Effective Organizational Architecture
The organizational design or the organizational architecture has to be efficient as it is simple to bring the organizational architecture, which is brilliant, but it does not work and it affects hardly the competitiveness of the organization on the market.
The successful systems have their characteristics in several areas, mainly in the following ones:
- Simplicity – the simpler the system is, the easier the members of the organization can use it and the chance of using it grows. The simplicity is about keeping the connections simple and limited in number allowing a quick reaction of all involved parties
- Flexibility – the organizational architecture has to be flexible as it can be adjusted as the external or internal conditions changes; when the organizational architecture is not flexible, it has to be changed, which is cost inefficient; on the other hand, the organizational architecture has to provide the stability and the final flexibility is always a compromise
- Reliability – the reliability is about the robustness of the organizational architecture and the robustness of the processes based on the assessment of the critical points in the organizational architecture; it is always a compromise as there is no possibility to have a back up for everything and the organizational architecture has to detect the point, where the back up has the highest impact on the outcomes
- Economy – it is a compromise as usually, the economical organizational architecture does not keep the redundant points in the process, but it keeps the possibility for finding a quick back up
- Acceptability – the worst condition for the effective organizational architecture as it has to be fully accepted by the managers and employees living and operating in such architecture.
The HR Business Partner has to ask the critical questions during the organizational design phase as answering these questions after the organizational architecture gets implemented is too late.
Role of Leadership Team in Organization Architecture and Design
The good leadership role is very important for the organization. As the organization does need a strategic vision and strategic decisions about the organizational development, the leaders are the only players in the organization to make the decisions about the organizational design for the growing organization.
The leaders or founders do not realize, when they found the organization, how important their role is for the successful organizational life. When they set up the organization, which is decentralized, the roles and responsibilities are clearly defined, the organization has a chance for the successful survival.
The leadership role in the organizational design is about the correct setting the basic organizational rules, the organizational governance and specific areas of the personal responsibility in the organization.
The leaders have to focus on their leadership role, not managing the operational life of the organization. The leaders have to be sure about their role in the organization and they have to be very specific in their messages about the organizational design. The leaders have to recognize the level of importance of the daily tasks and they have to set an efficient controlling over the organization to recognize the main trends and to be able to set the corrective initiatives.
The leaders have to set the basic rules for the organizational design and they have to monitor the development of the organization and the organizational rules development. The leaders should keep the organization in the shape they want the organization to be.
