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About the guest
Learn more about Dallin Whitfield and his work with AlignOrg on his expert page
Summary
In this episode of the Org Design Podcast, Tim Brewer and Amy Springer sit down with Dallin Whitfield, a volunteer at the Org Design Festival and an expert in organizational design. Dallin shares his unconventional journey from aspiring lawyer to becoming an organization design consultant, highlighting the importance of understanding systems and people in the workplace.
They discuss the evolving nature of organizational design, emphasizing the need for adaptability in response to external pressures like technological advancements and market changes. Dallin explains how Align Org, his current consultancy, focuses on collaboration and leveraging existing organizational knowledge to drive effective design processes.
Listeners will gain insights into the methodologies used in organizational design, including the "Mastering the Cube" framework, which Dallin uses to guide organizations through strategic alignment and structural changes. The conversation also touches on the challenges faced by organizations in today’s fast-paced environment and the importance of continuous design governance.
Join us for an engaging discussion on how to navigate the complexities of organization design and build better workplaces.
Show Notes
AlignOrg - https://alignorg.com/
Mastering the Cube - https://alignorg.com/our-book/
Transcript
[00:00:00] Tim Brewer: Welcome to the Org Design Podcast, coming from Twin Cities at the ODF Org Design Festival. With me today, I have got Dallin. Dallin is one of the volunteers at the festival. You help out, I know a big part of the community.
Dallin, tell us a little bit about how you ended up being an org designer. Was it like, "Hey, Mom, Dad, I'm thinking about being a doctor or maybe an astronaut." And now you're an org designer. What was the pathway from growing up, thinking about what you wanted to be as an adult, and ending up today, helping out people with their org designs.
[00:00:34] Dallin Whitfield: Sure. And one, thank you just for having on. Really excited to share and have a good discussion. So, my journey to org design is— I think it sounds interesting. I think it's a logical flow of just how I start to think about systems very early, without even knowing it.
What I wanted to be as a kid was always to be an attorney. Was really interested in becoming a lawyer. I think it was just because I had an uncle who was a very successful business attorney, did lots of big M&A transactions and had lots of material things. And I was like, "Oh, that's what I want to do. That's exactly what I want to do." I think I came to that realization when I was eight years old. From eight years old on, my track was law. As a young kid, not knowing what M&A or anything like that is, I just had a focus to learn, actually, a little bit more what that was.
I ended up getting my degree in business law, so part of my career aspirations was still, certainly, getting into corporate representation. Also at the same time of going to school, I had other business, corporate jobs, sales, marketing, events. Before I went to law school, or was considering law school, I really asked myself the question, why am I actually interested in M&A and law outside of, maybe the material benefits of a profession like that.
And it really wasn't the legal stuff. It was really after I'd learned a little bit more about the M&A work and what it takes for two organizations to come together, was really the people and the system, that really intrigued me. So, from there, I just was like, was law school even the right decision? I questioned and I just started to look out, what else is out there? What industries are out there? And consulting landed in my lap, because a part of not just the system stuff, I really loved working with the people and having a diverse set of problems and situations, and consulting just seemed like a really good fit.
Not being at one place, working with a lot of different clients, and working within a lot of different situations. Found a really great opportunity at a boutique organization design firm. Talked to the founder. Because, really, organization design was not a familiar thing to me.
It's not something I was like, that's the clear obvious choice. Just had to go out and find, what industry, consulting, and then what specific niche really aligned, and organization design consulting really just landed in my lap when I started to look for, "Okay, what is my long term career? What do I want that to be?" So, started within a boutique, went to a bigger consultancy, and now I'm back at a boutique at an organization called Align Org.
[00:03:03] Tim Brewer: One of the things that we've noticed is very few org designers had a straight line to org design.
But I wonder now, as we see it become more prominent, if we're going to see more students thinking about, something they may end up doing. You talked about you're at Align Org now. Maybe tell us a little bit about the ideal customer, or the types of people that work with at Align Org.
I know you've brought some assets today. We, obviously, have produced the Org Design Oracle cards, which we've been giving out here at the conference, and you get to take one of those home. But, you were kind enough to bring along some assets for me, as well. Do you want to talk through those assets?
[00:03:38] Dallin Whitfield: Sure.
[00:03:39] Tim Brewer: For those of you are watching on video, conscious that this might be audio. But, tell us a little bit about the business, what you do, where you specialize, and then why physical assets are so important in the org design process.
[00:03:51] Dallin Whitfield: Yeah, absolutely. Well, let me first address your first question, which was, who are our ideal customers, or the best customers to work for?
I would say customers that are looking for— Not consultants to come in and tell you what to do, but to work and partner to really leverage the brilliance and the expertise that's already embedded in the organization. Stylistically, that's where we tend to operate, is really in strategic facilitation. And again, really leveraging the brilliance that already exists within organizations. And how we do that is through, I would say, is one of the best methodologies in the market. And that's all captured in Mastering the Cube here. Which is one of our books that we've had published, and we're coming out with a new book.
I would say the Mastering the Cube is a lot about the "What", how to go about design in the right ways. What are the pitfalls that typically happen? And how can you overcome and have more foundational building blocks to build on, when going through a design process.
So, that's Mastering the Cube. Our next book that will be coming out sometime this year, I think it's going be a little bit more on the "How", actually giving some more methods. This is something that we, typically, will give to leaders, or anyone we're doing design with. Just have them read chapter one, to really ground in how we see the world. And how we see the world is through this organizational cube.
So, it's a cube model. Very similar to a star model. You'll see very similar sides. You'll see strategy. You'll see structure.
[00:05:17] Amy Springer: Dallin is holding a Rubik's cube.
[00:05:18] Dallin Whitfield: It is a Rubik's cube.
[00:05:20] Amy Springer: An Align Org speciality Rubik's cube.
[00:05:22] Dallin Whitfield: Yep. Yep. Exactly.
He's going to juggle three cubes at the same time. And see if he can fix the cubes while—
In one hand, blindfolded.
[00:05:31] Tim Brewer: While we're doing the podcast.
[00:05:34] Dallin Whitfield: Yeah, that's the trick. But we use the metaphor as a Rubik's cube, because just like organizations, you can't just fix or attempt to fix one aspect, without trying to look at the whole. Just like as a Rubik's Cube, you can't change one side of the cube without it influencing the other side. And there's a process. Do you know how fast the world record is to solve a Rubik's Cube?
[00:05:57] Amy Springer: Less than 30 seconds?
[00:05:59] Dallin Whitfield: Three seconds, 3. 01 seconds to solve a Rubik's cube. Just to be able to do that, you really need a process. You really need a process. So, that's how we think through organizations the same way.
There's so many components and, really, organization design is aligning the different choices that we make as an organization to align to our strategy. So, you'll see at the center of our cube, actually, is strategy. Things have to align on our business direction, and what really ties these things together is we view that as strategy.
[00:06:29] Tim Brewer: Wow, that's really cool. Look, Dallin, that's super interesting, thinking about the world in a cube and how important process is to the speed that you can solve org design challenges.
A theme of org design, at the moment, is how all the things that are influencing AI and other things— while that's an interesting conversation— actually, everyone's just saying, Tim — and I'm sure they're saying to you and Amy— This is just going to lead to org design not being something that can happen once every three years."
Your customers aren't going to go like, "Hey, we want a big re org again. We've been looking forward to it for three years. I've set a thing in my calendar. I am so excited to re org again." You're seeing this need to consistently or iteratively approach org design. Do you see that a lot with your customers?
What are you seeing in the marketplace, in terms of the rate of change that organizations are needing to deal with, either internally because their own strategy changes, or externally with the likes of COVID and AI and other changes we're seeing, that they may not be so in control of.
[00:07:29] Dallin Whitfield: I think it's a great question. And, certainly, we've been seeing that a lot.
And what we try to implement in all of our projects is design governance and sustainability. Having an adaptable model, making room for when things need to be flexible, but also still having the things that anchor, that provide actual competitive advantage. We don't want to lose those things, but, introducing a process to look at your organization, like the cube model in our methodology, I think is the foundational step to be able to decide whenever things might happen, disruption happens. Whether it's changes in AI or in technology, if that does fundamentally change your strategy, how does that then impact all the other elements of the cube?
Typically, just the step of introducing a model to think about organizations, holistically, has been the key for success for being fungible and nimble when changes occur.
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[00:09:02] Amy Springer: So, Dallin, imagine one of our listeners is one of your potential clients. If we could click our fingers right now and give them a skill or a mindset or anything that prepared them for an engagement with you, what would that be?
[00:09:19] Tim Brewer: I would say to prepare, really get prepared to think in terms of being a leader of alignment. How can we build alignment, not representing just your own world. So, being able to think systematically, and what it means to be a leader, is all around alignment for us. And to be able to connect all the different parts within your organizational context, and really be able to pull yourself out of just your own view and perception of the world. We like to have energetic rooms, it's a very collaborative— and really, that can be very different for some. Some types of changes vary, it could be authoritarian and command and control type settings. And, really, that's not our way we like to operate.
With that work, how does someone listening in, who's thinking, actually we're thinking about getting some help into our organization, maybe don't want to go to really big institutional consultants, how do they know they're a right fit for Align Org?
[00:10:11] Dallin Whitfield: Again, back to the openness to collaborate and to not look for, "Hey, we need someone to come in and make a decision for us, but we need someone to come in with a process to get the collective minds together and work on the issue to come up with an adequate solution.
I think benchmarking is a big topic that we always hear about in the space. I think it certainly has its merits and its need to understand.
But, oftentimes, I see it being such a driver in how people make decisions. "Hey, this company has been doing it this way. That means we have to do it this way. They're best in class." If I put in a Ferrari engine into my Honda, it's not going to work, right? Because the system around it isn't aligned to that. Ferrari is one of the fastest engines in the market. Of course, we want that in our own organization.
But is that really the reality of what we need? No. Stylistically, we use benchmarks as an input, but certainly not as a driver. So, if you want to work with us, just keep those things in mind. Just because it's worked elsewhere— we certainly have that experience and knowledge of a lot of the different organizations we work with.
It's primarily the Fortune 500 organizations. A lot of what our partners are doing might not work for you. Really, it's assessing the needs, not only of your internal partners, but really outside-in thinking, from a customer's perspective. What are their needs and how are we meeting those needs?
What are the capabilities that are required to deliver better than anyone on those needs?
[00:11:42] Tim Brewer: Awesome.
[00:11:42] Amy Springer: Not naming any names, but can you give us some examples of clients you've engaged? What was it they were experiencing? What were they feeling inside their business that made them say, "Hey, we need to give these guys a call.
[00:11:54] Dallin Whitfield: Sure. I'll use my most recent one that I'm currently working on, leaving behind. Because we're getting closer to implementing and we'll support from behind the scenes, but they have their internal resources to help drive the implementation. Some of the pressures, and this is a Fortune 20 oil and gas company. As you can imagine, there's a lot of external pressure.
There's a lot of external pressure to cut costs and to be sustainable and to, move into areas that, might not have been as familiar to them. So, all these external things, as well as internal things that have happened— big merger acquisition and things that have really had prevalent implications to how people do work.
There's been lots of duplication identification of just like, "Hey, we've been doing this work in one legacy organization, very similar to how the other legacy organization was working. Is there a way we can get some efficiency?" That's the client situation and what they've been experiencing. Engaging with us was just helping them think through— they've gone through lots of iterations of big firm cutting because, essentially, head count costs are a lot.
So, with the external pressure from investors and the Street to get some efficiency and number reduction, it could really shake up an organization, and how work actually needs to fit together if we're cutting off an arm, for the sake of dollars. And really, our job was to help advise and help collaborate on, "Okay, what work do we need and how do we then need to think about organizing around our work? We always say that strategy drives the work drives our structure. Oftentimes, we find, with clients, they'll just jump to structure because that's where the cost findings are, right?
That's where the dollars are and in people's roles. But, when we do them, we don't really look at the work that drives it. It can really break things, could really break things. We were experiencing, or my client was experiencing quite a bit of pain with things just not working as they should.
So, really just taking a step back to understand, "Hey what is the work? What is the work? How does that connect to our strategy? Even clarifying strategy, do we really understand the needs that we're designing around? Do we understand the customer needs that we're designing around?
And then how does that then feed back into our structure? So, that's really the approach we've been taking and, really, our role with supporting our current organization.
[00:14:12] Tim Brewer: Dallin, thank you so much for joining us on the Org Design Podcast. We really appreciate you dropping off Mastering the Cube and the Rubik's cube, or the cube approach to org design.
If someone's listening along and they're like, "I want a cube and I want to read the book that Tim got and Amy got, where can I find that?
[00:14:30] Dallin Whitfield: You can go to Alignorg.com. I think there should be an inquiry function on the website and just drop a line.
It's also available on Amazon and online, Mastering the Cube. And if you're interested in talking more, don't hesitate to connect with me on LinkedIn or reach out, just Dallin.Whitfield@alignorg.com. Would always be happy to chat.
[00:14:48] Tim Brewer: Yep. We'll also have an author page on the Functionly content site attached to this podcast with all the content details attached there and your contact details. Thank you so much for joining us. Amy, thank you for helping lead and co-host the Org Design Podcast. We're recording live from the Org Design Festival, as part of the Org Design Forum. For those of you who are org designers, that's a great place to start as well. We're all here representing different parts of the community as a true community of org designers.
And for anyone else listening along, let's thank Dallin. And we'll see you all next time.
[00:15:19] Amy Springer: Thanks so much, Dallin.
[00:15:20] Dallin Whitfield: Thanks so much for having me. Appreciate it.
Functionly is a powerful tool that can assist organizations in achieving the key takeaways from this episode by providing a comprehensive platform for org design.
With its intuitive interface, Functionly enables leaders to visualize and align their organizational structures with strategic goals effectively. By leveraging the insights shared by Dallin Whitfield, Functionly helps teams to facilitate collaboration, streamline workflows, and implement sustainable design governance. This ensures that organizations can adapt to changes, such as those brought on by AI and market dynamics, while maintaining clarity in roles and responsibilities.
Functionly empowers organizations to build healthier and more effective structures that meet their unique needs.
