Out of the heirloom treasures (and tax-receipts) from my great-grandparents, my lovely sister present
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January 18 · Issue #28 · View online
Feeding the Passion for Transformation: Be it Talent, Culture, Work or HR
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Out of the heirloom treasures ( and tax-receipts) from my great-grandparents, my lovely sister presented me with an Anthropology book for children, Treedwellers by Katharine E Dopp (1904) - because it was pretty and at one point in time I had studied Anthro. Bored one day, I decided to flip through the gift: it was more a reflection on society’s progress than I was prepared for. I was suprised by Dopp’s questioning the possible, potential detrimental effect of scientific management in education by separating various subjects from their practical application. Dopp stressed the importance of putting knowledge into relevant context (e.g. practical activity) and encouraging exploratory thinking. In the preface, she writes: “Society to-day makes a greater demand than ever before upon each and all of its members for special skill and knowledge, as well as for breadth of view….The isolation of manual training, … from the physical, natural, and social sciences is justifiable only on the ground that the means of establishing more organic relations are not yet available. To continue such isolated activities after a way is found of harnessing them to the educational work is as foolish as to allow steam to expend itself in moving a locomotive up and down the tracks without regard to the destiny of the detached train.” Meaning if a topic is decoupled and not put into context, then it is much harder to see the broader picture and potential impact of one’s actions. In the world of work, this is to the detriment of whatever it is one is trying to produce, sell, or create. Unfortunately, Dopp did not have as much influence outside of pedagogy and Anthropology as one might have hoped (I know, right?!). As, over the last 115 years, many organizations have been built upon the Tayloristic and autocratic model of high specialization for the production of goods or services. Efficient production was maximized and Taylorism did power growth - so much so that it became the norm. The org design prototype follows the key five principles of
- shifting all responsibility for the organization of work from the worker to the manager,
- using scientific methods to determine the most efficient way of doing work,
- selecting the best person for the position as the job is defined,
- train the worker to work efficiently (ahem: not necessarily the most effectively) and
- monitor worker performance to ensure that workers follow the appropriate work procedures
These principles are where the slaying notion of leaving your brains at the door came from. The premise was that a worker is paid for their consistent doing not for their thinking - and that there were others being paid to do this type of work. Based on the above-aforementioned principles, organizations and success measures were set-up in a way that encouraged a “my win” over a “your”, “our” or “customer win”. Examples are Corp vs. operations; sales vs. manufacturing; quality vs. purchasing; engineering vs. finance; view of HR as the labor police, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. These pitfalls are why many organizations nowadays are looking to different models for organizational and role design to foster things that in the world of speed, rapid change and multitude of customer choices are necessary to thrive in a knowledge-based economy. The people function, leaders, and people doing work are heading up the challenge to rethink organizational and role design which foster agility, empowerment, autonomy, collaboration to deliver an amazing user / customer / employee/ stakeholder / social experience that is considered worth paying for. Therefore, in this edition of Transforming Talent, we look alternative types of organizational design, look at design principles and ask questions around what are we willing to give-up/do differently to transform the world of work. In Dopp’s talk, so that the “steam” we expend, leads us to the destination we wish the “detached train” to go.
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Poor work instructions in a knowledge-based economy
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Listen to the Talking About Organizations Podcast Episode - 41: Images of Organization - Gareth Morgan (Part 1) | iHeartRadio
Images of Organization by Gareth Morgan is one of the cornerstone books on the effects of Taylorism and what we believe an organization looks like. Via the use of metaphors, this is a great dive into org design theory.
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Taylorism and The History of Processes: 6 Key Thinkers You Should Know | Process Street
This is a great quick dive into business process management theories - from Taylorism, to continuous improvement, Toyota production system, Systems Theory, Lean Six Sigma, and principles before processes. This is a great quick foundation for asking better questions when designing roles and responsibilities.
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Martin Danoesastro: What are you willing to give up to change the way we work? | TED Talk
What does it take to build the fast, flexible, creative teams needed to challenge entrenched work culture? Martin Danoesastro, asks: “What are you willing to give up?” He shares lessons learned from companies on both sides of the innovation wave on how to structure an organization so that people at all levels are empowered to make decisions fast and respond to change. I loved his analogy at the beginning of his talk. A friend of mine was at the bank at the time and part of the key to the success was setting up the guiding principles for why agile.
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The Unbundling of Jobs and What it Means for the Future of Work Laetitia Vitaud
Laetitia Vitaud dives into the implications for HR, organizations and networks in the future of work as jobs become decoupled. In the mass economy, each job used to be a bundle. With that job came money, health care, a pension, provable solvency to purchase a house and a car, the promise of stability and constant enrichment. In the new world of work, how will those areas be addressed from the People role in organizations? Good fodder for thought.
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The New Work Manifesto | Eat Sleep Work Repeat Sue Todd and Bruce Daisley
One of iTunes most popular podcasts, the founders of the new work manifesto, Sue and Bruce dive into their thinking and their plan for seeing a different way to work. If you wish to dive into the themes deeper, check them out on their s pecific site.
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10 Principles of Organization Design
“Principles before processes” “do not build an organization around personalities or current dependencies” are statements, that those I advise, hear a lot. This is a collection of 10 guidelines, which can help you ask the right questions as you redesign your organization to fit your business strategy.
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Organize for Complexity - Keynote by Niels Pflaeging at Agile Telekom Convention 2015
This is an efficient keynote from Niels on how to Organize for Complexity at Deutsche Telekom back in 2015. Using humour and diagrams, he dives into how to make work work again. Niels also has some great slide-shares on LinkedIn. One of my favourites is “ Turn Your Company Outside-In” How to break the barrier of command-and-control – and create the peak-performance.
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Flatarchie, Holacracy and Virtual: 3 Emerging Business Structures That Might Work For You | TLNT
This is a more hands-on, experience based short article from a soft-ware company directed at HR leaders to think about their competitive advantage for talents with options to offer a non-traditional works truce as a carrot-stick. It is a good quick overview.
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Study: the Mathematics of Street Children Geoffery Saxe | Child Development
Back to Dopp’s point of making learning and concepts relevant for practical application, this study from the 80’s on Brazilian street kids essentially proves her point. Children, with little or no-schooling, where confronted with math problems, were able to solve the problems based on their own novel understandings that they had gained via their work selling candy and fruit. The study underscores the notion that if make it relevant and personal IRL, concepts are understood.
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This question and how to guide the process towards a culture of co-creation has been buzzing around in my brain for awhile. I am now working together with Anne-Cecile Graber on a concept design to help support companies, HR, expertise groups on this subject. If this is something that tickles your interest bone, hit me up and we can dive into more. If the subject of organizational and role design is on your to-do list for 2019 and you would like some support, great - just give me a call or drop me an email. All my best regards, Liz
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Elizabeth Lembke, Transforming Talent Consulting: www.transformingtalent.co and www.transformingtalent.de
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