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Speaker A Hello, I'm Dan Smith, and I'm pleased to represent the Global Organization Design Society by presenting a very informal and brief overview of how a project might go forward involving organization structure analysis applied to the information technology arena. This again is a very informal presentation and it is not meant to demonstrate all of the details of an actual specific client. Instead, this is a composite of a number of different It projects I've been involved in, with a background in measurement and statistics, business research, and so on. My current focus in organization structure analytics is a natural extension of my training as an industrial psychologist. It's been my privilege to be an associate with the Global Organization Design Society since soon after its inception. My work with work levels based organization design methods is now 30 years old, or has extended over the past 30 years in a variety of client settings and with very deep experience in the organization of information technology and human resource functions. The example that we're going to discuss today is meant to not necessarily be a complete organization profile, but rather a subset of the elements that go into an enterprise. And the intent is to demonstrate how it is often structured and how the work of data analytics within the It arena is sometimes positioned in a way that makes it difficult for It to realize its full potential. From an organization design point of view, it's common for the business strategy process to identify a number of organization goals and to make decisions on organization design that are at a very high level and, for example, centralize or decentralize, outsource a particular function or insource another, carry out a business relationship just in time or perhaps operate with a substantial internal inventory. These are decisions made from a strategic point of view. The challenge is to operationalize them. And work levels, or levels of work based methods of organization analysis offer a practical tool to make these decisions a reality. In this particular example, it is shown as a unit positioned within the administration arena, and the It function is positioned with its normal operational duties and supporting various administrative tasks, hardware support and so on. Help desk. The core It functions, however, do not include in this particular example, the development of application systems. In this particular example, the development work for manufacturing systems, customer systems, HR systems are positioned within the particular end user department. This is not meant to suggest it's always done this way, but it sometimes occurs when, for example, a large project is taken on by an outside consulting firm and contractor and the It organization moves to a background support role. There are consequences of this, and we'll discuss that and we see further examples. Job titles reporting progressions that are shown in this example are typical and I found common in many organizations. It's common that analysts are grouped together under a lead, that a group of leads is then led by a manager of a particular systems area. The role of Director and various General Manager and Vice President roles are common and frequently positioned in this way. This particular organization chart might be constructed following a comprehensive process of analysis and work with both It and Human Resources in documenting current reporting relationships, the deployment of staff and current structure. The Budget and chart of Accounts and budget structure is taken into account. The objective is to track down and verify the specifics of who reports to who and what are the various elements involved in the organization. Having done that, though, this type of organization chart offers little insight in terms of particular areas of problems or opportunities for improvement. And it's this area where a levels of work based analysis is very productive. The first step, and probably the key step in an organization structure analysis a levels of work based analysis is to overlay the organization structure on a template of levels of work and illustrated here by the position of the various roles classified by levels of work. This is referred to as a levelized.org chart and here we see the President role is positioned and identified at work level five. Level of work five. This classification and the positioning on an.org chart like this would be based on careful analysis of the work role, the duties, responsibilities, authorities, et cetera. And a decision is made for each role in terms of, quote what is the level of work for which that role is defined? When this is accomplished, the end result is an array of the organization structured, stretched up and down to fit the various roles by level of work. And in this particular case then on a template with the bands in the background, it's possible to then start to see cases in which there are multiple work roles in a hierarchy, all at the same level of work or perhaps sharing the level of work. The analysis of this levelized organization structure then gives rise to or makes possible the targeting of particular issues. One example is the idea of a reporting thread reporting chain. Between this, in this case there are eight roles from bottom to top. In the example of programmer analyst, senior Manager of Manufacturing and Customer System senior Director of Operations fifth is GM of Operations, 6th is the VP of Operations, 7th is the Chief Operating Officer and 8th is the President. The fact that there are eight reporting roles arrayed in five target levels of work suggests that this is an area where there may be extra levels of management or perhaps jam ups and role definition as illustrated in other areas. Here I won't go through all the details, but just point out. For example, in the It area the data analytics services is managed at work level three. But there are really no other roles involved in analytic services data analysis. They are delegated down to level of work two. In the work of a data resources manager and data analyst. This type of organization may be productive for the management of a data mart or various databases for analysis, but in this particular case there is no distinctive positioning of any roles that would drive an effective deployment of big data tools. The purpose of a levels of work based analysis of an organization's structure is improvement and also implementation of strategic decisions. There are a number of fundamental principles of effective organization structure that would drive a design exercise of restructuring intending to optimize performance. This is an example of an organization structure that might evolve from the previous highly layered organization. And there are a number of features of this type of organization structure which would comply with levels of work based principles. For example, there's a very clear differentiation of operational work, improvement work and sustaining work across the essential business functions reporting to the president. To illustrate one option, this particular example has consolidated now the systems and applications development work and integrated It within It. This is a very common function and is necessary in order to take advantage of the It capabilities as they might apply to It contributions as they are essential for effective systems work. It is also visually clear here that there is one level of work in each reporting relationship at each level of work, and that there is a one level of work differentiation between manager and direct report. The role titles here would also be levelized, so to speak, with consistent titles used across all of the different job areas at a particular level of work. Of special interest here in our discussion of Big Data is the point of positioning a high level individual contributor role separate from It responsible for analytics at work level four in the improvement arena. This design would create a role of Chief Analytics Officer, and this role would work as a peer with It operations and services, but is operationally separate because the intent of the role would be to promulgate effective use of analytics tools building on a data mart infrastructure that It may put in place. Again, the purpose here is to illustrate how the use of levels of work based principles allows an organization to be understood in more detail and particular areas of improvement identified. This is a very brief, again an informal demonstration and an example that illustrates two fundamental points organization design and technology innovation go hand in hand. The good design enables innovation. Poor design creates barriers when work roles are designed so that they are not integrated, that they are not at the same level of authority, that they're not positioned to be influential. Organization design is a very very important enabler of full technology deployment. What's needed however, is not so much the notion, not so much the strategic targeting of centralized, decentralized, insource outsource of various functions. These decisions follow very even very straightforward from a strategic planning process. What's needed is a very specific method to operationalize these strategic decisions. And the levels of work based approach has been shown to be very practical, very flexible across different industries. It's a systematic, understandable method. Again, thank you for the opportunity to present this very brief example and I would look forward to answering any questions. Can be reached via the website of WWWs four and also through the Global Organization Design Society. Bye.