What skills do you need to build a team or organization that will continue to produce results for a long time?

When creating a new company or building a team, you need to be careful to ensure that those organizations survive for a long time. Cedric Chin, who is involved in the management of a software development company, explains the skills necessary to build such a long-lasting organization.

The Skill of Org Design --Commonplace --The Commoncog Blog
https://commoncog.com/blog/org-design-skill/

Mr. Chin founded the programmer community 'NUS Hackers ' when he was in college. NUS Hackers survived after Chin left the community and has a large number of talented programmers at the time of writing the article. In addition, at the software development company where Mr. Chin built a recruitment process, 70% of the people who Mr. Chin was involved in joining the company continued to be enrolled, and the company's profits more than doubled. 'My organizational design skills are not world class. I rate my abilities as B to B +,' said Chin. 'How do I recognize the skills of people who are better than me?' And I know what parts of my skills I should improve, 'he explains, explaining the points to keep in mind when designing an organization.

First, Mr. Chin defines organizational design as 'changing the' form 'of organizational form, system, process, and differentiation according to the' context 'that is the purpose of the organization.'

There are two issues with the process of changing a form to suit its context:

・ It is difficult to predict the reaction of members to changes in organizational designers because the organization is composed of multiple members with different social, cultural, and economic backgrounds.
・ If the tissue becomes dysfunctional, it is difficult to restore it to its original state.

To solve these problems, Chin starts with small changes when making changes to the organization, 'monitoring how the changes affect the organization and undoing the changes.' He argues that the process of 'deciding' needs to be repeated.

“ 1: Build good relationships with members in the organization ” “ 2: Model member reactions ” “ 3: Economic incentives / contracts / He states that he needs four skills : 'use the three approaches of culture ' and ' 4: understand how to make changes to the organization' and explain each skill.

◆ 1: Build good relationships with members of the organization
Establishing good relationships with members makes it possible to predict the reaction of each member when making changes to the organization, and to target members who may resist changes to the entire organization. It will be possible. This will increase the effectiveness of 2-4 skills.

◆ 2: Model the reaction of members
Changes made to the organization provide members with 'economic incentives such as promotions and increased rewards' and 'status incentives built within the organization'. By modeling the response of each member to this incentive, it is possible to respond appropriately when the response is slower than expected.

◆ 3: Make full use of three approaches: economic incentives, contracts, and culture
According to Mr. Chin, there are three approaches to making changes to the organization: 'giving financial incentives,' 'adding new contracts,' and 'introducing a new culture.' Chin says these approaches need to be used appropriately according to the problem to be solved.

The software development company that Mr. Chin had run in Vietnam in the past had the problem that 'members repeat sexist behavior.' To solve this problem, an economic approach of 'imposing a fine on sexist behavior' and a cultural approach of 'introducing a culture that refrains from sexist behavior' can be considered. Mr. Chin took a cultural approach and told the members in the morning assembly, 'We need women to be members of the team. The current team has a culture that makes women uncomfortable. From now on, sexist behavior Is forbidden. ' As a result, sexist behavior disappeared within a month of the morning assembly.

◆ 4: Understand how to make changes to your organization
As mentioned above, if a large change is made at one time and the tissue becomes dysfunctional, it is difficult to restore the tissue to its original state, so it is necessary to make small changes at one time to avoid the dysfunction. .. Also, when making changes, treat them as a response to 'some problem' so that members can easily accept the changes.

After making changes, you need to evaluate the results of those changes. Mr. Chin made changes after learning that members were dissatisfied in an interview one month after introducing the new task management process and spending three weeks fixing it. After that, he insists that the reaction of the members should be checked diligently.