Cross-Functional Collaboration: Restructuring Your Organisation for Competitive Advantage

If you’re wondering how to begin on your Organisational Design journey, Nine Feet Tall’s consultancy service, as an experienced organisation design consulting firm, can provide you with guidance to get off on the right foot. We will partner with you to develop effective organisational designs using a holistic approach that taps into the core elements which make up an organisation from the processes, roles and responsibilities, technical enablers and decision-making streams. Similarly, if you have been working on your organisational design strategy for a while and have been struggling to get it off the ground, we can assess where you may be going wrong against tried and test criteria to ensure your design work can get back on track.

Our organisational design consultants are a team of experts who can help you design and organise your business from its overall structure down to the roles and resources within it, putting the right people in the right place at the right time as you work through this transition. You’ll benefit from their shared expertise as they help you nurture the tools you need to improve company efficiency and increase team productivity.

When it comes to envisioning where you want your company to go and planning how to get there, it can be difficult to strike the right balance across your organisation.

Differentiation vs Integration
During the organisational design process, you may find it tricky to navigate the tension between differentiation and integration.

For your organisational design to be successful, differentiation (the process by which resources are allocated to tasks and people are divided into departments and hierarchies across an organisation) has to work hand in hand with integration (the process of coordinating tasks, functions and divisions so that they work together rather than in isolation) to ensure that every member of your team is contributing to a united list of objectives. Achieving the right balance here is key to narrowing the gap between where your organisation sits currently and where you want it to sit in the future.

Centralisation vs Decentralisation
Balancing centralisation and decentralisation is also essential to the success of your organisational design. Centralisation, an organisational set up where authority to make decisions lies with the managers at the top of the hierarchy, is useful for several reasons including company evaluation, process and system standardisation and activity coordination, but can also be detrimental to individual initiative, team morale and customer experience.

This is where decentralisation comes in: by diverting some of that authority to managers at all levels rather than focusing it all at the very top of your company hierarchy, you can increase the opportunity for innovation, generate greater insights into your company and help streamline decision making.

Leadership problems and conflicting priorities
It is possible stakeholders within your organisation’s hierarchy may be resistant to the implementation of decentralisation, which can make it difficult to put a new organisational design in place. Authority figures could also have differing opinions on what the organisation’s priorities should be, which can derail the organisational design process.

The best way to combat internal problems such as these is to prioritise good communication and feedback between every member of your organisation, from the stakeholders to the individual team members. When it comes to changing the way you do your business, keeping each employee in the loop can help to maintain personal investment as well as improve motivation and morale.

Emotions may run high
Sometimes people shy away from restructures because of the negative connotations. We can help quell that anxiety. There are three core motivations for design, only one is for cost saving purposes and is likely to result in redundancies but for the most part, OD is about ensuring organisations reach their full potential.

There are two main approaches to organisational design. A hierarchical approach works from the top-down, using an inflexible management structure, whereas an organic approach focuses on flexibility, collaboration and participation across the organisation.

There are several frameworks within these two approaches that could work for your business. If you’re curious about which would suit you best, get in touch with our team who will be happy to discuss your organisational vision.

Organisational design is an essential part of ensuring your company’s future success. The benefits of organisational design are simple:

• Faster growth
• Better decision making
• Improved efficiency
• Greater visibility of your organisation
• Reinforced vision for your organisation’s future
• Growing a culture of continuous improvement

Organisational design usually requires a large-scale review of all elements of your organisation, from the wider structures, policies and practices in place down to ‘unwritten’ company culture, individual performances and reward systems that work to support them. There are three steps to the organisational design process: consideration, planning and support. We will talk you through these steps in more detail during our proposal process.

Before you do anything else, consider the impact that any changes you make will have on your organisation and the people within it. You can do this by evaluating your existing design, examining factors like your company size, your current strategy and your market environment, to identify areas of improvement and envision a new path for your organisation.

The next step is to plan how you get there, gathering input from every department to ensure a collaborative approach that works for everyone. This goes hand in hand with the final step to successful organisational design: support. Not only will your team provide valuable insights into your company processes and feel included in the design process which helps to boost morale, but your new vision for your company will be effectively communicated across your entire organisation.

With an open mind and a clear vision. Understanding where you want your organisation to be in the future is absolutely vital to the success of your redesign; without a goal to work towards, it’s difficult to review with a critical eye or strategise with purpose.