Dear leaders, there is something important many of us think about but rarely plan.
It is organisational design, creating a team and wishlist of roles we want to hire for.
In one of my support networks, a question was asked about how other execs go about reshaping their team(s) and was there a method anyone used specifically.
Away from old school methods of creating a skills matrix or having to question every January the bottom x% of staff, many thought about it but did not plan or have a plan.
There are two main components for success for organisational design and reshaping your business to consider: (1) company culture / your own subculture and (2) company performance.
My recommendation is to always plan forward, I have a saying that is
Always Be Auditing, Always Be Marketing.
Auditing helps you review, plan and understand if you are on the path you should be on and the timeline you are operating on.
Marketing enables you to guide, influence, bring others on a journey, alongside being able to attract talent and great team members and bring in senior leaders into your business.
Many leadership teams are on a long term journey together and just started their journey, there are CEO’s and chairpeople who follow the adage, you should always look to change 5%-10% of their management team, especially if it is larger than single digits. (A good podcast to listen to on this is with PagerDuty CEO Jennifer Tejeda on BVP)
Remember a large leadership team can be great and add more diversity, with more people there is always more bikeshedding (Parkinson's law of triviality) and more opinions creep in and can become a politically charged status game and each decision can become death by committee.
Plan: Be Strategic, Not Reactive
The plan can be simple, you ideally would like this role for these reasons.
You can build out another dimension and create an org chart with names and responsibilities and how you look to develop out the people and reporting lines, some do this with their right-hand person and create a timeline for such moves.
Often the unspoken truth is; the more senior you become the less turnover and change occurs, the longer it can take to improve your senior leadership and the longer teams and company culture can suffer.
Why not look to plan the people evolution of your business for the next 24 months ahead, this helps you to reshape the business, refocus the teams and create a window where you are the company and the employees openly embrace change.
Remember: Organisational design has to be proactive, never reactive.
This week start planning the two years ahead, what you would like your team to look like and operate like and where you can transfer the next generation of leaders into your business and smartly and proactively evolve your business.
Thanks and have a great week,
Danny Denhard
You can help other leaders improve by forwarding this email to those in your network who might enjoy reading leaders letters.
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