Which business structures are best suited to the unpredictable 21st century? How can a business reconfigure itself with minimum disruption and maximum impact? Every executive grapples with problems of restructuring--and most need hands-on guidance to solve them. Based on Jay Galbraith’s world-renowned approach to organization design and featuring a broad selection of practical tips and tools developed by Diane Downey and Amy Kates, Designing Dynamic Organizations gives business leaders at all levels everything they need to implement positive, progressive change. In this book, business executives will learn how to examine their choices by leading them systematically through these fundamental questions: Designing Dynamic Organizations includes examples and worksheets that pilot you through the essential steps of organizational design.
I found many of the exercises and approaches in this book helpful, if not completely 1:1 applicable. I scaled down several of the organizational design exercises to use with a smaller team, and it helped focus our discussions. I don't think the results would have been as good without this framework. I recommend reading through the first few chapters, skimming the rest, and then diving into any particular chapters that speak to your immediate needs.
I never got to meet Jay Galbraith. His first work was published just months after my birth. However, Galbraith’s perspectives on organizations and change have reverberated over the years, and I finally got a chance to read some of his later work – Designing Dynamic Organizations. Galbraith published many works over the years, nearly all about creating structures for organizations that would perform and adapt.
Good book for an OD practicioner. This book does not give much of a theoretical background on organization design but it is extremely useful if you need to start OD work in a short span of time. Its neatly structured and can be used to create good content for workshops or sessions for leadeship. It contains multiple ready-to use questionnaires and formats that can be easily used to collect data on business level metrices.
Fantastic overview of organizational design principles, along with great hands-on tools for application in one's organization. My familiarity with the subject matter is purely experiential, so this book was extremely helpful in building my understanding in the discipline of org design as well as in thinking about how to apply it at work.
The edition I read was from the early 00's, so I just politely overlooked some of the ridiculously outdated case studies from companies like 3Com.