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If we assume that employees never behave randomly in organisations, but are guided by the applicable framework conditions, it becomes clear how important organisational design is. Together with the corporate culture, the organisational design forms the way we work together, the way we interact with each other, but also the decision-making process and economic efficiency.
Which organisational structure we choose depends on how we understand organisations. If, for example, we think of organisations as machines, the answer for organisational design is completely different than if we see organisations as living organisms or vital systems. However, the ideal organisational structure also depends on other components, such as history, culture (corporate culture, national culture, etc.), the external environment, the type of company, sector, number of employees, division of labour, ownership structure, etc.
In his book “Reinventing Organizations”, Frederic Laloux says that seeing organisations as machines seems soulless and restrictive. “The leaders of evolutionary organisations do not want to play the role of the indispensable manager who pulls the levers at the top and thereby sets the employees below in motion, like cogs in a machine.” Gary Hamel & Michele Zanini go even further in their comments: „Our organizations were designed to be inhuman. As Max Weber noted more than a century ago, ‘Bureaucracy develops the more perfectly the more it is ‘dehumanized’’. They are inertial. This isn’t the fault of supposedly change-phobic employees, but of top-down decision structures that create long lags between sense and respond. They are incremental. That’s hardly surprising, since bureaucracy has little room for the curiosity, intuition, playfulness and daring that animates human creativity.
And they lack nobility. How often in our organizations do we hear talk of love, beauty, truth, courage, freedom, and justice? Bureaucracies are emotional dead zones.
As a result, our organizations are less adaptable, creative and inspiring than we are.“
Hierarchy in organisations
Why is the call for fewer working hours per week so loud?
Why is the discussion about working from home or back to the office so diverse?
Why do so many people work so hard just to go to the seaside for a fortnight?
Why do fewer and fewer people want to become managers?
Why would many fathers like to work less?
Why is there so much on the programme for leadership development?
Why are many people just waiting to be able to take a longer break or make plans for retirement?
The reason is simple and worrying. Many of our workplaces are demotivating and joyless places where people are told what to do. They are performers with little opportunity to contribute their talents. As a result, they focus more on their free time and live out their dreams as photographers, as organisers of neighbourhood events, as club leaders, in the cooking group, in the garden, as inquisitive tourists or in the running team. That’s wonderful too. However, it is a shame that they are obviously not trusted to take on responsibility in organisations. The organisational design is not set up for this. Put simply, the hierarchy ensures that a small number of managers take over the thinking, steering and coordination. In the process, they all too often lose the joy themselves and end up in the hamster wheel, which initially promised fame and honour as an enticing temptation and turned out to be a vicious circle of “ever more and more intensive”.
The perSens organisation
Our perSens approach shows the evolutionary path from today’s situation, regardless of whether it is a start-up, traditional craft business or corporation, to a vital open organisation — from shared responsibility to shared leadership to joint success.
The organisational design in the perSens organisation thrives on the shared responsibilities in the teams. Instead of a single power holder, roles and tasks are systemically divided according to the competences and possibilities in the manageable teams. The various role holders meet in platforms to learn together, guarantee quality, exchange ideas and ensure a common direction. Depending on the framework set at the beginning, many previously hierarchical functions gradually migrate to defined teams and platforms.
We are always fascinated by what people are really capable of and what possibilities lie dormant within them. In the perSens organisation, they have a personal and entrepreneurial impact. Decisions are made on the spot and yet prudently. Responsibility is assumed by those who really know their way around — and all of this in an eagerly collaborative and invitingly relaxed atmosphere. We see that decisions are not delayed, but are made more quickly and conflicts are resolved more directly.
In our view, long-term orientated companies must constantly and consciously realign themselves. We see organisations as living, pulsating organisms in which people play the main role.
🚀 Only the right organisational design can unleash this (dormant) potential — and perhaps we will then discover that our employees are not only competent colleagues, but also fantastic bakers, creative artists and ambitious athletes whose talents are brought to bear in the organisations for the benefit of the community. 🌟