Putting organizational complexity in its place - McKinsey Quarterly - Organization - St... - 0 views
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The goal? To identify where institutional complexity is an issue, where complexity caused by factors such as a lack of role clarity or poor processes is a problem, and what’s responsible for the complexity in each area. Companies can then boost organizational effectiveness through a combination of two things: removing complexity that doesn’t add value and channeling what’s left to employees who can either handle it naturally or be trained to cope with it.
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In this article, we review the experience of a multinational consumer goods manufacturer that applied this approach in several regions and functions and consequently halved the time it needed to make decisions in critical processes.
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Armed with the survey data, the manufacturer constructed several “heat maps” to help senior managers pinpoint where, and why, complexity was causing trouble for employees. Each map showed a particular breakdown—a region or function, for example—and how much complexity of various kinds was occurring there, as well as the level of coping skills employees possessed.
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Heat maps would be a nice tool for the CD. We should begin to create a catalog of these visualizations that support decision analysis, as opposed to simple graphical displays in basic analytics applications that don't naturally lead to a transformation that provides insights.
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Additionally, each of these "temperatures" should have a gradient to indicate the degree of consensus associated with each map. The graphic below implies there is only one view that all share -- preposterous!
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