What Should You Change?

What Should You
Change?
Don Zillioux, Ph.D.
Founder/Chief Scientist
Strategic Development Worldwide
donz@sdwnet.com
© 2005-2017, DZ/Strategic Development Worldwide. All rights reserved. 1

On
Organizational
Alignment
• Many CEOs perceive organization
alignment as a tough, daunting challenge
and it can be if the process is not well
defined and accepted by everyone in the
organization. What is organization
alignment? It’s a state in which every
person in the organization has a clear and
agreed-upon understanding of his role in
delivering the organization’s strategy. It’s
obtained through a process of numerous
(and often heated) discussions leading to
consensus on what results each team in
the organization and each member of each
team are accountable to deliver in support
of the overall strategy.
© 2005-2017, DZ/Strategic Development Worldwide. All rights
reserved.
2

Alignment
• There are two types of alignment –
horizontal and vertical. Horizontal
alignment refers to the resolution of all
role overlaps within the team and
between teams so that waste and
conflict are minimized. Vertical
alignment refers to the sufficiency of
output through all the parts of the
organization so that the results that
need to be produced are accounted for
within the organization (i.e., nothing
falls between the cracks).
reserved.
3

Alignment
• Organization alignment starts with the
leadership team having clarity and
agreement on the top-level outputs of
the organization. We call these
effectiveness areas. They describe the
important results the organization
must deliver to achieve their long-term
strategies. To make these results
tangible and manageable, key success
metrics must be developed for each
one and there must be agreement
amongst all members of the team that
these are the collective success
indicators for the organization.
reserved.
4

Alignment
• The next step in the alignment process
is that each member of the team must
reach agreement with all other
members of the team on his individual
effectiveness areas and success
measures which again must align both
horizontally and vertically with the
team overall.
reserved.
5

Alignment
To fully align the organization, this process is
repeated in a cascading fashion throughout the
organization. This will ensure your people at all
levels are doing the right things for the right reasons
and that your teams are reaching their maximum
potential. We’ve spoken of the alignment of results
which is an extremely important aspect of
alignment, but effective organization alignment
encompasses a broader scope:
1. alignment of activities in support of
results,
2. alignment of decision-making authorities,
3. alignment of process accountabilities and
4. even alignment of the team leaders’ roles
with the needs of their respective teams.
reserved.
6

1. Alignment of activities in support of results
reserved.
7

2. Alignment of decision-making authorities
reserved.
8

3. Alignment of process accountabilities
reserved.
9

4. Even alignment of the team leaders’ roles
with the needs of their respective teams
reserved.
10

Alignment
• In other words, effective organization alignment is a broad set of concepts and processes
that need to be approached systematically and with discipline and continuously
maintained and adjusted as situations evolve and new opportunities arise.
reserved.
11

Alignment
• With effective organization alignment,
employees are committed to the CEO’s
vision and direction. They understand
the strategy, understand their roles
within the overall plan and are
dedicated to getting it done. Each team
also understands the impact of its
efforts on the organization and the
customer. The net result is that the
whole organization becomes stronger
and more effective than the sum of its
parts; the whole company is working
on the right things at the right time.
reserved.
12

Eight Types of
Change
Objectives
1. Structural objectives deal with
reorganization. This might be moving power
around by clarifying roles or simply
reorganizing.
reserved.
13

Eight Types of
Change
Objectives
• Effectiveness objectives deal with outputs of
individuals or the organization. This might relate
to improved corporate strategy or very broadly,
to improved organizational effectiveness.
reserved.
14

Eight Types of
Change
Objectives
• Effectiveness objectives deal with outputs of
individuals or the organization. This might relate
to improved corporate strategy or very broadly,
to improved organizational effectiveness.
reserved.
15

Eight Types of
Change
Objectives
• Decision-making objectives are critical in any
firm. Should decision-making be more
centralized or more decentralized; should
power be moved?
reserved.
16

Eight Types of
Change
Objectives
• Interface objectives deal with relationships
between organization parts. The most obvious
one is between production and marketing,
which sometimes do not cooperate as much as
they might.
reserved.
17

Eight Types of
Change
Objectives
• Communication objectives must have
everyone’s agreement not only that it needs to
be improved but also exactly what that means.
reserved.
18

Eight Types of
Change
Objectives
• Flexibility objectives deal with changes in
power and resources of members of the top
team and with overcoming the resistance of
managers.
reserved.
19

Eight Types of
Change
Objectives
• Individual objectives relate generally to
personal or interpersonal needs, such as job
satisfaction and improved candor
reserved.
20

Eight Types of
Change
Objectives
• Style objectives deal with the choice of
managerial and organizational style. Should the
organization have a bureaucratic, separated
kind of style or should the organization be a
more dedicated, production-oriented type?
reserved.
21

The five structural
change objectives
Clarify roles: Define authority and therefore,
responsibility
reserved.
22

The five
structural
change
objectives
• Reorganize: Essentially, move the
various positions around somehow.
reserved.
23

The five
structural
change
objectives
• Flatten pyramid: Increase the span of
control and thus remove one or more
layers of management.
reserved.
24

The five structural change objectives
• Add layer of management: This objective is often necessary when a company has grown by
acquisition and the CEO finds 20 units reporting directly to the position. Clearly, there is a
need for an assistant CEO level.
reserved.
25

The five
structural
change
objectives
• Remove layer of management: As
organizations grow, layers of
management are often added quite
unconsciously. Removing a layer of
management does not apply simply to
CEO and assistant CEO; it can apply
equally well to supervisor and assistant
supervisor.
reserved.
26

The five effectiveness change objectives
• Improve organizational effectiveness: This broad objective can easily be measured by
lower costs or improved service to clients.
reserved.
27

The five
effectiveness
change
objectives
• Improve managerial effectiveness:
Sometimes the change should be
based on the individual manager rather
than the organization as a whole.
reserved.
28

The five
effectiveness
change
objectives
• Improve profit planning: If the
organization is well structured and the
managers reasonably motivated, the
problem may be that they do not have
a good planning cycle and that they do
not have sharp pencils or spend time
planning.
reserved.
29

The five
effectiveness
change
objectives
• Introduce or improve management by
objectives (EMBO): This objective
requires a well-planned introduction or
a regeneration of an MBO that did not
work as well as was expected
reserved.
30

The five
effectiveness
change
objectives
• Improve corporate strategy: Ask the
fundamental question: what business
are we in? This is more than sales plans
for one or two years.
reserved.
31

The five
decision-
making change
objectives
• Improve teamwork: Make more decisions on a
group basis and emphasize the quality of the
decision and the team commitment to it. This
means more than improving relationships
orientation.
reserved.
32

The five
decision-
making change
objectives
• Introduce participative management: This
objective is problematic because some people
think it means lower levels getting more
involved in their work directly, while others
think it means lower levels getting involved
more in the senior levels of work.
reserved.
33

The five
decision-
making change
objectives
• Move decision-making downward: Many
organizations talk about the desirability of doing
this, but use such general terms as
“decentralize,” “participation” and “delegation.”
However, “move decision making downward” is
probably better than all of these because it
states quite clearly what is intended.
reserved.
34

The five
decision-
making change
objectives
• Centralize: This broad objective can be made
specific by the measurement methods attached
to it. One can centralize some things, while
leaving many other things not centralized.
reserved.
35

The five
decision-
making change
objectives
• Improve problem-solving climate: Improve the
quality of decisions and the commitment to
them solely by using more group methods and a
greater degree of candor.
reserved.
36

The five
interface-change
objectives
• Optimize the system: Organizations consist of units or
positions and aggregates of positions. Sometimes the
units do not connect well with each other. In short, the
interfaces do not run. Optimizing the system means
getting the organization to work as a whole rather than
getting the individual units or positions to improve their
own effectiveness alone.
reserved.
37

The five
interface-change
objectives
• Improve horizontal communication: The most
important communication problems can be horizontal,
rather than the more commonly perceived vertical ones.
reserved.
38

The five
interface-change
objectives
• Improve inter-functional cooperation: There may be
some specific functions, often production or marketing,
that do not cooperate as well as they might.
reserved.
39

The five
interface-change
objectives
• Improve HQ-field relationships: Sometimes level A does
not work well with level B.
reserved.
40

The five
interface-change
objectives
• Facilitate a merger: Address not only the financial
problems but also the human ones. Often a merger
results in a combined balance sheet but no real
combination of effort.
reserved.
41

The five communication change objectives
• Improve upward communication: Sometimes those at the top are not listening enough to
those at the bottom.
reserved.
42

• Improve downward communication: Some senior managers think that this is always the
problem.
reserved.
43

• Increase output of new ideas: Essentially, this is creativity but it leads to better
measurement methods than the term creativity might.
reserved.
44

• Increase use of new ideas: Many organizations have a very high output of new ideas but
for one reason or another they do not seem to be able to apply them. In that case this
objective would be better than increasing the number of ideas; it would be much better to
use the ones they have already.
reserved.
45

• Create greater autonomy: This means less inter-unit communication. Sometimes
organizations are composed of parts that should not be together. Then great effort is spent
on making the parts all work together, when in fact a different organizational structure
should be created.
reserved.
46

The five flexibility change objectives
• Improve organizational flexibility: Make the organization respond better to
external forces such as competition, government legislation, or new
technology. Some organizations grow old too soon. They lose their power
to adapt.
reserved.
47

The five flexibility change
objectives
• Improve manager flexibility: In some organizations particularly
at middle management level, managers tend to increase their
resistance and lower their flexibility. Top management wants to
introduce a change but finds it is resisted. The easiest way to
unfreeze middle managers is to send them to a one-week
seminar
reserved.
48

• Revitalize management: Get managers to rethink what they are doing.
reserved.
49

• Improve marketing orientation: Get the organization to think more of the
market than of their own production system.
reserved.
50

• Facilitate system introduction: It is quite common for a new budgeting
system, a new management information system or a new computer system
to be introduced with little thought of the human side.
reserved.
51

• Improve marketing orientation: Get the organization to think more of the
market than of their own production system.
reserved.
52

The five
individual
change
objectives
• Improve climate: Each organization has a
climate or culture. It amounts to “the way we
do things around here.”
reserved.
53

The five
individual
change
objectives
• Improve candor: In some organizations people
do not talk to other people about the right
things often enough.
reserved.
54

The five
individual
change
objectives
• Improve job satisfaction: Arrange the situation
so the individual whistles on the way to work
rather than on the way home.
reserved.
55

The five
individual
change
objectives
• Serve individual needs: Some organizations
want to do a better job of integrating the needs
of the individual with the needs of the
organization. Sometimes this is very difficult but
sometimes it can be done.
reserved.
56

The five
individual
change
objectives
• Increase individual autonomy: This can relate
to such things as job enrichment. In essence it
means letting the individual get on with it
without being told as much as before.
reserved.
57

The five style change
objectives
• Increase separated managing: Increase emphasis on
systems orientation and procedures.
reserved.
58

objectives
Increase related
managing: Increase
emphasis on people
reserved.
59

objectives
Increase dedicated managing: Increase emphasis on
getting the work done with reference to cost and quality.
reserved.
60

objectives
Increase integrated managing: Increase emphasis on both
people and work.
reserved.
61

objectives
Increase matrix managing: Increase emphasis on
designing the organization around project teams rather
than around strict functional areas.
reserved.
62

Characteristics
of the Results-
Focused
Organization
• There are seven characteristics of the results-focused
organization, which we consider:
• An organization output statement.
• An organization design, which will achieve the
organization, output statement.
• A clear understanding by all managers of the
meaning of outputs and effectiveness.
• Integration of key systems with the concept of
outputs.
• Linking of organization, unit and manager outputs.
• A flexible response to achieve outputs.
• Creation of one’s own approach to outputs, not
copying those of others.
reserved.
63

Characteristics
of the Results-
Focused
Organization
• An organization output statement.
reserved.
64

Characteristics of the
Results-Focused
Organization
An organization design, which will achieve the organization,
output statement.
reserved.
65

Results-Focused
Organization
A clear understanding by all managers of the meaning of
outputs and effectiveness.
reserved.
66

Results-Focused
Organization
Integration of key systems with the concept of outputs.
reserved.
67

Characteristics
of the Results-
Focused
Organization
• Linking of organization, unit and
manager outputs.
reserved.
68

Characteristics of the Results-Focused
Organization
• A flexible response to achieve outputs.
reserved.
69

Characteristics of the Results-Focused Organization
• Creation of one’s own approach to outputs, not copying those of
others.
reserved.
70

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