Intelligent CIO Middle East Issue 38 | Page 18

LATEST INTELLIGENCE PRESENTED BY Commentary on CRF’s research findings This timely and robust report calls out the unprecedented challenges that organisations, today, are facing. Digital disruption, complexity and connectedness are ubiquitous themes throughout. Organisations must learn to adapt. They must be responsive to ever-evolving business strategies, as well as help their people flourish during change. Download whitepaper here Nowhere is change happening more rapidly than in digital transformation. To respond effectively, businesses need faster organisation design cycles. As the report concludes, it is no longer sufficient to rely on the unfreeze-change-refreeze approach to design. Instead, a process of continuous change is needed – one that is driven by in-house HR teams and seeks to constantly adjust designs in response to evolving strategy. This continual cycle of organisation design is a new, Board-level mandate for HR, but it is not a common strength. Worryingly, only 39% of research participants feel they have strong organisation design skills within HR. 18 INTELLIGENTCIO What a missed opportunity for HR to take a more central role in the development of the organisation. Given 89% of respondents have recently gone through or are still going through a reorganisation, and a further 68% expect more change in the next two years, building capability in this area should be of paramount importance. When it comes to developing capability in organisation design, the report emphasises how today’s practice involves much more than reporting lines, organisation charts or spans and layers. Organisations are dynamic ecosystems, made up of many interconnected elements, succinctly embodied in Galbraith’s STAR model: strategy, structure, processes, reward systems and people practices. Effective design considers all the organisational elements, holistically, with all their interdependencies, and makes changes systemically. Effective design also addresses the inherent tensions that arise from business strategy. Where strategy is complicated – such as balancing the need for agility and customer intimacy against operational scale – then the organisation will be www.intelligentcio.com