Naomi Stanford

A new approach to structuring a business to support strategy and maximise efficiency. Organisation design matters. Every organisation has a better chance of success if it's designed properly, and that design is regularly reviewed, refreshed and updated to reflect and support organisational goals. Based on the latest thinking and research, and taking into account the profound impact the Covid-19 pandemic has had on how we think about work, Designing Organisations offers five key principles of organisational design that we can all adopt and deploy. Together, they provide a framework that balances the needs of today's strategies and operations with the agility to look ahead and meet the challenges of a rapidly evolving business environment.

Why it matters and ways to do it well

Designing Organisations

The Economist Guide to Organisation Design

Thousands of established businesses fail every year because of the way they are organised, or re-organised. Business survival can depend not only on whether its structures and reporting lines meet the needs of the market, but also whether they can adapt in the face of a rapidly changing business environment. Yet managers seldom talk coherently about structuring or restructuring their operations, let alone take a systematic approach to this vital issue. Too often, companies are restructured for the wrong reasons - for example, because a new CEO wants to make an impact, or to work around a new IT system. This revised and updated Economist Guide shows how leaders should think about and implement the design of a company, using five easy-to-use guiding principles: - Design a company around its strategy and the operating context, not for ulterior or non-business reasons; - Think holistically - don't restructure just one division without taking into account other operations;- Consider future markets, customers and trends, not just what works best now;- Invest time and resources: - a redesign can be complicated to implement and must be done without disrupting daily activities; and - Go back to the basics of how the company operates and its market position; this is not a repair job to fix a short-term problem.

Creating High Performance and Adaptable Enterprises

The Economist Guide to Organisation Design 2nd Edition

An organisation's culture either gives it a competitive advantage or a competitive disadvantage. It is a crucial factor in determining how successful a business is and how much people want to work for an organisation. That is why managers are putting more and more emphasis on getting their organisation's culture right. This book provides a route map for managers who want to ·Get a grip on why culture matters and the effect it has on success.·Understand, define and measure their organisation's culture.·Position their organisation's culture: aligning it with the business strategy. ·Avoid the common mistakes of "culture change" programmes. ·Keep their culture dynamic, responsive and resourceful.Full of real life example from companies as diverse as Ikea, GE, Microsoft, Google, eBay, McDonalds, Procter & Gamble, Unilever, Wal-Mart and Tesco, the book also includes a series of wide-ranging practical exercises that will help managers analyse and make their organisation's culture a powerful driver of success.

Getting it Right

Organisation Culture

How corporate culture affects a company's long-term success Today, more and more managers are learning that an organization's culture matters, and are, therefore, putting greater emphasis improving their company culture. The Economist's Organization Culture: Getting It Right can help. In Organization Culture, Naomi Stanford provides a road map for managers who want to: understand the power corporate culture has on a company's success; understand, define, position, and measure their organization's culture; avoid the common and costly mistakes of "culture change" programmes; and, keep their culture dynamic, responsive and resourceful. The book Provides case studies on the business culture of companies like Google, IKEA, eBay, Wal-Mart, Microsoft, and Lehman Brothers Describes cultural patterns within organizations, and offers useful exercises on shaping a positive corporate culture Other titles by Stanford: Guide to Organization Design: Creating High-Performing and Adaptable Enterprises Organization Culture addresses all facets of company culture, offering managers commonsense, practical, realistic and pragmatic approaches that will help them improve all aspects of how they do business, regardless of the type of business they're in.

Getting It Right

Corporate Culture

Organizational Health is an organization's ability to function effectively, to cope adequately, to change appropriately, and to grow from within. A healthy organization is just that in all its aspects: people, process, structures, systems, behaviours and governance. It is one where appropriate adaptive, maintenance and development activities are integral to maintaining performance and alignment in the operating environment. Organizational Health takes an informed look at the critical and interdependent elements of an organization that must be maintained in a healthy state for managers to meet their business goals. Using a practical, structured approach it covers: understanding and assessing organizational health; the impact of structures on organizational health such as hierarchies, alliances and joint ventures; control methods such as corporate governance, ethics and compliance; maintenance and development including OD, change management, learning and workplace environment; sustainability including carbon footprint and business ecosystems; indicators of health and dysfunction. Additional material and a weekly blog is available by visiting the author's website: www.naomistandford.com

An Integrated Approach to Building Optimum Performance

Organizational Health

Organization Design looks at how to (re)design an organizational system in order to increase productivity, performance and value, and provides the knowledge and methodology to design an adaptive, agile organization capable of handling the kind of continuous organizational change that all businesses face. The book clarifies why and how organizations need to be in a state of readiness to design or redesign, and emphasizes that people as well as business processes must be part of design considerations. With an enhanced international focus, this third edition includes new material on: organization design theories designing ethical, diverse and inclusive organizations the role of leaders in organization design work organization design in public sector organizations and evaluating the success of an organization design project Aided by a range of pedagogical features and downloadable resources, this book is a must-read for students or practitioners involved in organizational design, development and change.

The Practitioner’s Guide

Organization Design

As the purse strings tighten company costs need to be cut without this affecting performance or sales. A common solution to this problem is to restructure the organization of the company i.e. adjust the lines and boxes on the organization chart with the aim of setting it up for high performance. This inevitably fails because an organization is a system; change one aspect and other facets will also change. Organization Design: Engaging with change looks at how to (re) design the organizational system in order to increase productivity, performance and value; providing the knowledge and methodology to design an agile organization capable of handling the kind of continuous organizational change that all businesses face. The book clarifies why and how organizations need to be in a state of readiness to design or redesign and emphasizes that people as well as business processes must be part of design considerations. Responding to developments across the world since the first edition, this book covers, among other topics: Technology changes that have impacted upon organizations Increased demands for ‘sustainability’ and corporate social responsibility The pressure on organizations to be smarter, more efficient and more effective Whilst the material on this subject targets a wide management audience, this book is specifically written for consultants, OD/HR practitioners and line managers working together to achieve the goal of organizational redesign for changing circumstances. Aided by a range of pedagogical features, this book is a must-read for students or practitioners involved in the field of organizational design, development and change.

Engaging with Change

Revised edition of the author's Organization design, 2014.

The Practitioner's Guide

Organization Design looks at how you need to change the ways your organization does things in order to increase productivity, performance, and profit. Providing the knowledge and method to handle the kind of recurring organisational change that all businesses face, those which do not involve transforming the entire enterprise but which necessitate significant change at the business unit, divisional, functional, facility or local levels. The problem lies in knowing what needs to change and how to change it. Taking the organisation as a designed system, it describes four major elements of organizations: the work - the basic tasks to be done by the organisation and its parts, the people - characteristics of individuals in the organization, formal organization - structures eg the organisation hierarchy, processes, and methods that are formally created to get individuals to perform tasks, informal organization - emerging arrangements including variations to the norm, processes, and relationships, commonly described as the culture or 'the way we do things round here'. The way these four elements relate, combine and interact affects productivity, performance and profit. Most books on this subject target a wide management audience rather than HR, this is specifically written for HR practitioners and line managers working together to achieve the goal. It clarifies why and how organisations need to be in a state of readiness to design or redesign and emphasises that people as well as business processes must be part of design considerations.

Naomi Stanford

Books

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