Training Industry Magazine - September/October 2021 - 31

Organizational design initiatives are happening
with increasing frequency - and the stakes for
getting them right are incredibly high.
The world in which we work is changing
quickly. Business leaders are more
frequently evaluating their organizations'
operating models and structures to
keep pace with dynamic environments
and emerging competition, as well
as to meet evolving customer needs.
This means that organizational design
initiatives are happening with increasing
frequency - and the stakes for getting
them right are incredibly high.
Organizational design is the process of
aligning and optimizing an organization's
capabilities, culture, structure, processes
and technology, people and talent
practices, and metrics to drive the
achievement of its strategy and goals.
Each of these areas is critical for the full
system to operate in an organizational
redesign. From a talent perspective,
success occurs
when employees
are equipped with the new skills and
mindsets that allow them to take on
the new roles, work and culture that
power the changes required to drive
organizational success. This can only
happen when the organization aligns its
talent and expertise to drive the design
of its future and accelerate the speed of
adoption of the new behaviors, skills and
mindsets needed to enable that future
state and drive culture shifts.
SAVING A SEAT FOR L&D
AT THE ORGANIZATIONAL
DESIGN TABLE
At its core, organizational design
is about creating a holistic, aligned
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system through which work is done and
organizational strategy is attained. To
build that complex system, organization
design is typically broken into a series of
interconnected focus areas (see Figure
1) that build on each other. This process
should be driven by a multidisciplinary
team of experts, including sponsors,
leaders and subject matter experts
(SMEs) from across the organization,
HR leaders and business partners,
organizational design/development,
learning and development (L&D),
change management, and talent
management to maximize the success
of the new design.
As a L&D practitioner, you play a
pivotal role in organizational design
by equipping employees with the
knowledge and skills they need to
be successful in the shift to new ways
of working, expected behaviors and
culture change.
L&D plays a role in each step of
organizational design:
STRATEGY: Understanding the
organization's strategy
and
the
anticipated outcomes of the initiative
at a deep level provides L&D experts
the information needed to create
learning solutions that will propel the
organization toward meeting its goals.
CULTURE: If culture shift is part of the
change, L&D should also be involved

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Training Industry Magazine - September/October 2021

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