With our focus on corporate development, organization becomes an important part of our twins. We have combined the best concepts to make them available to our customers as part of their twin. Organization design is all about identifying the right form, structure, degree of decentralization, location of accountability and the nature of the decision-making.
Management and organization design are closely related. One requires the other, or the design of management and organization needs to be aligned. To assist the alignment, we have introduced the twin module Organization. The module is available with the twin for organizations and is presented with the Twin Cockpit Software or as part of our workbooks.
Organization form, design, delegation, accountability and decision-making require dedicated design decisions. They follow each other, and they are all located in the CEO office space.
ORGANIZATION FORM
The organization form decision is a choice of four options: The personal enterprise, the programmed machine, the professional assembly and the project pioneer organization. The choice has been inspired by Henry Mintzberg in Understanding Organizations ... Finally!
With the CEO's structure decision, a series of other decisions are strongly linked. The twin toolbox returns details on generic model decisions. It's the decisions that most other organizations of that form have implemented. It further renders the results of the Executive Survey on the current organization. The differences between the model and the actual requires clarifications or redesign. In line with the form decision, perspectives offers the choices on the future organization. This in return, creates the transformation needs.
ORGANIZATION DESIGN
Organization design follows the selection of the organization form or unit structure. The structure decision combines organization and management systems with another series of questions. They have been inspired by Robert Simons' Levers of Organization Design.
With the structure decisions, several other decisions are related: Span of control, critical performance variables, diagnostic control systems, span of accountability, creative tensions, interactive networks, span of influence, commitment to others, shared responsibilities and span of support. Many of the answers to these question stem from management design. That's why management and organization are intertwined. The difference between actual and planned organization and systems create the transformation need.
DELEGATION
With the decisions on organization form and unit structure, another set of decisions follows regarding the delegation of accountability. To get this right, we use the "Babushka" concept and our list of big decisions in organizations.
The Babushka maps all organizational units in counts of one. With this, key decisions are allocated to these units. These maps of decisions vary greatly with the form and structure of the organization. Our twin toolbox offers templates of the most popular forms.
ACCOUNTABILITY
With clarity on where the accountability is and where key decisions are made, it is time to design accountability. We do this with the help of levers of organization design, originated by Robert Simons' Levers of Organization Design.
Levers allocate resources to areas of accountability. These areas can be narrow or wide. Proper design of accountability balances the demand and supply of resources. With this, the accountability fits the form of the organization. Our toolbox compares the levers across the form, the life cycle stage and the inherent structural crisis to ensure best balance.
DECISIONS
With clarity on accountability, we now need to orchestrate the decision-making process: How are key decisions made? The leadership toolbox with its rules, routines, tools and interactions helps us to design the decision-making.
With this, the decisions rules, routines, interactions and tools can be designed to fit the chosen form, structure, delegation and accountability. We have extensively documented the design of decision-making in all our books.
The twin module Organization supports all design decisions with concepts, templates and examples.
The module is part of the TWIN FOR THE ORGANIZATION.
Since 2002, we create twins of organizations with the AI-based operating system for dynamic leadership.
Management Insights is an independent and privately owned company with headquarters in Zuoz, Switzerland.
For more information, contact Lukas Michel, founder and author, or our partners across the world.
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