Exploring the Interface of

Organizational Design and

Work System Design
Creating Sustainably
Effective Organizations
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Strategy and Design: The Star Model
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Core Premises About
Organizational Effectiveness
The resources of the organization must be
configured in an organization design that
fits the strategy of the organization and
enables the capabilities/key work
processes required to deliver value to the
stakeholders.
Effective work systems must be designed to
deliver high quality services and products
while consuming resources efficiently.
Harsh V Bhasin
Sustainably Effective Organizations
Enterprises that are sustained by solid
financial performance, while improving:
the lives of people
the health of the communities in which they live
the condition of the planet
Have the capability to flexibly reconfigure
both their organization and work system
designs
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Three approaches:
For organizations that continually
adapt and innovate to be sustainable.
1. Flexible, high performance work
system design
2. Lateral work structures
3. Agile management systems
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Flexible, high performance
work system design
Include socio-technical systems
approaches, lean designs and six sigma
approaches that build quality, reliability
and efficiency into the routine processes
of the organization that deliver value to
customers and process for continual
improvement and reengineering of
processes.
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Lateral work structures
Lateral work structures that cut across
the core units of the organization and
allow resources and knowledge to be
flexibly combined to focused on
problems and opportunities.
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Agile Management Systems
Agile management systems that allow
rapid, multistakeholder approaches to
strategy, innovation, organization
redesign, and change implementation.
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The Organization is a system
with inputs and outputs.

Two Kinds of Work
Core Work of the Organization takes inputs and
delivers value (products and services) that customers
are willing to pay for. e.g.,
Defining the products and services, including innovation
Producing and delivering these valued products and services
Management Work determines
Purposes, strategy, and goals of the organization
How resources will be organized
How to measure and regulate the system
How to align the organization
How to improve performance and develop new capabilities
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Steps:
Socio-technical System Design
1. Constitute Participative Design Team
2. Specify Social and Technical System Values
3. Map Technical Work Process and Perform
Environmental Scan
4. Identify Key Variances and Places where System
goes out of control
5. Identify Teams to Carryout and Manage whole
Piece Process (maximize self containment )
minimize interdependencies across boundaries
6. Identify organization wide teams to carry out
integration and give voice to employees

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Example:
Wimbys Innovation Network Plan
Wimbys Innovation Network Plan
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Wimbys Innovation Network Plan
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Wimbys Innovation Network Plan
Iterative Process Control
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Variance of
Technical System



Social System
Iterative Planning
Iterative
Time Bound
Feature Based
Incremental
Work Tasks
Interaction
Plan
30/60/90 days
Iteration and reviews for
achieving study state
Study state
requirements
Improved
functionality
Harsh V Bhasin