Organizational Design & People

Watch

• How to design and build a healthy company culture | Melissa Daimler | TEDxBocaRaton ↗TEDx Talks
• 5 steps to designing the life you want | Bill Burnett | TEDxStanford ↗TEDx Talks
• How Great Leaders Inspire Action | Simon Sinek | TED ↗TED
• Amazon Empire: The Rise and Reign of Jeff Bezos (full documentary) | FRONTLINE ↗FRONTLINE PBS | Official
• The Office Design Strategies of Amazon, Samsung, Adobe and Others | WSJ Open Office ↗The Wall Street Journal
• The ‘IKEA Effect:’ Behind the Company’s Unique Business Model | WSJ The Economics Of ↗The Wall Street Journal

Read

• Strategy and Structure: Chapters in the History of the American Industrial Enterprise ↗Essential for understanding how corporate strategy historically shaped organizational form, a timeless lesson for modern enterprises.Alfred D. Chandler Jr.
• The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization ↗A seminal work advocating for systems thinking and collective learning as the bedrock of enduring organizational success.Peter Senge
• Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...And Others Don't ↗Distills the disciplined leadership and people practices that propel companies from mediocrity to sustained excellence.Jim Collins
• What is Strategy?A definitive exposition on the essence of strategic positioning, underscoring its critical influence on organizational structure and resource allocation.Michael E. Porter
• Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World ↗Offers a compelling blueprint for fostering agility and shared consciousness within large, complex organizations facing dynamic challenges.General Stanley McChrystal

Voices to follow

• Adam Grant ↗His incisive research into generosity, motivation, and challenging conventional wisdom provides a blueprint for fostering adaptive and engaged workforces.Organizational psychologist, Professor at Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
• Amy Edmondson ↗Her seminal work on psychological safety has fundamentally reshaped how organisations cultivate high-performing teams and foster continuous learning.Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management, Harvard Business School
• Daniel Pink ↗He distills the science of motivation and the evolving nature of work, offering frameworks for designing roles and incentives that genuinely engage and empower employees.Best-selling author and speaker on work, business, and behaviour
• Lynda Gratton ↗She provides prescient analysis on the future of work, guiding organisations in adapting their structures and talent strategies for an increasingly dynamic global economy.Professor of Management Practice, London Business School

Glossary

• DepartmentA larger section of an organization that focuses on a specific function or area of work, like marketing, finance, or human resources. For example, in your school, the science department handles all science subjects, and the sports department manages all athletic activities.
• EmployeeA person who works for an organization, usually for pay, and performs specific duties as part of their job role. For example, a librarian is an employee of the school, responsible for managing books and helping students.
• HierarchyA system where people or groups are ranked one above the other according to status or authority. It shows the different levels of power and decision-making in an organization. For example, in a game of chess, the King is at the top of the hierarchy, followed by the Queen, Rooks, and so on, each with different powers.
• ManagerA person responsible for overseeing a team or department, guiding their work, and making sure tasks are completed successfully. They often have people reporting to them. For example, your class monitor manages the class when the teacher is away, making sure everyone follows rules and completes tasks.
• OrganizationA group of people who work together for a common purpose, like making products, providing services, or achieving a goal. For example, your school is an organization where teachers, students, and staff work together to provide education.
• Organizational CultureThe shared values, beliefs, practices, and attitudes that shape how people behave and interact within an organization. It's 'the way things are done around here.' For example, if your school has a culture of always helping each other, students will naturally share notes and support friends who are struggling.
• Organizational StructureThe way an organization arranges its different parts, like departments and teams, and how they connect to each other. It shows who reports to whom and how decisions are made. For example, a school's organizational structure might show that the Principal is at the top, with department heads reporting to them, and teachers reporting to department heads.
• Reporting RelationshipThe formal connection that shows who an employee or team is accountable to and who they receive instructions from. It defines the line of authority. For example, in a group project, your team leader has a reporting relationship to the teacher, meaning they tell the teacher about the team's progress.
• RoleThe specific set of duties and responsibilities that a person has within an organization. It's what someone is expected to do. For example, a student's role in a group project might be 'researcher,' while another's role is 'presenter.'
• TeamA small group of people within an organization who work closely together on a specific project or task, sharing common goals. For example, the school's basketball team works together to win games, each player having a specific role.

Threads 5

Where this connects to other fields, and why it's worth knowing.

• Motivation & Behaviour Change Psychology

  Give people a number to hit and they'll chase the number, not the real goal behind it; pay a call center by call length and workers rush customers off the phone. Psychologists keep rediscovering this: reward schemes warp the very behavior they're trying to encourage. Aim at a target and you often hit something you didn't want.

• Software Engineering Technology

  Here's a spooky rule programmers learned, Conway's Law: whatever a piece of software looks like inside, it ends up mirroring how the teams that built it talked to each other. Three separate teams tend to build three clunky, separate parts. So sometimes you can't fix the code without first fixing who sits with whom on the org chart.

• Ritual and Practice Religion

  Temples figured out long ago that chanting or praying in sync makes a crowd feel like one body. Armies and companies quietly copied it: marching drills, team chants, the daily morning standup. Moving and speaking together builds group loyalty faster than any speech or logical argument ever could.

• How Beliefs About Learning Shape Teaching Education

  A teacher who secretly believes kids learn by drilling runs a very different classroom than one who believes kids learn by exploring. A manager works the same way: believe workers are lazy and need watching (Theory X) or trust them to self-drive (Theory Y), and you build totally different workplaces. In both cases, a private hunch about people quietly becomes the walls everyone lives inside.

• Positive Psychology Psychology

  People often do their best work because they enjoy it. Studies show that piling on cash bonuses can actually kill that inner drive, so workers care less, not more. Pay meant to motivate can backfire and do the opposite of what textbooks promise.