Question

Taking the position of an organization development consultant, students should recommend the actions that management might take in order to align the organizational structure with the strategic plan in order to maximize the likelihood that the entity will achieve its directional strategy. You’re an external organization development consultant that has been retained by an academic medical center to assist the leadership team is redesigning their management structure. What key considerations are needed when redesigning the management structure? How do you determine “effective” service line management and leadership structures? As an organizational development consultant, what tactical approach would you recommend managers take to “hardwire” new reporting relationships?

Answer 1

Qs 1. What key considerations are needed when redesigning the management structure?

Ans 1. Organization Development (OD) is a complex strategy intended to change the beliefs, attitudes, values, culture and structure of organizations so that they can better adapt to new technologies, markets, and challenges.

Several OD methods are employed to redesign the Management Structure in order to improve the overall Organizational Effectiveness.

1. Emphasis on the longer-term strategic objectives: People often spend too much time on the current deficiencies of an organization as it’s easy to get fixated on what’s wrong today and to be swayed by the vocal (and seemingly urgent) complaints of frustrated teams and their leaders. However, redesigns that merely address the immediate pain points often end up creating a new set of problems.
2. Choosing the right outline: Interestingly, Fortune magazine found that its Most Admired Companies had little in common when it came to aspects of their organizational design, beyond a flexible operating model. This finding is consistent that off-the-shelf solutions aren’t likely to work. The unique mix of strategy, people, and other assets within a company generally requires an individual answer to things like role definition & decision-making power. The key is to get the right set of leaders reviewing options with an open mind in the light of redesigned criteria established by the strategic long-term aspiration.
3. Identify the obligatory mind-set shifts and change those mind-sets: Leaders of organizational-redesign efforts too often see themselves as engineers and see people as cogs to be moved around the organizational machine. Organizations, however, are collections of human beings, with beliefs, emotions, hopes, and fears. Ignoring predictable, and sometimes irrational, reactions is certain to undermine an initiative in the long run. The first step is to identify negative mind-sets and seek to change the way people think about how the organization works.
4. Create metrics that measure short- and long-term success: New metrics, typically focusing on how a changed organization is contributing to performance over the short and long term, are best framed at the aspiration-setting stage. Simple, clear key performance indicators (KPIs) are the way forward.
5. Business leaders should communicate: An interactive cascade (one that allows two-way communication) gives people an opportunity to ask questions and forces top leaders to explain the rationale for change and to spell out the impact of the new design in their own words, highlighting the things that really matter.
6. Manage the transitional risks: Every organizational redesign carries risks such as interruptions to business continuity, employee defections, a lack of personal engagement, and poor implementation. Companies can mitigate the damage by identifying important risks early on and monitoring them well after the redesign goes live.

Qs 2. How do you determine “effective” service line management and leadership structures?

Ans 2. Service Line Management (SLM) has been used by many medical centers in different ways. It’s important to identify if a strategic commitment exists to do a better job of coordinating service delivery for patient populations.

Let’s assume that the Medical Center in question does identify this as a part or redesigned strategy; I will then focus the attention of multiple discrete departments into a singular clinical program that can achieve higher levels of performance in three distinct areas:

1. Improving the patient’s experience of care.
2. Improving the health of patients.
3. Reducing the cost of providing excellent care

In addition to having enough volume to sustain SLM, a service line should be relative to the patient population served. For example, some service lines might be segmented by disease states, such as cancer or heart disease. Other service lines might be organized to address populations with unique needs, such as women, children, or geriatric patients.

In terms of the leadership structure, one of the most common and commonly ignored rules of organizational redesign is to focus on roles first, then on people. This is easier said than done. The temptation is to work the other way around, selecting the seemingly obvious candidates for key positions before those positions are fully defined.

A talent draft that gives all units access to the same people enables companies to fill each level of the new leadership structure in an orderly and transparent way, so that the most capable talent ends up in the most pivotal roles. This approach promotes both the perception and the reality of fairness.

Qs 3. As an organizational development consultant, what tactical approach would you recommend managers take to “hardwire” new reporting relationships?

Ans 3. One of my favourite tactical approach that is recommended to managers to hardwire new reporting relationships is ‘the transition cycle’.

The transition cycle provides a valuable model for organisations, managers and employees to understand the different phases of transition that all employees and groups will go through during a period of change. Understanding this process helps managers to support employees through this natural human process.

It primarily highlights the pattern of feelings and behaviours that employees typically go through when they experience change, whether the change is personal or organisational. The cycle and stages of transition were first recognised in studies of bereavement conducted in the 1960s by specialists such as Elizabeth Kubler-Ross. Later research identified that the process can be triggered by any major life event - good or bad.

An example of trigger events at work include starting a new role, being made redundant or being re-deployed.

There are a number of initiatives and activities that an organisation can employ as part of their plan for transition. The following key factors were first identified by Peter Herriot in his 1999 paper ‘Trust & Transition’:

• Engage in real two-way dialogue, not one-way communication
• Understand the organisational change from the employee’s perspective
• Align the organisations human resources systems to support the employees in transition
• Allow for individual differences in employees’ capacity to cope with change
• Concentrate on providing adequate training, mentoring and coaching for employees affected by change
• Equip managers and employees with the personal and leadership skills to manage change and the transition process.

Hope the aforementioned is free of any ambiguity and is useful to you.

Thanks