The Monthly Foresight: Tuning Organizational Structure in Digital Way Nov. 2017

The whole point is how to build a more creative and productive working environment in which the employees’ talent can be unleashed.
The effects of an increasingly digitalized world are now reaching into every corner of businesses and every aspect of organizations. Digital is the age of creativity and innovation, creativity is the most wanted trait for digital leaders and professionals today, and innovation is the light every organization is pursuing. Which themes shall you set to advocate digital transformation? What are your practices for building a hyperconnected and ever-evolving digital business ecosystem?

    Tuning Organizational Structure in Digital Way

Digital Master Tuning XIII: The “Digital Way” of an Organizational Structure and Beyond? Organizations large or small are on the journey to digital transformation, and there are different theories of organizational structure evolution and continuous brainstorming about the concept of self-management, the format of future of the organization etc. The whole point is how to build a more creative and productive working environment in which the employees’ talent can be unleashed; and business as a whole is more optimal than the sum of pieces, in order to adapt to the change with the accelerating speed? Ultimately, what's the digital way to run a business?

What is the ideal Digital Organizational Structure? Due to the hyper-connectivity of digital nature, the trend toward softer and flatter organization structure is clear. And surely it is the right direction, as speed is a key imperative these days and “silo” mentality as a product of rigid hierarchy hinders flexibility. However there are certain limits from an organizational design perspective, and there is a long way ahead of building a high performing digital organization with optimized organizational structure.  

Organizational Structure and Digital Transformation Majority of organizations are designed to improve functional efficiency in the industrial era; and many traditional organizations today are running at two speeds, with the industrial speed, it can continue to keep the business light on; and with the digital speed, it will adapt to the more frequent digital disruptions, wired to change and designed for better innovation and long-term digital transformation. More specifically, how much influence does organizational structure or management hierarchy have on efficiency and innovation? How do you analyze your company's organizational structure for efficiency/innovation and radical digital transformation?

Is Hierarchy Good or Bad for Systems?  As complexity is pushing the boundaries of the thinking and traditional systems, what we do know is "those larger and more complicated systems" do not have the requisite agility to adapt to more complex and adaptive environments. The more nonlinear, interconnected, and interdependent the environment, where uncertainty and emergence become more prevalent, hence accelerated rates of change, the less likely ordered hierarchical systems are to be the answer due to the rigidity. Hence, we need to adapt to the Systems Thinking and re-imagine the digital organizational structure. Systems Thinking is the ability to think the "whole," and understand the interconnectivity of its parts as well.

Fine-Tune Organization Structure to Get Digital Ready Due to the “VUCA” nature of digitalization, the business complexity is unavoidable. Organizations that are skilled at managing complexity can gain advantages by pushing the boundaries of a more complicated business mix that provides opportunities to create inter-business value. From an organizational structure perspective, how to fine tune the digital dimensions of your organizational structure development to get digital ready?

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