Communities and Networks in Transformation

Hello and welcome to Leading Digital Transformation with Rob Llewellyn and the Digital Transformation People. In this podcast series, Rob interviews experienced practitioners, authors and thought leaders whose stories and experiences provide valuable insights for digital transformation success.

There's an urgent need for companies to shift their focus from developing into individuals to enabling networks and relationships between employees. I'm joined today by John Ingham who wrote the book the Social Organization and he was previously an HR director inside the consulting firm ey. Now operating as a consultant, trainer, writer and speaker, John is focused on strategic, innovative approaches to people management and organizational effectiveness. And I'm delighted to have him join us here today. John, welcome.

Thank you Rob, great to join you.

John, as you go in and out of different organizations, what are the main types of organization changes that you're seeing these days?

Well, there's a lot going on, Rob, obviously, and an increasing amount. I suppose the changes that I get involved with are sort of deep organizational changes because of changes in direction often associated with digital as well. So as business businesses become digital businesses, they need digital organizations as well. So there's lots of things going on. Well, firstly the biggest shifts. You know, I still, most of the time when I talk to clients about organizational changes, what they first approach me about very often is just a functional restructuring, you know, sort of moving from one functional organization to another. The way I'm trying to get them is to think about other broader shifts. And I suppose the first thing, because it's so popular in the media these days, is about reducing hiring hierarchy, moving towards self management and that can be really useful. But it does tend to be sort of an efficiency oriented change. You know, it's saving money, it's making communications better, it can result in greater engagement. But then I also think that if you've got a good manager, a great coach in your organization that you're reporting to, you know, that's a really positive enabler for employee experience as well. So you know, hierarchy can be part of it. But, but the biggest shifts and the ones that I wouldn't say I'm coming across that much, but I am certainly having more conversations about and also am helping organizations work towards is firstly. Well, it's all about changing direction I think getting people to focus on the most important things and that can be about a shift from vertical functions to horizontal teams, particularly with the massive hike in organizations going agile. But also more people oriented structures which are about getting people together around things that they're intrinsically motivated, they're passionate about and helping them identify work that they can do. So here I'm talking about communities which help people focusing internally within a community, supporting each other, and also distributed networks looking externally at the rest of the organization or beyond the organization. So increasingly I'm sort of seeing those four main core ways of organizing functions, teams, communities and networks. And importantly, although I did talk about structure, you know, that's clearly not the only change. So any of those changes you're making, and in fact even just a functional restructure, we should always think about the whole organization as well. You know, the skills, the relationships, and obviously also because of digital technology support for it as well.

John, you said that you know, to do this it helps if you've got a good manager or a good coach. What in your view makes a good.

Manager someone who is interested in people. To me, you've got to be committed and competent to manage. And actually I'd almost suggest this is the first thing that you should have a look at within an organization. How do we provide mechanisms that mean that we only ever select or promote people into manager positions if they are committed and competent to manage? And that might be things like dual career streams or this mix of. If organisations are becoming more project based and developing communities, for example, then you can actually split the role of the manager. So McKinsey, for example, these days are talking about the Helix organization where there'll be a project manager, but also a sort of personal manager, a bit like professional services firms always had. I think a lot of organizational changes is actually making the role of the manager easier or more effective as well.

Now John, most people listening will understand the use of functions and horizontal teams. What examples can you give us of companies using communities and networks in their organization architecture these days?

Yes, well, I mean, I did say that this is something that organizations are more interested in and more able to think about. There still aren't many organizations organizing whole scale like this. And they do tend to be the same organizations that get talked about time and time again and have probably been on the podcast previously as well. So community organizations, you know, my favorite example is Birtzorg, which is an interesting one because they actually talk about having teams. But to me it's very clear that they're sort of community groups of nurses. They're not teams, they're not focusing on a specific objective. They're coming together to identify the patients that they want to work with and the ways they're going to do that. You know, it's a very community way of operating. But you don't see many organisations which are fully Community based. But what you do see is lots of organizations moving towards communities. And probably the most popular aspect of that is organizations that have centers of excellence, centers of expertise, that increasingly they recognizing are a little bit too stable and too siloed and they're changing those into communities to be a little bit looser and more emergent and more flexible and to break down some of the silos in the organization networks. The big example everyone talks about is Gore and there are a few other organizations moving in a sort of network based direction. But again, the most popular example is, you know, things like, well, for digital transformation, the high proportion of organizations which are using digital change agents, digital champions. John Cotter talks about having networks of change in his new approach in his new change methodology. So this sort of idea of having networks to manage change in organization is probably the most prevalent use of that organization form.

John, I've personally noticed an increase in the interest of change management, people management in organizations over the last few years. But what do you see some of the common challenges that organizations who want to do the right thing, they understand that change and people matter a lot. What do you see some of the big challenges that they still need to overcome?

Well, I think the biggest change in change management is to recognize that, you know, we've never really been terribly successful in leading change from the top down. Sometimes we still need to do it. You know, if you're going to go into a merger or acquisition, that's probably the only thing you can do. Although probably the, the best guidance on that is, you know, don't do a merger or acquisition. But increasingly we want to involve people rather than sort of tell them what to do because that makes change a lot easier and a lot more effective. And therefore to some extent at least, and I think this is true for digital champions and digital change agents too, is we need to give people freedom to make the right decision. So I think to me the major challenge in many organizations still, because of the sort of traditional top down environment that we're moving away from, is wanting people to be able to make the decision about where they're going to go, but trying to ensure that they make the right decision. And you know, that to me is still a bit of a paradox that many leaders are still struggling with. And of course the answer to it is you have to trust your people and believe that the decision that they make will be the right decision. But that's still a new step that I think many leadership teams need to take.

Now John, you've referred to a new Organization form called a meld which you contrast to a matrix. Can you explain this meld?

Oh yes, thank you. Right, so communities and networks. I'm suggesting our newer organization forms, but actually, you know, they've always existed for sort of, you know, 20, 30 years. It's just that they're now starting to be a little bit more popular or certainly the opportunities to use them are starting to be a bit more recognized and a bit more extensive. And I guess that this idea, the meld, isn't new either, but they didn't. When I was sort of researching and trying to start discussing this topic, there didn't seem to be an existing word or term or phrase for it. So, you know, we know what a matrix is. So in a traditional organization or even a, you know, an organization trying to balance a vertical and a horizontal perspective, we often end up in a matrix organization where some people at least are working in two dimensions, have two bosses, are focusing on, you know, sales and managing people or products and geographies or whatever it may be. And actually just while talking about that, you know, matrices get lots of criticism. But if you do matrix design, well, they can work, but they do tend to be associated with those older, more work based ways of organizing. Whereas as soon as organizations start to have a look at these softer, more people oriented structures, you don't need a hard matrix to make those work. It really is just a case of sort of slotting these different organization forms together, laying them on top of each other so you can have an existing functional organization or a project based organization and just have a layer of communities and let people select the communities they're going to be part of or to participate in networks without having the need for handshake meetings and racy matrix and all of these tools associated with traditional organizations. And I think that's an important point to make because very often in certainly my conversations with organizations, helping them think about broader organization changes than just restructuring, very often people see these new types of organizations as a bit risky. You know, how do we move to horizontal teams or set up networks? That's completely new and I'm not quite sure how it's going to work. And to an extent I see where they're coming from because they are new and they are different and they do need a lot of focus on communication with insights organizations to explain how they're going to work, particularly to existing leaders and managers so that they don't try to manage communities in the same way that they do functions and projects. But actually because you can meld these different forms together, it's a lot less risky. You know, you don't need. So when you do a traditional functional restructure, you have to move directly from, you know, one way of organizing to another. You know, you have a big bang and suddenly people are into a different group reporting to a different manager. It's very difficult to those two structures operating at the same time. But these newer organization forms, you know, because you can meld them, because you can just lay them on top of each other, it's very easy to keep that existing functional structure and just start experimenting with a few teams, increasing the number of the teams. Gradually the teams become more important than the functions or, you know, keeping the existing projects and just starting getting people back coming together in communities. It's much more softer and it can be a much more incremental approach to change. So I think this idea of melding organizations is a really useful enabler for the type of changes I've been talking about.

And how do these changes relate to digital transformation, John?

Because obviously that's our focus on the podcast. And I did say at the beginning, you know, I think the reason that I'm now able to have these types of conversations and organizations are beginning to explore and experiment and certainly talk about other ways of organizing is largely because of digital. Because businesses are becoming digital, they're picking up digital business models which require them to change their organizations. And I think the key needs there are firstly to help people work in a more agile, more flexible way to integrate people. So any sort of evidence of siloization within their existing functions is going to be a problem. And also in the same way that digital businesses get closer to their customers, digital organizations need to get closer to their employees. So I think that's particularly why things like reducing hierarchy are seen as potentially useful solutions. Because potentially, and you know, I gave my view about that earlier, but potentially reducing hierarchy moving towards self management may be a way of improving the employee experience as well. So I think, well, firstly, any business becoming a digital business, it is going to be core to that change. That IT effort is probably going to be based around Agile. Therefore the whole organization needs to look at scaling up that approach and either developing an agile methodology or at least becoming horizontal and a bit more experimental and innovative. So things like Spotify, Tribes and Guilds are becoming a much better known model. Although, you know, I'd caution organizations against simply copying that. I think the fundamental idea of introducing horizontal teams and communities is really sound. But just because Spotify use Tribes and Guilds you know, you don't have to use that language, you don't have to use exactly that type of approach in a different organization. I think digital, you know, I was saying it leads to a growing focus on getting close to customers, but also getting closer to employees. So I think there is a dual focus in digital business in focusing on both task and people, which means again, there's a growing need to look at functions and projects to do the tasks, but also communities and networks to grow the people. And technology obviously gives us new opportunities. So any network based organization in particular really needs a platform. And that can be a cultural platform, it can be a technological platform, but it's very difficult to grow an effective network without some type of platform just to make it simple for the network to operate. And technology is obviously enabling us to use platforms more effectively more extensively and indeed starting to lead towards this new network, this new sort of network based organization, form of a platform based organization and sort of, you know, even in future. So blockchain distributed, autonomous organizations where we can pull people together in a very different type of way. So it's not just about digital transformation, but certainly if you're going through a digital transformation, I'd look really robustly at your organization and try and think much more creatively and innovatively about the different ways of organizing than we have done before digital.

Now, John, you've touched on communities and networks a number of times. What's your view of enterprise social networks and, and how well are organizations embracing them pretty extensively?

I mean, obviously they've sort of been around for 10 years or so now. And I think again, they're another aspect of digital technology which is enabling organizations to organize in a different, newer, more people centric way. So, you know, it is an important question when I'm talking about communities and networks. I'm not just talking about having an enterprise social network or a similar type of system. I think that's a useful enabler. You know, it's an example of a platform that enables the network to operate. But I think to sort of see yourself as having a network based organization, there has to be some organizational focus, senior leader, sponsorship, probably some resources, you know, other more traditional ways of organizing which are there to support the community or network communities. Networks need to be managed in a different way and in a sense they can't be managed, they can only be nurtured and enabled. But they do need to be resourced and supported if they're to be more powerful than simply an enterprise social network supported group would be. And actually there's another aspect of this which is that the enterprise social network needs to be part of the broader organization. You know, this is part of digital business, making everything more integrated. We can't do things in sort of different silos anymore. They all need to support each other. And one of the things which I think is quite important if, well, both if organization change and if digital technology change are to be effective is that both of those need to point in the same direction. So your choice of organization form should inform your choice of digital or social technology. And so if you're a functional organization, you probably still only need a traditional intranet like SharePoint or whatever it may be. If you're focused on horizontal teams, that's where you're going to need Slack or Microsoft Teams. If you're a community based organization, I think there are less effective systems here, but I really like social community systems like Teligent. I think Workplace by Facebook probably fits within this category as well. Or if you're more of a distributed network type organization, that's where you'll want to use something like Yammer or Jive. So absolutely, your choice of enterprise social network should align with, should support, should fit within, but also needs to be enhanced by all of the other things we've been talking about.

Now, sitting at the very heart of organization change, John, of course, are people. Now, is there a link between the organization forms that you've described and employee experience?

Yes, absolutely. So what I was describing at the beginning of the podcast, that the functions and horizontal teams are both focused on getting work done by people. You know, traditionally we've taken work, we've cascaded it down, we've asked people to do it and we've organized people to do the work. That's particularly functions and also horizontal teams. But increasingly because work is more knowledge based, is more service based, is more team based, is more complex, is more changeable, it's increasingly difficult. For that work has become much more people oriented. And therefore for some of that work at least, we need to look at taking people together and helping them identify the work they can do in areas that they are naturally passionate and intrinsically motivated to do. So I don't think you could ever. Well, unless it was like a charity sales center or something, it's very difficult to take a service center and construct it as a community because people need a high level of intrinsic motivation to do it. But there are lots and lots of areas that people are intrinsically motivated about. And therefore you don't need to sort of command and control them to do their work. So you know, in a sense everything I've been talking about is focused on improving engagement, improving the employee experience by enabling people to come together in more people centric ways. And then I think the other thing is again that other point that everything across the organization needs to be holistic and integrated. And if the organization design is focusing one direction and the enterprise social technologies we've just been talking about appointing in another, that's going to reducing organizational friction and confusion and it's going to reduce the employee experience as well. So organizing, doing things in the way I've been talking about. So things like journey mapping that everyone talks about in terms of employee experience, really, really useful. But actually I think you can get a much better impact on employee experience by designing the whole organization around people in the way that we've been describing.

John, we're going to have to wrap it up there. It's been terrific speaking with you and I know that the subject you've been talking to us about today will resonate with so many of our listeners. So where can people go to learn more about what you've been telling us about?

Well, firstly, thank you Rob. It's been great talking to you and thank you everyone for listening. If you do want to know anything more about all of this, probably first of all, my LinkedIn profile which is LinkedIn.com in Johnigham, my website as well, Johnigham.com I tweet extensively on Ingham and just to say all of those, John is just J O n so no H J o N I n G H a M Terrific.

And we'll put links to those in the show notes. John, thank you so much for your time today.

Thank you Rob. Really appreciate it.

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Leading Digital Transformation with Rob Llewellyn and the Digital Transformation people. Visit the Digital Transformation people to secure the knowledge, talent and services you need for Digital Transformation success. To continue your journey as a Certified Transformation professional, visit rob llewellyn.com be sure to subscribe to the podcast and follow us on Twitter heDigital, TP and Obert Llewellyn.