Organisation

1. Structure

   How work is divided into units and coordinated again: the basis for grouping, the spans and layers of management, and the mechanisms that link units whose work depends on each other.

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2. Decision rights

   Which recurring decisions exist, who makes each one, who must agree or be asked, and what authority is delegated below the board. Standing allocations, as distinct from the owner of a single initiative.

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3. Leadership

   What leadership is expected to do in this organisation, how the work changes from one layer to the next, and how leaders are judged against it. Kept to observable work, not personality.

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4. Adoption

   The human side of change: which groups are affected and how much, how far each has actually taken up the new way of working, what resistance is saying, and what holds the change in place afterwards.

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1. Kotter’s eight-step change model

   John P. Kotter · 1995

   Also known as Leading Change

   Eight steps for changing how an organisation works, beginning with urgency and ending with making the change stick.

   Drawn from watching change efforts fail, the sequence runs from establishing urgency and building a guiding coalition, through a clear vision and communicating it relentlessly, to short-term wins and anchoring the change in the culture. Kotter’s finding was that skipping any step feels faster and reliably costs more later; most efforts fail at the first, because everyone is already busy.

   Reach for it when

   Before a change programme starts, and when one has stalled and nobody can say at which step.

   Where it stops

   It is top-down and linear, and it was drawn from large corporations in the 1990s. Anything genuinely emergent will not wait for step three.

   John P. Kotter, “Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail”, Harvard Business Review, 1995; Leading Change, HBS Press, 1996.

2. Situational leadership

   Paul Hersey & Ken Blanchard · 1969

   There is no single right way to lead — the right amount of direction depends on how ready the person is for that particular task.

   Four styles, from telling someone exactly what to do, through coaching and supporting, to handing the task over entirely. The variable is not the person’s worth but their competence and confidence at the task in front of them, which means the same person needs different handling on two different jobs.

   Reach for it when

   When a capable person is being micromanaged, or a new one is being left alone and called a poor fit.

   Where it stops

   Judging someone’s readiness is a subjective call, and the empirical support is weaker than the model’s popularity suggests. It is a way of checking your instinct, not a measurement.

   Paul Hersey & Kenneth H. Blanchard, “Life Cycle Theory of Leadership”, Training and Development Journal, 1969.

3. The McKinsey 7S framework

   Waterman, Peters & Phillips · 1980

   Also known as The seven S’s

   Seven things that have to agree with one another for an organisation to work: strategy, structure, systems, shared values, style, staff and skills.

   Three of them are hard and can be changed by decision; four are soft and change slowly whatever anyone decides. The argument is that a change to one obliges a change to the others, which is why a new strategy imposed on an unchanged structure, unchanged incentives and unchanged habits reliably comes to nothing.

   Reach for it when

   Before a reorganisation, and when a strategy has been announced twice and nothing downstream has moved.

   Where it stops

   It says what has to agree, not what any of them should be. As a diagnosis it is strong; as a design it is empty.

   Robert H. Waterman Jr., Thomas J. Peters & Julien R. Phillips, “Structure Is Not Organization”, Business Horizons, 1980.

4. Mintzberg’s organisational configurations

   Henry Mintzberg · 1979

   Also known as Structure in fives, Mintzberg’s organisational structures

   Organisations settle into a small number of coherent forms, and mixing the parts of different forms rarely works.

   Mintzberg describes a handful of configurations — from the simple, founder-led firm through the standardised bureaucracy, the professional organisation and the divisional group to the project-based adhocracy — each with its own way of coordinating work and its own dominant part. The argument is about fit: structure has to suit the work, the environment and the other design choices, and borrowing a practice from another form tends to break the one you have.

   Reach for it when

   When a company has outgrown the way it is organised, and when a structure is being copied from a much larger or very different organisation.

   Where it stops

   The types are ideal forms and most real organisations are hybrids. It helps to see which pull is dominant; it will not draw the organisation chart for you.

   Henry Mintzberg, The Structuring of Organizations, Prentice-Hall, 1979; “Organization Design: Fashion or Fit?”, Harvard Business Review, 1981.

5. The Star Model

   Jay R. Galbraith · 1970s

   Also known as Galbraith’s Star Model

   Organisation design is more than structure: strategy, structure, processes, rewards and people have to be designed together.

   Galbraith’s starting point was that organisations are information-processing systems, and that changing the boxes on a chart does nothing if decisions, incentives and the people in the roles stay the same. Each policy area is a lever, and the design works only when the levers point the same way — otherwise informal workarounds grow up to do what the formal design does not.

   Reach for it when

   When a reorganisation has been reduced to redrawing reporting lines, and when a new structure is in place but behaviour has not changed.

   Where it stops

   It lists what must be aligned without saying what the right alignment is. Culture and power appear only indirectly, and they are often what decides whether a design takes.

   Jay R. Galbraith, Designing Complex Organizations, Addison-Wesley, 1973; Designing Organizations, Jossey-Bass, 1995. Star Model is a trademark of its owners and is named here only to refer to their work.

6. Lewin’s change model

   Kurt Lewin · 1947

   Also known as Unfreeze–change–refreeze, Force field analysis

   A settled way of working is held in place by opposing forces, and change means loosening that balance before a new one can form.

   Lewin’s interest was in the forces that keep a group’s behaviour stable — those pushing for change and those resisting it. His practical observation was that reducing resistance often achieves more than pushing harder, since pressure tends to call up counter-pressure. The familiar three steps of unfreezing, moving and refreezing came to stand for this work.

   Reach for it when

   When a change keeps being announced more forcefully and the resistance grows to match, and before a change effort, to name what is currently holding things in place.

   Where it stops

   The tidy three-step model was largely assembled by others after Lewin’s death, and organisations today rarely refreeze at all. The force-field idea travels better than the sequence.

   Kurt Lewin, “Frontiers in Group Dynamics”, Human Relations, 1947; on the model’s later construction, Stephen Cummings, Todd Bridgman & Kenneth G. Brown, “Unfreezing Change as Three Steps: Rethinking Kurt Lewin’s Legacy for Change Management”, Human Relations, 2016.

7. The ADKAR model

   Jeff Hiatt, Prosci · 2006

   Organisations change only when individuals do, and each person has to pass through the same few conditions in order.

   The model follows one person through a change: first understanding why it is happening, then wanting to take part, then knowing how, then being able to do it in practice, and finally having it reinforced so it lasts. Its usefulness is diagnostic — when a change stalls, it asks at which of these points people are stuck, instead of repeating the announcement.

   Reach for it when

   When a change has been communicated thoroughly and adopted poorly, and when training is being offered to people who have not yet accepted the reason for the change.

   Where it stops

   It looks at individuals, not at the structures and incentives around them; a person can pass every stage and still be defeated by a system that rewards the old behaviour. It is also a commercial method, taught through its owner.

   Jeff Hiatt, ADKAR: A Model for Change in Business, Government and Our Community, Prosci Research, 2006. ADKAR and Prosci are registered trademarks of their owners and are named here only to refer to their work.

These are other people’s models, named here so you can go to the source and use them properly. The Omnigoal is not affiliated with their authors and is not endorsed by them; nothing of theirs is reproduced here — no canvas, no diagram, no wording. Each is described in our own words, with the originator credited, because the framework is a place to put thinking, not a replacement for the people who did it. Model names and trademarks belong to their respective owners and are used here only to refer to the work itself.

Draw the decisions as well as the boxes. An organisation chart shows who reports to whom and says nothing about who decides, which is where much of the friction lives.