Influencing outcomes for organizational effectiveness – Orgvue Knowledge Base

This article is one in a series sharing best practice insights for continuous organization effectiveness. Other articles can be accessed through links provided at the end.

This article outlines the practical actions we see being taken to influence outcomes for organizational effectiveness.

We often see prescriptive recommendations laying out the actions to be taken when analysis of key measures reveal organizational inefficiencies: adjust reporting lines to address narrow spans of control, or ‘change position grade’ to remedy grade-compressed reporting relationships. But these types of intervention are rarely immediately practical because they have real life consequences. What looks like a minor change on paper can create disruptive turbulence in the organization for the teams and individuals affected. Decision makers often perceive taking action is just not worth the effort. Savvy executives reach for the playbook of change resistance: “Your data is wrong; it doesn’t reflect my organization"; “my part of the organization is different”.

We see the following practical approaches being taken to overcoming resistance and influence desired influence outcomes.

Speaking directly to cost and to strategy

We observe industry leaders operating astutely to win influence. They earn their seat at the table by focusing initially on the critical issues for leaders: the size and cost of the workforce. They directly address this by establishing a single version of the truth providing insight on the current organization; by providing forward-looking projections; and by efficiently reconciling changes over time.

Alignment with the organization’s strategic priorities further secures management attention. For example, we often see programs relating to the rebalancing of the workforce’s geographic footprint. In such settings, insight revealing the current and future workforce by geographic location is provided to track progress on this strategic priority, and to identify where action can be focused to deliver required outcomes.

When value is delivered for leaders to manage the size and cost of their workforce in alignment with the company’s strategy, we observe an enhanced mandate being won to address a broader organizational effectiveness agenda.

And this agenda is advanced through cost-focused business cases. Taking the example of structural efficiency, the case for addressing management spans is advanced with regard to the potential cost efficiencies deliverable through a reduction in the number of manager positions.

“As an OD professional, I immediately go to Spans and Layers, and other opportunities for enhancing organizational efficiency, but I’ve learned that you can’t make progress without gaining credibility and addressing the fundamentals demanded by the business.”

The business case projects conservative impacts over realistic time horizons

We often see unrealistic business cases being developed. For example, based on insight revealing an excessive number of people managers with narrow spans of control, proposals are made to consolidate teams, reduce the number of people managers, and deliver a saving equivalent to the costs of purged managers.

This type of projection is typically too extreme to pass muster with executives outside transformation settings. A more subtle approach we see is for a reduction in the number of management positions to be proposed, but with a majority of these being repurposed as non-manager positions and a smaller proportion planned for closing.

Regarding the timeline over which action is to be taken, a golden rule is “Don’t overestimate what can be achieved in the short term, and don’t underestimate what can be achieved over a longer-term duration.” It’s predictable that a business leader who has bought in to the business case for reducing the number of manager positions would resist the call to action if radical action was planned over – for example – the next quarter. The anticipated turbulence resulting from organizational change would likely outweigh the benefit to be achieved. Projecting the potential benefit of the duration of the business planning cycle provides more realistic and palatable approach. It is for this reason we see the management of exceptions forming a key element for influencing desired outcomes. This is introduced in the following section.

Managing exceptions

Setting targets to limit and manage the number of exceptions impacting key measures provides opportunities for pragmatic action. Illustrative examples of exceptions include:

People managers with off-target spans of control
Employees with compensation outside target ranges for the position being performed
Critical positions without an identified succession candidate
Positions remaining unfilled, without active recruitment, X months after being vacated
Positions beyond the target number of organization layers

The key point is that exceptions can be identified in the organization structure: they are tangible and observable. Exceptions always exist in organizations, but when transparency is provided, the exception rate can be reduced over time. We see the following approaches being taken:

In the absence of having a veto on the creation of new positions (this being limited to a minority of organizations), checks are built into the position requisition process to avoid further exceptions being created. These are deliberately explicit, for example “Does not create a micro team”, “planned position is within the target number of layers”. During the position planning process, colleagues specifying organizational changes (e.g. changing existing positions and creating new positions) have immediate insight to identify whether their planned actions will cause an exception to these are caught upstream. including automatic flagging of cases which do not comply with defined logic.
Challenge is provided when new positions are created (and when existing positions are changed) to drive desired organizational effectiveness outcomes. If an exception is unavoidable, an accompanying rationale is required to prevent exceptions becoming normalized.
Tracking the number of exceptions over time, with accompanying internal benchmarks provide reference points for challenge to be strengthened.

Corrective action is taken organically when opportunity is presented. For example, consolidating teams as when a people manager moves to another position, or leaves the organization.

Rather than seeking a near-term step-change in performance, “a hundred small steps in the right direction” are taken over time.

“It’s hopelessly naïve to say a position should be downgraded to address a grade-compressed reporting line, or that reporting lines should be merged to improve spans of control. These types of actions have real-world consequences. Our approach is to have visibility on exceptions, avoid any more exceptions getting created and to converge towards targets over time.”

“Influencing decisions is not something we have to worry about! We have a mandate from the CEO that every position has to go through my team. We run on tight margins: if we get our head office resourcing wrong, we risk bankrupting the business.”

“Business leaders are deliberately empowered to take the decisions they need. We can’t block a decision, but we can influence the outcomes. We’ve made the case for maintaining organizational effectiveness and provide the insight to inform decisions.”

This article is one in a series sharing best practice insights for continuous organization effectiveness. An overview can be found here, and related articles can be accessed through the following links: