An ODx3 Half Dozen
Six posts relating to organisational design, development, and digitalisation
“Clearly, the thing that’s transforming is not the technology — the technology is transforming you.” — Jeanne Ross 1
I’ve just returned from a wonderfully inspiring and engaging three days at the 2022 European Organisational Design Forum (EODF) Conference in Bilbao.2
It was great to be at an in-person event again after two and a half years, and to have the privilege of presenting a session on why we still don’t have much organisational learning 30+ years after The Fifth Discipline was first published. 3
What struck me most powerfully overall was the open, warm, welcoming, collegiate spirit of the EODF community — clearly embodied by the organising team and also widely evident throughout the participants.
It genuinely reflected their aspiration to be “an unrivalled open space” for practitioners.
Although EODF founder Paul Tolchinksy couldn’t be there in person, when he joined the closing session by Zoom it was easy to see where the original spark of the EODF spirit originated. 4
The members clearly have tremendous respect and admiration for Paul — bringing back powerful memories of the affection and esteem in which we in the Society for Organisational Learning held our late colleague Arie de Geus, originator of the concept of organisational learning. 5
So, a warm welcome to new subscribers who’ve signed up for the Create a Future-Fit Culture Substack channel at or after the conference.
Following the conference, I’m going to now try tackling the question: “Where would you suggest I start, given that there are over 70 posts on the channel?”
Below I’ve sought to weave together six posts related to some key themes from conversations at the conference.
I’ll kick off with the concern I voiced when Paul Tolchinsky first asked me to speak at the event — the interpretation of “D” in “OD” as Organisational Design.
Specifically, my concern is whether the very word design implicitly perpetuates the prevailing legacy paradigm of organisation as machine.
Maybe I’m too influenced in my interpretation of the word “design” by my early career as an engineer specialising in digital electronics design and real-time software development for machines and their control systems.
But I can’t yet dismiss a nagging doubt as to whether the challenge of creating future-fit organisations that live and breathe innovation, agility, and adaptiveness can achieve such a paradigm shift by starting from a design stance.
In other words, is starting with design like standing in a bucket and then trying to lift it up by pulling really, really hard on the handle?
When you’re standing in a bucket, it doesn’t matter how hard you pull on the handle, you’ll never get off the ground.
Designing a better bucket, investing in a high-tech gel handle that doesn’t cut into your hand when you pull really, really hard, or going to the gym to develop your upper body strength so you can pull even harder on the handle are all ultimately unhelpful.
Except perhaps in escalating the frustration at expending so much effort to no avail that it eventually triggers the “aha” insight: first step out of the bucket…
What does stepping out of the bucket involve in practice?
I’d suggest it’s about focusing attention and efforts on the highest levels of leverage for systemic change identified by Systems Dynamics legend Donella Meadows, as described in the piece below: Leverage for systemic change.
Which leaves me wondering which of Meadows’ hierarchy of leverage points design addresses..?
Organisational design isn’t my area of expertise — so I’m keen to learn from those for whom it is — but looking at Meadows’ descriptions of the places to intervene in systems it might be Level 4: “The power to add, change, evolve, or self-organize system structure”; or possibly Level 6: “The structure of information flows (who does and does not have access to information)”; or maybe Level 9: “The lengths of delays, relative to the rate of system change”. (Note that Level 12 offers the lowest leverage and Level 1 the highest).
In conversations at the conference it was clear that one of the ongoing debates amongst practitioners is about whether the “D” in “OD” should stand for design or development.
This is a vitally important question reflected in Meadows’ hierarchy described in the post above, because these are themselves different paradigms — i.e. the very highest places to focus in terms of systemic leverage.
Then one of the delegates made the very insightful, and potentially game-changing comment that maybe in future, the “D” needs to stand for Digitalisation. 6
Hence the ODx3 in the title above — Organisational Design, Organisational Development, and Organisational Digitalisation.
What’s potentially so valuable in this insight is that it may have the power to pull practitioners free from the Design vs Development debate and enable a more cohesive community to emerge where less energy goes into debating Design vs Development, and more into collectively achieving greater systemic impact in the world.
Digitalisation is clearly here to stay, and despite the understandable focus of tech vendors on pushing shiny new apps, architectures and platforms, the deeper challenge is ensuring an effective human experience. 7
The technology vendors have of course been very quick off the mark, but when digitalisation is approached tech first it often results in the tail wagging the dog.
Which tees us up for the second of today’s six linked posts on what can go wrong, does go wrong, and is going wrong with many digitalisation attempts: Digital déjà vu.
Even if organisations avoid the problem highlighted in the above post (creating worse customer experiences through digitalisation) they can still lock themselves into legacy mindsets, attitudes and behaviours that stifle the innovation, agility, and adaptiveness they need to thrive in the future.
Which brings us on to the central theme of this Substack channel — organisational culture — and specifically what organisational culture is, how it forms, and how to create future-fit ones of innovation, agility, and adaptiveness.
In that context, it’s vitally important to understand what an organisational culture is not — because there’s a deeply plausible, very pervasive, but highly toxic myth that’s had organisations in its thrall since it was plucked out of thin air 40 years ago — the toxic myth of ‘culture as shared values’.
The above post raises the question — “If an organisation’s culture is not its shared values, what is it”?
Fortunately that’s the secret everyone already knows, the fourth of today’s linked posts:
The secret that many don’t already know is what specific signals people tap into to pick up the culture through their day to day actions and interactions — in other words how they suss out the way we do things round here.
This is where research conducted by my former colleague Joan Lancourt and others at MIT Sloan 25 years ago proves especially useful. 8
The MIT Research identified seven channels through which people pick up the clues, cues, signs, and signals from which they infer the culture.
My concern over whether design is the right frame to put on the creation of future-fit organisations is reinforced by this, today’s 5th linked post, because in the seven channels of culture only one of the seven seems directly related to design — namely Channel 5: Structural Rearrangement.
I can’t imagine though that seasoned organisational design professionals don’t have ways of addressing some of the other six channels, and I’d love to learn more about this, so do get in touch.
The sixth linked post addresses the challenge for practitioners of striking an effective balance of bringing their experience to bear but not expropriating sense making from people within the client organisation who must build their own future-fit muscles.
When we overstep the mark, we inadvertently stifle — and in the worst cases smother or strangle — the organisation’s capacity for ensuring that sense making, decision making & action taking are done well, well joined up, and well embedded and distributed throughout the organisation.
It’s a piece called Gurus, gugus and rugus:
Okay, I know I said six posts, but this bonus seventh and final linked post takes up the central theme of this channel: that the key to creating future-fit organisations is the cultivation of 2D3D mindsets throughout the organisation.
And to clarify a misconception this can trigger, as it did in Bilbao, I’m not suggesting everyone gets sheep-dipped on 2D3D mindset theory. That's one of the legacy ways organisations have consistently failed in their attempts to create systemic change. 9
So do check out this seventh post, and the six minute video it cross-references, on how to go about unlocking the innovative mindset.
As ever, if the above sparks questions or comments, please do get in touch by email or via LinkedIn.
Jeanne Ross, MIT Sloan Center for Information Systems Research, quoted in the International Labor Organisation’s 2021 ITC report on digitalisation (page 40).
The Fifth Discipline by Dr Peter Senge.
Paul’s LinkedIn profile is here.
Peter Senge wrote the following in the foreword he provided for Arie’s book The Living Company (1997): “It was through Arie de Geus, who I met over 15 years ago, that I first became seriously acquainted with the concepts of organisational learning.”
Thanks to Alison Walker for this nugget…
See the Jeanne Ross quote at the top of this post.
Published in the 1996 book Intentional Revolutions: A Seven-Point Strategy for Transforming Organizations.
See this six minute video on why widely attempted traditional ways of approaching change don’t work for creating future-fit cultures of innovation, agility, and adaptiveness.