Organisational Change during a Pandemic- Part 2
This is the second blog post of a 3-part series that looks into how to kickstart recoverability during the current pandemic.
In the first blog, I explained the use of tools/ techniques that could be deployed by business leaders and employees alike to quickly rethink their business's ways of working.
In this article, I will review the next four actions with the aim is to look at organisational change.
1. Organisational Structure ¹
Proactive businesses, in general, tend to react with speed to change as more people tend to take action, with fewer feeding an overly bureaucratic monster. With the need to embrace the “need for urgency” (a military term I used in my first article) and lean-agile principles, a theme I have and will apply to all the 3-part blogs, there is a real need to drive a flatter organisation to improve agility and speed to react to new emerging and challenging opportunities. To put it more precisely, relooking at team network dynamics and behaviours to organise and how work gets done.
It is not surprising to see transformation programmes being taken off hold (slowly but surely) under the current pandemic, where valuable time has been lost. These initiatives are enablers for real-time collaboration with co-location taking precedents in the current digital world. David Ricardo (a British political economist) developed the theory of comparative advantage, where the principle could be applied here, to specialise or concentrate in what we are good at or to create centres of excellence to build capability platforms where specialist teams with specific skills, tools, talent is needed the most, to share best-practice. A bit like a global process owner (GPO) committee/ team/ member.
2. SAFe ¹
Not safe to be safe, but a project management technique to support successful transformation agendas into Lean-Agile enterprises. SAFe agile training helps businesses understand the need for urgency and the need for change by adopting new ways of working to thrive and flourish, whilst other businesses struggle and go extinct.
Food for thought? At this point, I will not go into SAFe fundamentals here. If you are interested in finding out more about SAFe methodology please feel free to contact me ³.
3. Hybrid working styles ¹
It is true to say that remote working has become the norm, coupled with onsite colleague meetings. I see the benefit of this as employers (whose hand has been forced due to the pandemic) has unlocked greater employee satisfaction, potential to reduce property office costs through co-location.
Including, access to a broader range of interim consultant talent (not location dependent) that are more flexible, nimble, highly specialised and skilled to gives businesses flexibility and the solutions required.
To achieve these benefits, businesses need to ensure that the basics are in place to digitally enable remote working and collaboration, whilst being mindful of mental health and fostering social togetherness. This will involve understanding the roles, which can be done better onsite, offsite, remotely or with teams to help create a strong valued culture, camaraderie and trust.
4. Moving your Operating Model to a Future Orientated Digital Target Operating Model (TOM)
First of all, an operating model is both an abstract and visual representation of how an organisation delivers value to its customers or beneficiaries as well as how an organisation actually runs itself.
For those who do not know what the steps are involved in building one, the diagram below outlines the basic roadmap on building an operating model:
The above work will be necessary if you do not have an existing operating model to scale up to your next-generation/ future digital target operating model.
This is especially true where the pandemic has partly stimulated the use of disruptive technology to harness the creation of a digital-related service proposition, how your business works today versus what is necessary to put in place as a next-generation target operating model that will sustain new levels of speed, agility, efficiency and precision that will require a three-pronged approach as shown below:
Key takeaways on building your Future Orientated Digital Target Operating Model:
To help businesses identify the way forward, I have listed out a number of thought-provoking questions on what is needed, not to just identify value from digital services, but how to capture it as well.
What operating model is needed to simultaneously disrupt the existing processes to drive value and improve the customer experience while reducing the costs to serve?
Some questions business leaders need to ask themselves:
How do we actually build it and what does the roadmap actually look like?
What is our end journey and what initiatives will deliver the most shareholder value?
Do we have the right mix of capabilities and skills to meet our new digital TOM?
How do we set up teams to be successful under the new TOM?
What our IT strategy to support a digital TOM?
How can we scale and sustain the operating model across the entire group?
How do we support a SAFe and customer-centric culture?
How do we put in place and embed the new skills, technologies and processes?
Admittedly these are not simple questions to answer, but the right ones and ultimately for serious business leaders to answer them and even engage the help of external interim consultants ³ to deliver their strategy in house ³.
On that note, I leave you with another quote from The Great Mahatma Gandhi who said:
“Happiness is when what you think, what you say and what you do are in harmony… where even a bit of real practice is worth a thousand empty words.” ²
In my final blog post in this series, I will examine what ingredients make a good workforce.
Dee Singh Kothari is a senior partner in Kothari Partners
¹ Ideas expressed in this article are solely of the authors. The author nor Kothari Partner’s accept any liability for the incorrect application of these ideas either used by companies, employees or other individuals alike.
² Quotes from The Great Mahatma Gandhi- (1869- 1948)- abbreviated by the author to confer the original meaning.
³ At Kothari Partners, we have worked with various UK and overseas listed and PE-backed clients across various industries to consider how their business and finance services can bring them both cost reductions and performance improvement.
Our approach is to help our clients understand their current situation, identify the value and decide on the scope, vision and set of strategies for what they could achieve for their business. We help plan their implementation and support them and deliver the solution/ change needed, so it is properly and permanently embedded in their organisation.
We aim to help past and future clients by delivering high-quality work to their organisation, generate real efficiencies and free up time to support better business decisions.
For a confidential discussion please free to contact us, via our corporate website: https://dipakagkothari.wixsite.com/website