advantages and disadvantages of redesigning an organization

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Hi there,

Here is some information for you regarding organizational re-design:

Design Your Organization Structure
and Work Processes for High Performance

Energizing leadership backed up with an effective organization structure and work processes will enable your organization to operate at its optimum. We discuss energizing leadership elsewhere in the site, here we focus on the organization structure and work processes (in other words organization design) that lead to high performance.

Hiring talented people is not enough. The best and brightest employees will not be able to do their best work in a poorly designed workplace. Poor organisation design is one of the leading causes of low employee morale and productivity. There are four critical signs that your organization structure and work processes need improvement:

* High employee turnover (particularly of your most talented people)
* Low productivity
* Increased customer complaints
* Decreased profitability

Organisations are perfectly designed to get the results they get. In other words if you want different results from your business you will need to scrutinize and somehow change your organization design structure and processes.

Organisation design is not new. You may have heard it referred to as (amongst others):

* open system design,
* socio-technical systems design,
* high performance work systems design
* total quality management,
* participative management and
* re-engineering

The name you apply to organization design is not that important. What is important is that the change is approached systematically and you have long-term commitment from the leadership team to follow through, even when it gets tough. Whether you choose to use an organization design model or not, you are constantly making design choices that impact on the performance of your business.

Here are some of the benefits of adopting effective organization structure and work processes:

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Improved Employee Satisfaction: Effective organization design creates a culture of commitment. The people fully understand their accountabilities, authorities, and goals of the business and see themselves as having a significant impact on the success or the organisation.

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Improved Customer Satisfaction: Employees are better able to deliver high quality services and products that meet customer expectations.

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Improved Financial Performance: When an organization's employees and goals are properly aligned, there is greater productivity and less waste which leads to significant returns for the business.

* Improved Competitive Advantage: Effective organization design creates a well-aligned, flexible and productive business that is able to meet the demands of a shifting market place.

High Performance Organisation Design and its impact on Organization Structure and Work Processes:

A High Performance workplace enables each person to contribute their full potential through tapping into their talents, skills, ideas, energy and creativity.

High Performance Organisations generally use an organization design model that supports them in making well thought through choices in structure and work processes that support the delivery of the high performance.

Here are some of the typical elements of a High Performance Work System Design:

* Focused on a common vision
* Business focused
* Integrated design of people and equipment
* Flat organisational structure
* Multi-skilled team members
* Principle based rather than rule based
* Committed to training and learning

Should you attempt an Organisation Re-Design?

It depends. Organisation re-design can be a timely and costly process (in fact it can take up to 2 years to re-design a business and 15 years of implementation!). The readiness of your business to begin a re-design process is determined by two factors:

The urgency for change to take place
The readiness of the organization to accept widespread change

Ideally you should only begin a re-design process after you have acceptance and ownership of the need to ...