Category: Organization Design — a Collaboration Platform

Purpose & Function Setting out on the journey of organization design means consciously choosing to align all the parts of an enterprise.  The aim with this deliberate business solution is to ensure the organization’s strategic or competitive advantage—PURPOSE (why it exists) & FUNCTION (what tasks it does in service to its purpose—is delivered effectively and efficiently to its customer base.  Excellent customer service is directly correlated to whether or not these parts are aligned. Shared Experience Broadly speaking, all organizations share the same three parts: • a Social system—customer demands, rewards/recognition, people processes, ways of working, culture, strategy, value-creation activities) • a Technical system—structures, technologies, management/ coordination processes and systems • an Environmental system—geographic-social-political-economic trends surrounding and influencing the business Bringing this “whole system” into a design exercise can daunt even the best of multi-taskers, which is why a collaborative approach not only eases the brain strain and workload but also enriches creativity, innovation and engagement. Whole System Collaborative Design By collaboratively co-designing their entire enterprise, employees and managers learn how to best serve all their stakeholders not just for today’s circumstances but for future change as well.  Designing your enterprise’s collaboration platform creates the stable, agile foundation capable of surviving and thriving in the rapidly changing environment of the 21st century. Collaboration Platform

Forget Goals — Favour Systems & Structures

It is that time of year again when we find ourselves developing a set of personal and professional goals for 2014.  Whether it is organizations requesting services for strategic planning or individuals desiring coaching support, December and January bring forth…

Helen Maupin

Culture & Consciousness — The DNA of Leadership

DNA (Deoxyribonucleic acid) holds the genetic instructions that enable all living things to function, grow and reproduce.  Typically, we speak of DNA in reference to species development.  However, I have also heard DNA used as a metaphor for organizational functioning…

Helen Maupin

Collaboration is Key to a Solution-based Economy

In 2011, I wrote a blog echoing the current duality of living as a global society with a foot in each of two economic paradigms — competition and collaboration.  At that time, I offered a middle ground of “do no…

Helen Maupin

A Discovery Roundtable

Yesterday, our STS community considered the ecosystem within which individuals, organizations and networks live and work.  Both the implications of New Economics and Big Data were addressed relative to the impacts on our own emerging experience of Big Design.  That…

Helen Maupin

Journey to Ithica

We glimpsed a very inspiring future yesterday during the Equitable Food Initiative’s (EFI) presentation.  The presenters demonstrated the collaboration power of their emerging ecosystem — major food buyers, growers, farm workers and consumer advocates — in growing safer food and…

Helen Maupin

Practicing the Art of Dialogue

Europeans, Americans and Canadians kicked off their 2013 Discovery Roundtable with a hearty discussion of what constitutes humane, healthy, innovative communities of work.  Although cultural interpretations varied in the language used, shared understanding culminated around what “ennobles individuals and acts…

Helen Maupin

Co-creating Healthy, Humane & Innovative Communities of Work

Opportunities surround the one who does not judge a situation as good or bad but simply remains open, trusting and persistent in effort and approach.      Jackson Kiddard Since 2007, my STS Roundtable colleagues and I have participated in a virtual…

Helen Maupin

Business Unusual — Happiness Motivates

Let’s face it, the evidence is in on happiness. Joy is our only job. In his 2010 Youtube video, Daniel Pink disclaimed money as the motivator to improve human performance.  In fact, research stipulates that once you surpass basic mechanical…

Helen Maupin

Happy, Healthy, Humane Places to Work and Live

In celebration of Labour Day, Deri Latimer and I put the finishing touches on our latest creative collaboration — how to design happy, healthy and humane work systems, organizations and ‘communities of organizations’ (next week’s blog post). The image to the…

Helen Maupin

Shifting Values I — Adaptation over Manipulation

In two recent conversations with social entrepreneurs (of which I include myself) we lamented the challenge of doing business in an economic environment where surviving is yet to be balanced with thriving.  The survival game amounts to business entrepreneurs manipulating…

Helen Maupin

Designing for Radical Transformation

wiangya / FreeDigitalPhotos.net What do you see as the greatest source of uncertainty in today’s world? Certainly, driving forces such as digitization, globalization and individuation top most lists as contributors to increased volatility and complexity.  However, at the root of…

Editor

Leading Radical Transformation

Balance is merely the fusion of opposites.  In the workplace, balance is the fusion between continuous improvement (incremental change) and disruptive innovation (radical transformation).  When we remove two steps from a 10-step work process to increase efficiency (add value for…

Helen Maupin