Can You Know Too Much About Your Organization?

How much do you know about the end-to-end operations of your organization? The communication channels? The decision-making processes? Thzae handoffs and coordination? The political walls?

If you looked closely, would you see a deliberate strategy or the results of years and years of patches, workarounds, political truces, and shadow systems?

Now imagine you had carte blanche to clean it up — redesign operations to be more efficient, more effective, more focused on getting things done. Would this experience change how you see your current efforts and responsibilities? And what might happen to your motivation when you see your job in the context of this large, complex machine that needs a good redesign?

These questions emerged from a study I conducted of six project teams tasked with redesigning their organization’s operations. Each team’s assignment was to create a new operational model intended to radically alter the everyday routines of the organization. Once they completed the assignment, everyone was expected to return to their regular jobs.