Summary
In this episode of the Org Design Podcast, Brandon Curry shares insights on organizational design and leadership. Key points include:
- The importance of understanding roles and their interrelations in an organization
- Recognizing resistance as a sign of engagement and progress in organizational change
- The value of specific questions and conversations in gauging organizational health
- Analogies between organizational dynamics and music or sports teams
- Recommendations for resources on organizational design, including works by Kates Kesler and the Center for Effective Organizations
- The significance of participative design and including more of the organization in the process
- The application of continuous improvement methodologies like Lean and Kaizen in organizational design
Brandon emphasizes the importance of clear communication, understanding current states, and involving team members in the design process. He also highlights the value of specific tools and methodologies in approaching organizational challenges.
Show notes
Kates Kesler (now Accenture)
Center for Effective Organizations
Jay Galbraith, Ed Lawler, Chris Worley, Sue Mohrman.
LinkedIn Learning - Org Design
Lean, Gemba management
Eliyahu Goldratt
Kaizen practices
Amy Kates on YouTube
Organization Design Forum
Transcript
00:00:00] Amy Springer: What does Work Arts mean?
[00:00:01] Brandon Curry: So, Work Arts is the brand that I've given to my work. And it's the idea that we spend most of our life at work. And we should value it as a creative act. It does matter that you do this. It's not just that anybody I could get the outcome of your work from. I find that, in my experience, when organizations value the people, they value the contributions, the discretionary effort. The concept of engagement is something we've talked about for decades. And so, what are we really talking about when we're talking about engagement? Well, we're talking about discretionary effort. It's like a level of effort and care that people give beyond what you can really recognize them for. We're talking about this zone that exists between performance below which you'll be punished and then up to a point of which you can be recognized for. Above that, there's a level of effort that we call discretionary effort. And that's what everyone wants, right? We all want people to be fit in a role that they're exceptional at and motivated enough or caring enough to give a level of effort beyond what you can recognize them for, because they want to. And I think, as people, we all want to create something that demonstrates our genius. So, that's why I chose Work Arts. It was this idea that our ultimate aim is to create organizations where that happens, for most people, most
[00:01:13] Amy Springer: Thank you, Brandon. Thank you so much for joining us on the Org Design Podcast.
[00:01:17] Brandon Curry: Yeah, this is cool.
[00:01:18] Amy Springer: We are recording live from the Festival of Org Design in the Twin Cities in the US. This is the annual event of the Organization Design Forum. So, why are you here with us? But go right back to the start? Right back to the start of your journey? We tend to find people who don't choose org design as a career. Where did you start? What were your experiences that led you to be here and doing org design?
[00:01:40] Brandon Curry: Sure. I actually started as an engineering student. I started working in controls engineering, systems engineering, did a little bit of software user interface, because I knew what it was. I came from a pretty middle class family. I was good at math and science and art. And, in the end, I went into engineering because I understood it.
As I was doing it, I found I was pretty good at it, but I didn't really love it. What I really loved was the work that we were doing in these continuous improvement forums that we're working across functions. I was working at a Japanese company and we would write great code. The machine builders are building great machines.
We still spent more time debugging and trying to get things to work when we would bring the parts together, than we actually did. And I hated debugging. So, that part around driving cross-functional excellence was just something I really loved. And I put myself through school, working in the university, kind of being responsible for the environment.
In that type of a role, I just found I was naturally inclined to find the line of what would make this an engaging place to live. Still orderly. I used to have this rule that like, nobody goes to jail, nobody gets hurt. That's kind of a very low threshold of design criteria, like anything. As long as nobody goes to jail, nobody gets hurt, we can still have a lot of fun. I found that I was just naturally skilled at facilitating groups in a very, kind of, participative way. So, it wasn't a high leverage type of thing, but I get a lot of satisfaction from it and that led me into training and development and continuous improvement work. And over my career, you started to see missing capabilities in organizations at the group level. And no level of excellence by individuals or even by individual departments could really create what it was capable of, because of these missing links— these missing capabilities at the group level.
So, most of the second decade of my career was working in what's typically called talent management, today. But organization development, talent management, which was developing scaled capabilities across portfolio companies. Companies that had multiple business units, multiple go-to-market segments, et cetera.
How do you find and build capability that's scalable across a pretty diversified organization? And that was a great learning ground because, sometimes, I had 14 business units, individual PNLs. And being a leveraged resource, you develop a skill set. You're never going to make everyone happy. So, you have to just have a point of view and you have to be able to make decisions on what's important and who gets helped and who doesn't. So, that was great training ground for this work.
[00:04:02] Damian Bramanis: There was something you mentioned early on there. The integration piece where, "Well, our thing works alright. We've built this bit well. But then, when it comes to pulling everything together as the system, that's where the faults start to occur." We see that sort of problem in org design quite a bit.
[00:04:15] Brandon Curry: Absolutely.
[00:04:15] Damian Bramanis: Is that something that you still see today?
[00:04:18] Brandon Curry: Absolutely. I think in tech, you talk about this as the Conway's Law or The Reverse Conway maneuver. It's like, the idea that structure will drive design. And, when you have too much variation in your structure, you allow decisions to be made in too many places. They don't come together, naturally. Oftentimes, it takes an effort to zoom out. And, ultimately, have somebody own that as a product in order to drive something that works at scale and makes a value-based prioritization or what creates the most value for the group. I've found that that is pretty common in organizations as they scale, that they have different types of problems and those problems have a different level of impact as you change.
The saying is that organizations change faster than people. Some people can adapt and catch up and some can't. But often, leaders need help understanding the problem, articulating the problem. The solutions become, honestly, more obvious if you get really good at that.
[00:05:13] Amy Springer: Can you give us some examples of the problems you help leaders articulate?
[00:05:18] Brandon Curry: I think common inquiries come and ask for help around go-to-market. It's natural for organizations that are incentivized on revenue to value all revenue. And, you start to distribute your resources evenly, but customers don't contribute evenly. So, over time, I think there's a rebalancing effect that a lot of organizations need, to be more intentional about how you resource your go-to-market functions and the service levels that really are valued and that customers are willing to pay for. So, there's always that tension. People will be happy to receive service that they're not willing to pay for. But, how do you find the right balance of serving a customer the service that they're willing to pay for, that you need to deliver in order to compete with your competitors. So, that's one of the common go-to-market commercial strategy areas that people ask for help with. Because they may have an idea of changes that they would like to make, but they are not really sure. "How do I bring my team along? How do I align my team that this is the right set of decisions? And then how do I implement it?"
So that would be one. Another would be scale problems. Organizations grow very fast, sometimes through acquisitions or combinations. And then they wake up one day and they're like, "We have a problem. This wasn't a problem, but now it is."
[00:06:26] Amy Springer: How do they know it's a problem? Is it metrics? Is it they're being kept up at night? They're not getting to other things? They're too busy putting out fires?
[00:06:35] Brandon Curry: Yes. All of the above. I've seen a number of clients that grow through acquisitions where they'll have many acquisitions that they just roll up. And then at some point, they're like, "We can't digest another, we can't grow. We have no capacity to talk to our customers. We have no capacity to develop a strategy or the pieces just don't come together." So, there comes a point at which they're like, "Okay, we have to rethink this in order to go forward."
There's also the other, where an organization could be large and be very competitive. And then, at some point, divest something or lose a key customer. So, a segment of revenue goes away. And they're like, "Now we're not competitive. Now I have a cost structure that I can't afford." So, they sometimes need help rethinking that, as well.
[00:07:12] Damian Bramanis: You've talked actually quite a lot about bringing the customer— or at least, thinking of the customer— as part of org design. And that's something that we don't hear very often. When we think about org design, often, we think about how do we talk to our teams internally and how do we think about our structure and how do we incentivize people and things like that.
How do you go about bringing in that voice of the customer?
[00:07:31] Brandon Curry: No customer, no business.
At the end of the day, it's common for organizations that are competing on costs or competing in efficiency, to lose the customer. But that usually doesn't last for very long. I think it's important to understand who the customer is, understand your business model, and how it creates value for the customer.
[00:07:49] Damian Bramanis: How do you do that as part of the org design process?
[00:07:51] Brandon Curry: First of all, they have to have a strategy. No strategy, no operating model, no operating model, no org design. That's a framework that I think about, in terms of the relationship of those parts. What we can help them do— if it's unclear— is to define that as a problem. What is the consequence of being unclear about who the customer is and how we create value for them.
And what would be the risk of designing an organization without that in mind, [is] you might miss value KPIs, or you might pay too much attention and overvalue a benchmark of like, how are we different than our competitors? Your customers are buying from you. Unless you're, truly commoditized, they're buying from you for a reason.
And what is that? Understanding where do you fit in the market and why do the customers choose you and how to leverage that as a mechanism to achieve your goals. Which may or may not be growth. It may be contribution. How do we grow our share? How do we grow our profitability? How do we stay in business longer than our competitor and then capture the share? People have different strategies, in terms of how they're going to relate to the customer over time.
[00:08:50] Damian Bramanis: And a lot of what you said there is about rebalancing. As the market changes and as your customers change, where your revenue sources change, that you need to rebalance things internally to be able to support that.
[00:09:00] Brandon Curry: And even having a point of view on what you think is going to happen in the market. I've worked with some firms that were delivering new things. So, the market was growing. So, it wasn't necessarily a winner take all scenario. I have a couple of clients that are producing things that there just aren't enough of in the market.
Their number one strategy is volume. We need better operational performance. We can sell every single unit that we produce. So, that is the design challenge that we're trying to overcome.
[00:09:25] Brandon Curry: I'm a pretty simple person, Midwestern, make it plain. If you can't say it to me in kitchen English, if I can't explain this at all levels of your organization, in terms of the shifts that we're trying to make, we're going to have a difficult time understanding what capabilities you're building for, and then looking at your, structure, processes, rewards, et cetera.
So, being really clear about the case is the very first milestone that we'll look at.
[00:09:46] Damian Bramanis: When we first started chatting, you mentioned that you're a musician. Tell us more about that. And do you see threads from music that carry through to OD or vice versa?
[00:09:54] Brandon Curry: I'm an artist and a musician, actually. I play guitar and I dabble in other instruments as well. But, my primary instrument is guitar. And I grew up in a musical family. All of my kids are— that's something that we really value. So, we really invested as a family to make sure each of the kids were able to be musicians if they choose to be. And I think I have an interesting point of view of both of those. I have kids, teenage kids. They're all musicians. They're really musicians. I'm somebody that likes to play music, but they're trained and I speak with them about— music is really about listening, first and foremost.
[00:10:22] Damian Bramanis: Yeah.
[00:10:23] Brandon Curry: And art is really about being observant, to some extent. You have to have a point of view. A lot of people are craftspeople, like I can make things that people find interesting, but, do I really see what's there? In listening, am I making the song better, or am I just making noise?
So, I think there's a different point of view if you're a solo artist versus in a band, et cetera. So, I do think that there is some common ground there with design. And as I look at how I engage with my clients, it's like I'm intervening in a system.
Like, the goal is not to create dependency. The goal is that I work with a client to achieve their goals and make them capable. And then, hopefully move on to something else interesting. Maybe with them, maybe with somebody else.
[00:10:58] Amy Springer: One of my favorite musical org design references— see if it strikes a chord with you, too— is, historically, organizations tended to be like an orchestra.
Everyone had their thing and you had to do it well and don't leave your bit and hit your bar. Whereas, we're having to shift into these organizations that are more like a band and, especially, a jazz band. You know everybody in that room is there because they're the best at what they do and you have to trust them to do that.
And you're going to come together in a really improvised way. You'll step back, let them have their solos when it's necessary, and you'll all come together again.
[00:11:31] Brandon Curry: I think there's a lot of analogies that can be drawn. The challenge is when you have a misalignment between what your intention is and what you have.
So, if I have an orchestra but I'm hearing a solo, that's a problem. I often use the sports analogy and soccer, football. Like, if you're watching a five or six year old play soccer, there's 10 or 20 kids on a ball. Our aspiration as management teams is often to play a more dynamic game. We need to, understand what is the game and what type of offense are we running and spread out. We each need to understand a role in order to make this more dynamic.
[00:12:00] Damian Bramanis: So, when you're working with organizations, how do you know when things are starting to get in tune and people are starting to play together nicely and things are starting to sing? How does it feel when that starts to happen?
[00:12:13] Brandon Curry: Yeah, you definitely can feel it. I think that's the right sentiment. I'm an operator. I spent 20 years in organizations, running organizations, cross functionally. So, I think that you can see it in the body language, but you can also see it in the results. People are understanding what their role is in the work.
There is a rhythm to an organization that you'll find, when people are clear on what their role is, how other roles relate to their roles, and that things are moving. I think you'll get a lot of questions. When it goes well, you get more specific questions.
So, there is like a socially acceptable way to say, "No". And it usually sounds like, "I don't get it" or, "This doesn't make sense".
[00:12:49] Damian Bramanis: "I'm confused."
[00:12:50] Brandon Curry: Yeah. And, sometimes, they are genuinely confused. More often, I find people express that it doesn't make sense, or, "I don't get it", as a way of saying, "I don't like it", or, " I don't want to do this."
I think driving more specific conversations about what has been accomplished is a great conversation. Because, I think there is a lot of progress that you usually find that organizations communicate much more when they're trying to change. So, "What has been accomplished? What's unclear? What specifically is unclear? What do I have planned? Where do I need support?" I think those are all interesting conversations. That's what I typically see when they're actually engaged in making change.
[00:13:25] Damian Bramanis: It's interesting seeing resistance as a gauge of whether things are going well or not. If people are resisting in a healthy way and engaging with the process.
[00:13:33] Brandon Curry: And if you're not hearing specific questions about where things are unclear or what is needed, that's also a red flag. That's a sign that maybe things are not moving as much as you would hope. It can be a pitfall when people think, "Oh, this isn't going well. People have so many questions. It's overwhelming." It's always like that before— building the list of things that are unclear is progress.
[00:13:53] Damian Bramanis: Changing gears a little bit, I'd love to hear about some of the techniques or tools that you've used and found really valuable. Many of our listeners are leaders who are looking to solve problems that they're seeing in their organizations.
They might not be experts in organizational design and looking for some way that they can take action today. Are there some things that you think might be helpful?
[00:14:13] Brandon Curry: So what are some useful tools for somebody who may be new to organization design? I really encourage people to read the work of Kates Kesler. I think that they have produced— I mean, some of it is older— but, really great white papers. Two pieces of paper that unpack— and, honestly, some great videos as well. Some short videos, toolkits that are written to an HR practitioner that may be within a team. I think that they have some amazing tools.
I use their methodology quite a lot. I think the Center for Effective Organizations has some more sophisticated resources that are incredible. The work of Jay Galbraith, Ed Lawler Chris Worley, Sue Mohrman. There's a lot of great resources that are available. But, on LinkedIn Learning, if you go to LinkedIn and you type in org design, you're gonna see Amy Kates walking you through the basics. And, I'm a musician, I always tell people, "Know your standards. You could always improvise, but know your standards". You'll know, like, this is a 12 bar blues, you'll know the song that we're playing. I think that that's a great place to start, is referencing those great resources that are already there and available. I draw on in my practice, a lot of continuous improvement methodology because I spent decades of my life doing that work. Some of the principles of Lean around, like, Gemba management. Like, go, see, understand it, show respect. Well, that's just a current state analysis. How am I actually engaging with the organization? To not only be able to document the current state, but that they know we understand the current state because they told it to me. So, that participative aspect of design, I think is really important.
Organizations spend a ton of money trying to manipulate an organization to accept something that they had no hand in designing. And it's much more challenging and expensive to do that than it is to actually include more of the organization in the process. So, I always try to bring some of that to my work, too. Like the work of Eliyahu Goldratt, there's some great books on constraints management. Very basic things of Kaizen practices are also very useful. If your listeners are coming from a background in manufacturing or an agile methodology, which is just Lean. Lean, packaged for developing software products.
Any of those methodologies are useful frames for this work. I would recommend if you're new to this, look up Amy Kates on YouTube. There's some amazing short videos that'll get you started.
[00:16:23] Damian Bramanis: We'll definitely put a link to that.
[00:16:24] Amy Springer: I think she's about to begin, so we should wrap it up.
[00:16:26] Brandon Curry: Yeah, she's about to start her keynote.
[00:16:29] Damian Bramanis: Fantastic. Well, thank you so much. Some of the things that you've talked about today, including about being really receptive and org design being such an active process where people work together well and it makes great music. So, thank you for that. Just before we do wrap up, is there anything else that we haven't covered that you wanted to mention?
[00:16:45] Brandon Curry: I am very open, accessible to your listeners if they're looking for [a] Thought Partner for help. You can find me on Linkedin, it's Brandon J. Curry. I'm not the bodybuilder that most people find if you google Brandon Curry. Or you can find me at workartsadvisors.com
[00:17:01] Damian Bramanis: Fantastic.
[00:17:02] Amy Springer: Perfect. Thank you so much, Brandon. Thanks for joining us.
[00:17:05] Brandon Curry: Thank you
