How to Design an Agile Organizational Structure

/in , , , /by

Because Standing Still is So Last Century

 

In today’s business landscape, staying stagnant is a death sentence. The organizations thriving right now? They’re nimble, they’re agile, and they’re ready to pivot faster than a start-up launching a new app. The key to agility starts with your organizational structure.

Gone are the days of rigid hierarchies where decisions trickle down like molasses. What you need is a structure that doesn’t buckle under the weight of change but bends and flexes with it. Think fewer “command-and-control” towers and more “empowered decision-making” hubs.

Building an agile organization is particularly challenging issue for my rapid-growth life science clients. They feel they’re living the “changing tires while going 85 mph” saying. Here’s some of what I’m encouraging them to do:

3 Steps Closer to an Agile Organization

Flatten the Hierarchy

Let’s be real: no one wants to wait weeks for approvals that could’ve been done over Slack in 30 seconds. Empower your teams with the authority to make decisions quickly, within their domains. Of course, we’re not suggesting anarchy (though that would be fun to watch); clear accountability is still crucial, but trust your people to handle more, and watch them rise to the occasion.

Get started:

  1. Eliminate unnecessary approval layers: Identify and remove at least two approval steps in your current process. This will force faster decision-making and create a culture of ownership at all levels.
  2. Implement a “skip-level” feedback system: Encourage direct communication between front-line employees and senior leaders to eliminate bottlenecks. This bypasses the need for middle management to relay every message and keeps leadership more informed.
  3. Create small, autonomous teams: Restructure departments into cross-functional, self-sufficient teams responsible for their own goals. Give them authority to execute without constant executive oversight.

Embrace Cross-Functional Teams

Why does IT always have to sit in one silo while marketing builds a wall around theirs? Break down the barriers. Create teams that bring together diverse perspectives and skill sets. This fosters innovation and allows your organization to solve problems from all angles. Plus, it’ll stop the “that’s-not-my-department” excuse we’ve all heard one too many times.

Get started:

  1. Mix up your meetings: Mandate that every project meeting include members from at least three different departments with a stake in the outcome. This fosters diverse perspectives and cuts down on siloed thinking.
  2. Launch pilot cross-functional projects: Choose two critical projects and form cross-functional teams to execute them from start to finish. Track the efficiency gains and use them as case studies for expanding the model.
  3. Reward collaboration, not just individual results: Incentivize employees based on the success of the team rather than individual performance alone. This shift in rewards drives teamwork and encourages knowledge sharing across functions.

Prioritize Communication (Seriously)

Agility isn’t just about the org chart—it’s about how information flows. Encourage open, honest communication at all levels. And not just the “nice talk” that comes out of a company-wide email. Real communication happens when leaders listen, employees feel heard, and feedback is acted upon. It’s like therapy for your business, but cheaper.

Get started:

  1. Hold daily 15-minute stand-ups: Require all teams to hold short daily meetings to quickly align on priorities and progress. This promotes transparency and keeps everyone connected, even in fast-moving environments.
  2. Introduce a “one-question” leadership check-in: Leaders should ask one simple, yet powerful question weekly: “What’s one thing I don’t know that I should?” This opens up critical conversations that can uncover hidden issues or opportunities.
  3. Use internal social platforms to promote open dialogue: Encourage the use of tools like Slack or Microsoft Teams for real-time, informal communication across all levels. This helps break down barriers between leadership and teams while fostering a more connected culture.

Remember, agility is less about changing your structure every six months and more about building a structure that’s flexible, adaptable, and ready to tackle whatever’s coming next (spoiler: it’s probably something disruptive). Because standing still? That’s so last century.

Who’s Going Back to the Office? Who *Should* Be Going Back?

/in , , , , , , , , , , /by

It’s usually not a simple choice – for companies or for individuals. Companies are making very different decisions. If you’re unsure who should go back to the office, how many days per week, and to do what type of work… here’s a bit of help.

Companies are making very different decisions.

Many people are thinking about being back in the office and what post-pandemic work life looks like. They’re asking questions like “why do I need to be in the office? When do I need to be back in the office? Why aren’t we all back in the office?”

The answers seem as varied as the people asking them. We are hearing weekly what different companies are doing, and the decisions are far from consistent.

  • The largest 4-day work week pilot to date is underway in the UK. For six months, 3,300 people, in 70 companies, across a wide variety of industries are testing the feasibility of a 4-day work week. During the program, workers receive 100% of their pay for working only 80% of their usual week, in exchange for promising to maintain 100% of their productivity. Joe O’Connor, CEO of 4 Day Week Global says “More and more companies are recognizing that the new frontier for competition is quality of life, and that reduced-hour, productivity-focused working is the vehicle to give them that competitive edge,”
  • Elon Musk made news because of a leaked internal memo to Tesla workersin which he says “Anyone who wishes to do remote work must be in the office for a minimum (and I mean *minimum*) of 40 hours per week or depart Tesla… not a remote branch office unrelated to the job duties.’ His reasoning seems to be that by not being in the office at least 40-hours per week, you are “phoning it in.”
  • Akamai went in the opposite direction. Full disclosure – I’ve had the privilege of working with them several times. They announced that as of May 2022, 95% of their nearly 10,000 employees around the world have complete flexibility to decide whether they work at home, in the office, or both. In making this decision, they analyzed all roles in the company against the same criteria, regardless of location, and determined 95% could be done with complete flexibility. Flexibility has been part of their culture for years but never to this extent. The analysis bolstered their belief that employees should decide what is best for them.
So, who’s doing what?  A Robin survey of more than 10,000 offices globally found that:
  • Nearly 20 percent of American office workers are back one day a week
  • About 10 percent are back two days a week
  • Just five percent are back three days a week
  • Even fewer are back four or five days a week
  • More than 50 percent do not use the office consistently every week.

The idea of everyone needing to be in the office or at the same site goes back to the industrial and pre-digital work environment. Materials were most efficiently used in a single location. Communication happened face-to-face or by phone. In my early consulting career, I worked for a firm where a large percentage of the consultants coded all day – onsite, in person. The technology was different then so there really wasn’t another option. However, these people spent 90% of their time in their cubes, working individually. With today’s digital environments, you could easily see that being in-person would probably be of little impact on their work.

Recent research finds that working collaboratively face-to-face (F2F) has an impact on creativity. A study of nearly 1,500 engineers in five different countries were randomly paired to create product ideas F2F or via video call. The study showed video conferencing had a negative impact on idea generation but did not make a difference in the ability to critically evaluate creative ideas. Since creativity begins with new or adaptive ideas, face-to-face could be critical to your innovation and problem-solving strategies.

What’s the right model for how we work? Different companies will have different needs, jobs will have different needs, people will have different needs. And, that’s a new way of thinking.  Many roles are much more nuanced than the coder example I shared above, so the choice is not that simple. It will take months, probably years before we understand the benefits and drawbacks of any model. At the end of the day, the answer will probably be, it depends.

“It depends” is not a great response for people seeking answers.  So, here’s a little help figuring things out. If you and your team are still deciding how to manage the Great Transition, you may want to start with looking at the nature of the work. Even if your organization is committed to a consistent hybrid model (i.e., everyone in the office 2 days per week), it may help you determine how to use those in-office days vs remote days.

You can start with a simple 2×3 matrix that allows you to map tasks to three task categories – creative, analytical, or transactional/process — and the degree of interactivity associated with the task – is it primarily individual or collaborative, and the amount of your time you spend on each task.

For example, if I am analyzing the data in a spreadsheet, it is primarily an individual task. If I am one of several people brainstorming a new solution, working collaboratively on this analysis will generate better results. Analyzing different solutions may work as well remotely as FTF depending on the nature of what’s being analyzed.  Also, creative and analytical processes can be co-dependent and concurrent, so working collaboratively, FTF on this analysis might generate better results. Think of this as a continuum between Creative and Transactional.

Here’s an example, below:

We’re working with leaders, teams and organizations right now helping them be successful in the new world of work through customizable programs and consulting engagements.  How can we help you?