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Luck is the residue of design. — Branch Rickey, Communication Bulletin to Managers and Supervisors, June 2004.
Organizations morph. Sometimes the change is slow over time, sometimes rapid as part of a merger. What was effective structurally at one point inevitable deconstructs as the organization it supports changes. As people move in and out of the organization personalities change the roles and by association how the work gets done. Informal structures emerge and at some point the formal organization becomes a hinderance as opposed to a means to facilitate and support successful results.
In a prior post, Organizing for Success, I discussed the four step process for organizational design which will greatly increase your departments chances for success. In short, solid processes drive consistent repeatable results. Organization of people to align with processes will allow a more effective execution of the work.
Once you have the org structure set up to enable success, another part of OD kicks in with the training of the people in place. The correct form of training will be critical to the success of the organization. This is an art form that cannot be underestimated. Mapping the current state of your workforce with where you need them to be and how fast you need them to be there is difficult – and critical. See discussion here.
Another critical piece to the organizational puzzle is the thoughtful consideration of the “success profile” each of the key players in your organization needs to fulfill. While overkill to look at all positions in this way, a few positions are high leverage, high visibility, and high risk. In many cases this defines a stretch goal for the incumbents, and provides the seed stock for career ladders.
Denise Kalos, in her blog HR Futurist draws the analogy of recruiting corporate talent to Billy Bean’s building of the Oakland A’s baseball team, and the formula he made famous as “Moneyball”. The gist is that being a small market team with a small market payroll, he needed to find the best broken players with which to build his team. He couldn’t afford the unblemished ones. With a few exceptions, aren’t we all small market teams? The challenge is how to recruit and compensate creatively to build the best team possible while still meeting and exceeding expectations.
Each of these are topics require HR and OD fluency of the CIO.
These cannot be left to those in the HR department. There is a heavy dose of HR/OD in IT. The job of the CIO depends on getting the HR/OD part right.
