload each shape wellbeing.
When people experience workload and have the ability to regulate things themselves, they feel good about it. See the top-right quadrant: Active.
The other three quadrants are health-damaging:
Plenty of room to decide, but too little pressure to give it direction.
High pressure and the room to shape how the work gets done.
Little say over the work, and no pressure either.
High pressure, without the room to decide what to do about it.
Tools for this theme
The choice of how you divide the work: which units exist, what each of them can complete, and where decisions are made. That choice determines how much coordination every result costs. Organisational design is therefore not drawing an org chart, but deciding where work can be finished.
When one change in one place sets the whole house in motion. If adjusting something in a single department requires coordination with IT, HR, communications and three consultative bodies, then the division of work is the problem, not the number of projects.
A design approach that organises work around whole flows instead of around functions, so that a team carries a complete piece of work and decides on it itself. It comes from the work of Ulbo De Sitter and is carried forward in Flanders by Workitects.