Organisational design
A structure that serves the work
- Coaching and counsellingA confidential space for you as the person behind the role. Coaching focuses on your development: what drives you, what holds you back and what you need to lead with more calm and direction. Counselling makes room for what touches you in your work and your life, so that you can choose clearly again.
- Teams and networksWhat matters happens in the space between people. I work with executive teams, teams and networks that want to collaborate better: holding the conversations that are being avoided, making clear agreements and being able to rely on one another again, also across the boundaries of departments and organisations.
- Transformational leadershipTransformational leadership changes not only what people do, but also how they see and what they commit themselves to. It begins with yourself: who you are shapes how you lead. I help you give direction that moves people, challenges them to think for themselves and gives them room to grow, especially when everything is in motion.
- Intelligent organisationsAn intelligent organisation learns from its own experience. It draws on the knowledge and judgement of its people, makes room for reflection and renewal, and connects human and artificial intelligence so that AI strengthens people rather than replaces them. I guide organisations in that development, from the inside out.
Organisational design
A healthy organisation is designed around the work. Not around positions, habits or the previous reorganisation. Good design makes collaboration natural. Poor design turns every day into a coordination problem.
Do you recognise this?
We meet a lot and coordinate constantly. Even so, the work falls between departments.
Employees see the problems but are not allowed to solve them. Everything goes up the line.
We have reorganised twice already. The organisation chart changed, the work did not.
I design organisations in a fixed sequence. First the grouping of the work itself, then the control structure, then the information it needs. That sequence comes from Dutch modern sociotechnical systems design and remains highly relevant. Whoever starts with management layers designs around the leadership instead of around the work.
Principles for healthy organisations
A good design groups work around complete assignments for customers, so teams see the whole and can take responsibility. It places control capacity as close as possible to where problems arise. It limits hand-offs and mutual dependencies. And it tests every design against three requirements at once: the quality of the organisation, the quality of the work and the quality of working relations.
Diagnosis and design
I start with a diagnosis of the existing structure. Where do disruptions arise, where does coordination pile up, where is room to act missing? We then design alternatives with the people who know the work and weigh them against each other. The result is a design you can explain and defend, with a realistic path towards it.
Psychodynamic. Structure also protects: against uncertainty, against conflict, against responsibility. Ignore that, and the old behaviour returns inside the new structure.
Systemic. Teams rarely function better than the place the design gives them. I look at the links between units, not only at the units themselves.
Human-AI. AI shifts tasks between people and systems. That changes how work is best grouped. I take that shift into the design.
Plan an exploratory conversation
Your structure serves the work. Teams solve what they encounter themselves. Less coordination is needed and there is more room for craftsmanship.