[Greatest Hits] “What Works: Organizational Design” with Amy Kates, Organization Design Expert, Consultant, Educator, and Author

In which you start with strategy.

What kind of organization do we want to build? What culture do we need? How are we going to compete and win? What choices have we made about how we're going to grow and where we're going to play? Then the next set of questions is what capabilities do we need? What new organizational muscles do we wanna build? And Jay's great insight was first, depending on the strategy, that will shape the organization.

There's no one best way to organize.

And number two is that a leader has four levers to pull.

One is structure, which is really about power, the architecture roles and the leaders, and who sits around the table to make decisions.

The second are processes.

How do we design conversation and decisions and move information across the organization? The third is metrics and reward.

How do we motivate and inspire people and align what they do and where they spend their time when they wake up in the morning and come to work with the mission of the organization? And then finally, our people practices, which are all the choices we make around who do we hire? Do we grow or do we buy talent? How do we compensate? How do we learn through learning and development and think about the employee life cycle? Those four levers create a system that builds capabilities, that create the culture that we want, the performance that we want, and allows us to not only deliver on the business strategy, but what's really important to me is to make a great place to work.

Why is organizational design much more than org charts and who reports to whom? How can HR guide, facilitate, and drive an effective organizational design process? Hi, I'm your host, JP Elliot, and this is the Future of HR podcast, the only podcast whose mission is to inspire the next generation of HR leaders.

On each episode, I interview successful HR executives and thought leaders who are reimagining, rethinking, and leading our field into the future.

During our candid conversations, you will learn about their career journeys, their lessons learned along the way, and their insights on how to take our field, and most importantly, your career to the next level.