Re-thinking how organizations work

Think about the organizational structure you work in and evaluate the following questions:

• Do you work in a line, matrix or project organizational structure pimped up with some agile methodology, but you don’t see any improvements in customer value, innovation and transparency?
• Do you have many projects running in parallel but only a few produce revenues and move you and your company forward?
• Is your organization difficult to control and the established processes need more and more exceptions from the standard?

If any of these sound familiar to you, I can reassure you: You are not alone! In my opinion, these problems become more and more visible and, at the same time their solution is crucial for a company in order to stay successful.

I believe that the root cause for all these problems are flaws of the classical organizational structures available and in use today. They are consequences of the structure itself. Consider that these structures are built during a century where specialization of departments and individuals was essential to improve productivity. In these days, productivity was considered the holy grail of a successful company. Today, productivity is only one element of success and its importance is decreasing.

It is time to re-think our organizational structures if you rely on constant innovation, time to market and a good fit between your solution and the customer problem. A new organizational structure should be built in such a way that it naturally boosts:

• customer value creation and
• innovation

I call this organizational structure the Lean Team Organization (LTO).
To get a first overview of the structure have a look to the blog on the topic. 

In this blog I want to share my thoughts about this new organizational structure and I would be happy to discuss and refine the model with you.

In my first post I explain the basic structure of the model. I am looking forward to discussing this model with you in this blog.