The business rationale for organization analysis

In transformation contexts, analysis of the ‘as-is’ organization establishes a baseline against which changes can be planned and the impact of actions can be projected, tracked and monitored.

In business-as-usual settings, continuous monitoring of organizational health informs where action is needed to prevent inefficiencies emerging over time and becoming so severe that drastic action is needed.  Prevention is better than cure:  identifying where inefficiencies are emerging and taking timely action reduces the risk that large-scale, disruptive, and potential costly interventions will be needed.

Data-driven insights help you take control and reduce the impact of opinions, politics and personalities in decision making.  Bear in mind the dictionary definition of data: “Factual information used as a basis for reasoning, discussion, or calculation."  Data informs better decisions.

Organizational issues typically fall into one of three categories with observable symptoms:

• Workforce size and cost:  the size of the workforce and its associated cost is misaligned with strategic objectives and planned business outcomes.  The split of resources across functional departments, geographic locations and business units does not support the work to be done.  Furthermore, the cost profile of the workforce may be out of line due to reward frameworks and grading structures being inconsistently applied.  
• Organization structure:  a proliferation of small teams and excessive organizational layers results in increased cost, increased complexity, and reduced speed to execution (Introduction to Spans and Layers analysis).  Furthermore, ad hoc changes to reporting relationships may result in the grades of people managers and their direct reports being mis-matched:  these may be compressed, with managers and direct reports share the same grade, stretched, with wide grade gaps between managers and reports, or even reversed, with people are reporting to a manager with a lower grade.  
• Workforce composition:  the demographic composition of the workforce introduces risk.  For example, if there is insufficient gender diversity, or gender pay differences, or an aging workforce with a high proportion of employees approaching retirement age. 

Orgvue’s template packs for organizational analysis provide out-of-the-box insight on the typical issues impacting organizational effectiveness and efficiency.