Mapping Organizational Design: Part One
Professor/Author/Speaker
Simon Fraser University
Terri Griffith holds the Keith Beedie Chair in Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Simon Fraser University’s Beedie School of Business. She spent two decades in the Silicon Valley and, in 2012 was honored as a Woman of Influence by the Silicon Valley Business Journal. Terri helps her students and their organizations accelerate performance and prepare for the futures of work. Through her speaking, writing, teaching, and research, she brings evidence-based leadership and innovation to high-tech, education, and global agribusiness organizations. She inspires and coaches groups on negotiating change and uniquely mixing existing and new capabilities. Her most recent work uses a “bottom-up” approach to automation, including artificial intelligence.
Her award-winning book, The…...
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1
When I first starting teaching the MBA course, “Organizational Analysis and Design,” I went in search of a tool to offer the students as they learn to describe organizations and think about organizational redesign. I’ve generally had the students read some version of Jay Galbraith’s work (Galbraith Star Model) and pieces of Nadler and Tushman’s “Mapping organizational Terrain.” One of the first things we do is look at the two models and think about how they fit in the students’ organizations. Quickly it’s clear that these models were written when technology was considered more like plumbing and less like a strategic opportunity for organizational design (or possible ways to augment or fully-substitute for human work).
Adding Technology to Traditional Organizational Design Frameworks
Organization design’s goal is to support the strategy of the organization. Give me a strategy and we can work out a design. Galbraith and Nadler and Tushman are foundations, but we need something that matches modern organizations, while is still basic enough to have top of mind for evaluating or creating thoughtful proposals, making sure you don’t let a particular dimension get dropped from discussion, or getting your thoughts together for an unexpected job interview.
My students and I end up drawing this image almost every class session. For shorter courses, like my sessions in the 21st Century Management program, I give them a stack of templates. At some point I break out one of my Skwish toys to demonstrate interconnections across different organizational design dimensions.
I’m now going to turn this post over to past student, Shandon Fernandes, for the real story:
From a Student’s Perspective
On the first day of class, Terri divided us into groups and sent us to nearby restaurants. The goal was to come back with an assessment of the organization -- without doing any interviews.
Our six member team was assigned to a nearby Starbucks. When we arrived at the store, we started to think about organization from the point of view of the business owners and made customer service and satisfaction a primary focus.
This assumption, that the most important thing for a business entity is the end result of what your customers get, led us to make shallow and casual observations, like how the two baristas rotated between counter and coffee making. We assumed this was to the benefit of the customers. At no point did we stop to think about the corporation’s policies and how other organizational dimensions could be interacting with each other. In retrospect, our observations were missing vital elements and the connected nature of the various dimensions of the star framework Terri would help us develop when we got back to class.
Star Framework Dimensions
- People – Psych 101 material. How do people behave (whether or not they are in an organizational setting)? People generally like rewards and don’t like punishments. Different generations may have different preferences.
- Process – This dimension allows for an evaluation of organizational policies. Hiring, performance, pay, training, any policy or procedure, big or small.
- Technology – Technology forms a crucial and inevitable part of the STAR Model. Technology has not only transformed the nature of and specializations of jobs but offers organizations an effective tool to evaluate and transform their operations when used appropriately. Ranges from the kind of office furniture you have to electronic communication to robots and artificial intelligence.
- Structure – Structure lays out the location of decision-making and authority. This is where team-based strategies and org charts are considered.
- Context -- Context is the linking point to many other MBA courses. Is this an international business or a local one? Is the market trending up or down?
Soon after that field trip experience we had our first Harvard case analysis. Many found it difficult to put the complexities of the case in perspective. Terri then reminded use to use the star framework as a tool to sort things out. This approach proved useful as we were better able to understand the underlying design of the organization based on the five star dimensions.
Don’t Change Everything All At Once
Terri adds: You also want to avoid trying to change everything all at once, either when playing with a Skwish or implementing all encompassing enterprise software -- I use FoxMeyer’s failure an example.
End of Part One
In Part Two, Shandon applies the star framework to a recent customer experience. Terri and Shandon work out some possible improvements and demonstrate using the template.
Shandon Fernandes is a currently pursuing an MBA at Santa Clara University and is specializing in Leading Innovative Organizations. A Political Science graduate, Shandon has always had an interest in the structure and functioning of government organizations. She has previously served as a Research Officer for a Diplomatic Mission in Mumbai.
Sometimes the greatest lessons can come from our mistakes. The only problem with this is that most people aren’t comfortable talking about their mistakes, which minimizes the opportunity for others to learn. With this in mind, I am going to occasionally write a column called “My Mistakes” where I will share an experience from my career where I failed in the hope that others can avoid similar mistakes. If anyone else is interested in sharing a mistake in a future column, 
Don Tapscott is a leading authority on the impact of technology on society is speaking at 
