Session 2: Lifting the Veil: How Visible and Invisible Structures Drive Organizational Behavior
Esther Derby
Managers want to improve results in their organizations, and use the tools available to them. One of the common most common tools is re-organization. Managers seek the optimum arrangement of people, processes, and work to achieve goals-creating new teams, here, new reporting relationships there, and a ramped up process or two. These changes can have a dramatic effect, though often the one desired.
It’s easy to say that the change was ill-conceived, ill-designed, poorly implemented, or scuttled by resisters. While that is sometimes true, even a sound design will fail when it doesn’t take into account the informal and invisible structures that pervade organizational life. Seeing the hidden structures opens possibilities for action and avoids pitfalls.
In this session, we’ll do a simple simulation and they analyze patterns of behavior based on the visible and invisible structures at play. We?ll also peek behind the veil of your organization as we work in small groups to analyze the interaction of structure and behavior where you work. When the invisible becomes visible, you will see more options for action.
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