Something is stirring in the undergrowth of corporate life. A new beast a big beast, too is threatening to burst out on unsuspecting businesses and organisations. The new corporate animal is the director of organisational design.
Talk of a board-level role of organisational design, while still a low rumble, looks like becoming a big noise in months to come.
The good news is that chief executives of major organisations understand that their board-level discussions are seriously underpowered as far as strategic issues and that means the people agenda as much as anything are concerned. Succession planning, reward and other aspects of the big strategic picture need to be better understood in the boardroom.
Too many businesses are paying inadequate attention to these fundamental issues of organisational design. And HR directors, even those who sit on the board, find themselves following corporate policy rather than making it, representing the people to the board, rather than driving the overall people strategy.
So organisational design has emerged from HRs own backyard. But heres the catch: boards are not convinced that they are going to find executives of the vision and calibre they need from their existing HR teams.
Samantha Allen, of headhunters Whitehead Mann, who has seen this trend emerging first-hand, says, The type of person businesses are looking for to fill this role will have been in operations, and will probably have worked at a big consultancy like PwC or Accenture. They will have a strong affinity for HR, but they will also have genuine commercial experience. The skill set will be quite different from what weve seen before. The number of people capable of filling this role is probably quite limited.
Firms such as Sainsburys, Reuters and One 2 One are looking to develop the role of organisational design. Pearsons director for people, David Bell, has already moved beyond the conventional HR boundaries to play a key strategic role alongside CEO Marjorie Scardino.
Perhaps the worst-case scenario for HR is the arrival and promotion of organisational design, along with a downgrading of the HR role to a more basic service function the more limited personnel management of old. HR will have to fight its corner again.
So can HR professionals acquire the skills that are needed? It is a challenge facing serious and ambitious HR professionals that goes beyond traditional arguments about influence. This is about becoming a respected board member offering sophisticated strategic leadership, based on commercial experience, Allen says. It is about the upskilling of the board, already going on in other fields such as finance and marketing. Are you ready to meet the challenge?
