The practice of organization design like our sense of organizations is at a turning point.
Design as it existed in the last decades of the twentieth century is "dying out" and the global world is searching for a replacement just as we are experimenting with new forms of organization - virtual, networked, temporary. Even the global value chain that was the trend at the end of the twentieth century is breaking down as the carbon footprint from moving partially completed goods from one country to another is perceived to result in higher costs.
The world is experimenting with what comes next in terms of design. We have WholeScale Design where large parts of the system are brought together. In the NGO sector, there is the use of Collective Impact. We have the use of Appreciative Inquiry as a design methodology. We have Open Space Technology to address a variety of organizational issues.
The U.S. is taking a different path than is Europe when it comes to design. The U.S. continues to place emphasis on the process of design. This has been the U.S. tradition though in truth this tradition is partly based on past work in the U.K., Scandinavia and Japan. The Europeans are looking at solutions that can be applied to organizations though with a good deal of thought involved in doing so. They do not appear to be as interested as is the U.S. in moving through a process to arrive at the given solution. In Europe, this results in approaches like Holacracy which involves the creation of a complex organizational constitution that only a few have tried.
Two factors in the developing approach to design are the ideas of purpose and emergence. Purpose, thought and state of mind, and commitment are being seen as drivers of design at least on a theoretical basis and in many cases in practice. Emergence relies on the twenty-first capabilities for networking to arrive at real-time design solutions. See: "Temporary, Emergent Organizations"
What is emerging across the globe is the use of Innovation Labs for the design of products, services and projects. Innovation Labs have been made popular through the work of IDEO and Stanford University and design labs in places like MIT. Innovation Labs are being used in the private sector. Social Innovation labs are being used in the NGO sector to focus on community or society-wide issues.
It remains unclear whether the vehicle of the Innovation Lab can be applied to organization-wide processes or the restructuring of an entire organization. At some point, the changing nature of organizations will intersect with the changing nature of design and an approach for designing twenty-first century organizations will emerge.
As stated, we remain in a period of experimentation where the old is dying out and the new is in the process of being born. As a result, there cannot be a definitive statement on a current practice of design. Instead, managers, organization staff, community members and consultants can be engaged in the ongoing process of inquiry and invention - a meta-design effort. There are things to be learned from design in the later part of the twentieth century. There are rich possibilities to be inquired into for the twenty-first century.
Each country can legitimately inquire into what is a culturally appropriate practice for its approach to design - looking at the American and European practices and other practices from around the world as well as factoring in its own needs and contribution.
Comments