ORGANISATIONAL DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT OF AN ENTERPRISE

Field of the Invention

This invention relates to methods of strategic management of an enterprise. It relates particularly but not exclusively to methods of strategic management which involve assessment, design, development and maintenance of the organisational structure of an enterprise.

Background to the Invention As they look forward, organisations typically run periodic planning processes, reviewing their environment and their capabilities to choose objectives and develop strategies to achieve these objectives (and usually document this in strategic and operational plans together known as a business plan). They then (typically) turn to the existing personnel in their existing roles to implement that business plan. In many cases the organisation's collection of people is capable (collectively and individually), available and motivated to achieve the objectives by means of the strategies.

But what happens if this is not the case?

Problems may be clearly visible as symptoms of organisational dysfunction: interim targets are being missed, there are high levels of stress and reactive decision making, and morale is falling. Customers are being let down. People may be working on things unrelated to objectives in the strategic plan.

Sometime the symptoms may be more subtle: all a senior executive may be certain about is a feeling of doubt or anxiety about performance as she anticipates future challenges.

The problems may include the following:

• The organisation's personnel do not have the necessary individual capability

• The individuals are individually capable but are not well organised to coordinate and to cooperate to achieve the business plan

• Motivation is poor

• There a greater volume of work to be done than people available to do it

Prior art The field of organisational design and development is a large one. Henry Mintzberg's (1992) classic text Structure in fives sets out environmental factors, design variables and principles of organisation in both a descriptive and prescriptive way. It is a useful text. However, it is not a practical tool for organisational leaders and their support providers (e.g. HR professionals and organisational effectiveness consultants) to use in adapting their organisational designs.

Similarly Elliott Jaques's (1996) Requisite Organisation and Thomas Gilbert's (1996) Human Competence: Engineering Worthy Performance are useful texts on managerial leadership and human competence. More recently (2002) Goold and Campbell in Designing Effective

Organizations: How to Create Structured Networks set out nine tests to use in reviewing proposed organisational designs, provide shared language for describing design options and suggest a process that uses the tests and language when managers face a design challenge. Although Goold and Campbell come closest, none of these authors provide a practical step by step method for busy organisational leaders to quickly, accurately improve their organisational design and performance through role and relationship clarity with a reasonable level of effort.

Summary of the Invention

According to the present invention, there is provided a method for the organisational design and development of an enterprise having an organisational design and a business plan, including the steps of:

(a) Assessing problems and opportunities facing the enterprise;

(b) Deciding as a next step: whether to replan the business plan or to maintain the business plan and organisational design or to redesign the organisational design;

(c) If the option of redesigning is selected in the preceding step, designing an organisational design of the enterprise including roles and relationships;

(d) Developing the enterprise by filling the roles, and connecting the relationships in it; and

(e) Maintaining the organisational design of the enterprise; wherein step (c) of designing an organisational design includes the sub-steps of:

(ci) Documenting role components and required outputs of a senior executive who leads the enterprise;

(cii) Classifying those role components and required outputs into those to be retained by the senior executive and those to be delegated in full;

(ciii) Within each of the classes, analysing the role components and required outputs of the senior executive into sub-roles each with required sub- outputs; and

(civ) Integrating and validating the collection of sub-roles and sub-outputs and their interdependencies.

It will be appreciated that the invention lends itself to computer implementation, and in preferred arrangements the inventive method is implemented by means of computer, thereby achieving efficiencies which cannot be achieved by manual implementation. As an option, the step of designing a strategic plan may further include:

(cv) Validating the design against design criteria developed as part of the step of assessing the problems and opportunities facing the enterprise.

The step (a) of assessing the problems and opportunities facing the enterprise may include any suitable sub-steps. One suitable sub-step involves:

(ai) Showing that an input strategic plan has at least one feasible organisational design.

Optionally, the step of assessing the problems and opportunities facing the enterprise may include the sub-steps of: (aii) Looking for symptoms of problems and opportunities in a current organisation design;

(aiii) Hypothesising root causes of problems and opportunities, and eliminating causes not supported by evidence; and

(aiv) Synthesising design criteria (Here the nine tests of Goold and Campbell can be relevant)

The step of developing the enterprise in accordance with the designed organisational structure may include any suitable sub-steps. Suitable sub-steps include:

(di) Filling roles (or letting contracts if the responsibility for providing the outputs are to be outsourced to a provider);

(dii) Validating roles-as-filled and adjusting to better fit people and/or providers to be deployed;

(diii) Setting up a system for appraisal of performance-in-role and development of performer-of-role based on the performance criteria documented in the design step (or for contracted provider review where outsourced) ; and

(div) Operating the enterprise in accordance with the business plan.

In practice, steps (c) "design" and (d) "develop" are done in one of two ways. The first is where the senior executive decides to evolve the existing organising structure and role performers. In this case the two steps are done in parallel. The step (di) of filling the roles is skipped and the incumbents are involved in their own role definition and peer relationship design— steps (cii-civ) and (dii). The second is where the senior executive decides to break with the past, redesigning the team without involving the current perfomers and ask them (and/or new applicants) to apply for roles in the new structure ("spill and

fill" or setting up a "green fields" enterprise). In this case the two steps are done in series.

The step of maintaining the organisational design may include any suitable sub-steps. Suitable sub-steps include: (ei) Appraising performance-in-role and developing performer-of-role; (eii) Updating organisational design; and (eiii) Where and when appropriate, repeating steps (a) to (d).

The present invention is a method to assess, design, develop and maintain an organisation so that the organisation can better accomplish its objectives. The method analyses an organisation's context, objectives and strategies to assign to each individual in the organisation a meaningful, doable and productive role. Then, when each role is carried out at an acceptable level of performance, this means that the organisation-as-a-whole will apply its strategies to achieve its objectives in the context in which it operates.

Brief Description of the Figures

Embodiments of the invention will now be described with reference to the Figures. It is to be understood that the particularity of the Figures does not supersede the generality of the preceding description of the invention. Figure 1 is a schematic diagram of a general form of the invention.

Figure 2 is a template for a role responsibility description. A completed role responsibility description for the senior executive is used as an input to the method. The template is an embodiment of the invention. An important output of the method is completed role responsibility descriptions for each role defined. Figure 3 is a template for a scorecard. A completed scorecard for the senior executive is used as an input to the method. The template is an embodiment of the invention. An important output of the method is completed scorecards for each role defined.

Figure 4 is a template for a delegation map. A delegation map is drafted and refined based on the input role responsibility description and scorecard for the senior executive. The template is an embodiment of the invention. An

important output of the method is a completed delegation map encompassing the senior executive and each role defined.

Figure 5 is an organigram illustrating the concept of an organising principle which is used in the development of the delegation map and is an embodiment of the invention. The principle is an embodiment of the invention.

Figure 6 is a template for a peer interaction matrix used to identify role relationships and to structure role interactions. The template is an embodiment of the invention. An important output of the method is a completed peer interaction matrix encompassing the senior executive and each role defined.

Detailed Description

Figure 1 illustrates a method of organisational structure assessment, design, development and maintenance of an enterprise. The method includes the steps of: (a) Using the current business plan and organisational design (if they exist) to assess the problems and opportunities facing the enterprise to determine if the current plan is feasible and the current organisational design is optimised to carry it out;

(b) For the rest of the method to be applied, the plan must be feasible— so if not then the plan must be redone and the method started again at step

(a). Else if the plan if feasible and the organisational design is optimal then the method skips to step (e). Else proceed to step (c);

(c) Using the feasible business plan to design an organisational design (roles and relationships) of the enterprise that is optimised to meet the business plan;

(d) Using the roles and relationships to develop the enterprise by filling the roles and connecting the relationships in it; and

(e) Maintaining the organisational design by revisiting steps (a), (b), (c) and (d) above. Step (c) of designing an organisational design includes the sub-steps of:

(ci) (As a prerequisite) documenting the role and required outputs of the senior executive who leads the enterprise (tools: role responsibility description and scorecard)

(cii) Classifying those role components and required outputs into those to be retained by the senior executive (alone or with staff assistance) and those to be delegated in full to line managers who report to the senior executive (tool: delegation map)

(ciii) Within each of the classes of retained-with-assistance (staff) and delegated (line) analyse the role components and required outputs of the senior executive into sub-roles each with required sub-outputs (tools: delegation map, organising principle, role responsibility description and scorecard);

(civ) Integrating and validating the collection of sub-roles and sub-outputs and their interdependencies (tool: delegation map, scorecard, peer interaction matrix).

An embodiment of the invention will now be described with reference to inputs and outputs to the process, steps taken and actors in the process.

1.1 Inputs and outputs

The method of the present invention uses as input a business plan for the enterprise. An appropriate business plan will contain answers to the following three sets of questions

1 . Context and capabilities: What environment will the organisation operate within? How will that environment evolve? What particular capabilities does the organisation have and will the organisation seek to apply in responding to the opportunities and threats arising in its environment?

2. Objective: What objectives will the organisation achieve? What do those objectives mean from the point-of-view of users of the organisation outputs (that is its customers)? From the point-of-view of claimants of surplus value generated by the organisation (investors or members if a

mutual)? From the point-of-view of providers of input resources (in particular raw materials, labour and other inputs) that is suppliers and staff?

3. Strategy: What strategies will the organisation follow to achieve its objectives? What activities will be done and when? How will the organisation secure the resources consumed and applied each day and the resources with longer lives that it needs to carry out its strategies? What mechanism will the organisation use to track progress towards its objectives and to adjust its strategies where appropriate? The intermediate output from the method is then a design for an organisational structure that (1 ) can reasonably be expected to deliver the business plan and (2) is better than other design options. Or, alternatively, the output is that there is no organisation design that can reasonably be expected to deliver the business plan. In which case the business plan is infeasible and should be redeveloped.

Apart from start ups, with most business plans there is an extant organisation available to implement it. In that case, there is an additional intermediate output from the method of the present invention: whether or not the extant organisation can be reasonably expected to achieve the strategic plan and even if it can, whether or not there is a design that will do it better.

The final output from the method of the present invention is an enterprise-in-place that is delivering the input business plan better than other options for organisational structure (if the plan is feasible).

1.2 Process steps

Between these inputs and these outputs, the method of the present invention is a five step process: a) Assess: The assess step takes the business plan and the extant organisation (if any) and first works out whether the business plan is feasible and second whether the extant design is optimal. This step also works out the design criteria for assessing an optimal design.

It does this by doing the sub steps: Show that there is a feasible organisational design (that is one using productivities available in the organisation's context to achieve the business plan without unreasonable levels of risk). Look for tell-tale symptoms of non feasibility first, then non optimality of the extant design. Hypothesise root causes of non feasibility or non optimality and eliminate those not supported by evidence. Describe the objective function and constraints that an optimal design will maximise and meet. Consider whether there could be a more optimal organisation than the best of the extant organisational design and the one used to demonstrate feasibility. b) // then else: If the business plan is not feasible then replan the business and start the process again. Else if the extant design is optimal proceed to the maintain step. In other cases proceed to the design step (on the basis the rewards from an improved design will outweigh the costs of developing one). c) Design: The design step takes the (best of the organisational design used to demonstrate feasibility and the) extant organisational design, the business plan and the design criteria of the assess step and produces as output the optimal (on paper) design for an organisational structure for an organisation.

It does this by carrying out several sub steps: Start with the role (role responsibility description) and required outputs (scorecard) of the senior executive who leads the enterprise. Classify those role components and required outputs into those to be retained by the senior executive (alone or with assistance of one or more staff roles) and those to be delegated in full to one or more employees who report to the senior executive (line roles). Analyse the role components and required outputs of the senior executive into sub-roles each with required sub-outputs. Decide whether to "make or buy" these outputs. Integrate the collection of sub-roles and sub-outputs and their interdependencies Finally, validate the design against the design criteria and demonstrate optimality (on paper). d) Develop: The develop step takes the optimal (on paper) organisational design, fills the roles and validates the filled-design. It also sets up the

maintain step (in particular the system for appraisal of performance-in- role and the system for development of performers-of-roles. It then "sleeps" while the organisation "operates" (that is carry out the business plan) until the maintenance step is due (either periodically or on an ad- hoc basis). e) Maintain: The maintain step takes the operating, optimal-at-start, organisational design and keeps fine tuning it to ensure it remains so. If a major (re) design is required, it will usually be noticed as part of the maintain step. It does this by carrying out several sub steps: Appraise performance-in- role and develop performers-of-role. Keep design up to date. And where/when appropriate repeat the inventive process from the "assess" step.

1.3 Actors

If these are the five steps, who does what in carrying them out?

The responsibility for carrying out the five steps of the invention for an enterprise-as-whole sits with the senior executive of that enterprise (e.g. CEO).

The method of the invention can also be applied to a part of an enterprise. In that case it is the responsibility of the senior executive of that part of the enterprise (e.g. General Manager of a Division) to carry out the steps.

We use the general expression senior executive (SE) to describe the person responsible for carrying out the inventive method for (the part of) the organisation they lead. So it is the SE who has the responsibility for carrying out the five steps of the inventive method for (their part) of an organisation.

A chief executive accounts to his or her governing body (e.g. board of directors) for quality of the organisational design (and its operation). This is done in the context of the governing body's role, vis-a-vis the chief executive, to agree the business plan and organisational design, to provide the necessary resources, to delegate to the chief executive the appropriate responsibility and authority with constraints and to set-up and carry-out appropriate governance.

That is, the board represents the organisation-as-principle and the CEO is the board's (and thus the organisation's) agent.

When a SE, who is not a chief executive, is carrying out the inventive method for their part of an organisation they account to their superordinate or boss for the quality of their organisational design to carry out their part of the business plan.

We use general expression board representative (BR) for the board itself— when the SE is the chief executive— or we use BR for the superordinate of a SE — when SE is not the chief executive. The responsibility of the BR is to provide the inputs (business plan, resources, time-to-achieve plan and ongoing direction and support) for the SE to carry out the inventive process itself.

Besides SE and BR, the other actors in the inventive method are the SE's (generalised) team members. We use the general expression TM for a team member (someone who is responsible to produce outputs for a TL as subordinate or supplier).There are four types of (generalised) team members:

• TL line team member (line: direct piece of SE responsibility has been delegated to the line team member)

• TS staff team member (staff: assistant to SE in discharging a responsibility that the SE retains some direct involvement in) • TO outsourcing supplier, so the SE is an external customer of TO

• TS shared service supplier, so the SE is an internal customer of TS

The responsibility of a TM is to participate productively and cooperatively in the process of the present invention as led by the SE.

Embodiments of the five steps in the inventive method will now be described in greater detail.

2. Assess

2.1 Show the strategic plan has a feasible organisational design

Show that there is a feasible organisational design (that is one using productivities available in the organisation's context to achieve the strategic

plan without unreasonable risk). Do this by looking for tell-tale symptoms of non feasibility. In practice feasible business plans usually arise from unreasonable risks being run without awareness of those risks. For example in 1998 there was an explosion at the Esso gas treatment plant at Longford, Australia that killed two employees. The Royal Commission that investigated the incident found that its cause was the failure to equip staff with appropriate knowledge and procedures. In other words, Esso's business plan— that did not resource the local provision of engineering knowledge and training— was unreasonable, and was in breach of the Occupational Health and Safety Act. Had Esso checked whether its mode of operation was feasible (low enough in risk by doing a review of operational hazards) Esso may have prevented this incident by not planning a business without sufficient resources into front line skill and knowledge development.

2.2 Look for telltale symptoms

Look for tell-tale symptoms of non optimality of the extant design. People's opinion of their work is typically one of the most sensitive ways to find symptoms of poor organisational design. One way to do this is to survey people in an enterprise as to their opinion (on a seven point scale 1 = disagree completely, 2 = disagree a lot, 3 = disagree a little, 4 = neither agree nor disagree, 5 = agree a little, 6 = agree a lot and 7 = agree completely) on the following 4 questions

1. When I look forward, I want to continue working for X

2. When friends and family are thinking about <products and services in Xs industry>, I recommend buying from X

3. When friends and family are thinking about a job in <Xs industry>, I recommend they work at X

4. Overall, taking all things into consideration, I am satisfied working for X

Poor organisational design is indicated when agreement frequencies of less than -65% of staff occur and/or levels worsen by more than 5-10% in a quarter (assuming over 400 respondents).

2.3 Hypothesise root causes and eliminate those not supported

Hypothesise root causes of non feasibility or non optimality and eliminate those not supported by evidence. One way to do this is to use a framework for root cause analysis of poor organisational design that looks at the match of each staff member with their job, their small team and their organisation through agreeing/disagreeing as above with the following additional 1 1 assertions

5. Job: I know what's expected of me at work

6. Job: I get frequent and useful feedback on how I am performing 7. Job: I am given the autonomy and the authority I need to deliver results for my customers

8. Job: X provides me with the tools and resources I need to do a good job

9. Job: In the last week I have been recognised or praised for doing a good job 10. Job: My job uses my skills and my knowledge

1 1 . Job: My work/life balance is good

12. Job: In the last twelve months I have had the opportunity to learn and grow

13. Job: My job suits my personality 14. Small team: My co-workers are committed to doing a quality job

15. Small team: My opinions count with my co-workers

16. Small team: My boss respects me as a person

17. Organisation: Xs purpose makes me feel my job is important

Again poor organisational design is indicated when agreement frequencies of less than -65% of staff occur and/or levels worsen by more than 5-10% in a quarter (assuming over 400 respondents).

2.4 Synthesise design criteria

Describe the objective function and constraints that an optimal design will maximise and meet. Here the nine tests of Goold and Campbell can be relevant. Consider whether there could be a more optimal organisation than the current one.

3. If then else

If the business plan is not feasible then replan and return to start, else if the organisational design is optimal then go to the maintain step, else go to the design step.

4. Design

4.1 Start with the role and required outputs of the senior executive

We start with the role and required outputs of the senior executive which by assumption are to "deliver the business plan."

It is helpful to document this using the role responsibility template

• Name of role: SE's job

• Duration: As per business plan time horizon

• Purpose: To deliver the business plan • Level: From the bottom-up, this depends on the number of levels in the organisation— from top-down this is the first level

• Reports to: Sponsor of business plan, that is BR

• Responsibilities: Extract from business plan

• Allocation of effort: How much of senior executive's time across each responsibility. Total should be 1 FTE if this is a full time role

• Resources provided: Extract from business plan

• Key constraints: What values, culture and compliance policies are to apply?

• Methods to measure achievement: Work out how to measure success. Be it subjective or objective, qualitative or quantitative, discrete or continuous? Work out how to separate signal from noise in measurement (analysis of variance and gauge repeatability and reproducibility) • Other information: As appropriate

• Agreement to manage and perform role: Role responsibility description to be confirmed by SE and BR and the scorecard template

• Name of role: SE's job • Manager: BR's name

• Performer: SE's name

• Step, signature, manager, performer, date, plan, actual: Once the role scorecard has been completed ("general instructions for the duration of the role"), the scorecard can be completed ("specific instructions for the next planning period"). There are three steps in using a scorecard (1 ) set one up at period start (e.g. annually), (2) conduct an interim review about half way along the period and (3) conduct final review at period end. These 3 steps must involve the manager (BR) and the performer (SE). They should record the scheduled and actual time that each of the 3 steps is finalised.

• Objectives (as QQRT standards): The specific instructions answer the question what (Quantity and Quality) will be output by when (Timing) and how (using what Resources)

• Stakeholder(s) served: In each row, the question is answered: what does achievement of this objective mean from the point of view from relevant interested participants: community, suppliers/partners, staff, customers and shareholders. Also review the objectives as a set to ensure that there will be sufficient output to satisfy the reasonable expectations of each of the interested participants. • Dependency: Some objectives of a TM may require critical support from people outside the TM's own team. In this case it is important to make

that visible to the person the sub-role reports to (SE) so that the objectives can be carefully managed and so that a TM can not avoid responsibility by saying "X let me down." "X let me down" is not an acceptable excuse unless (1 ) X's identify and exactly what required support from them has been discussed with X ("What is required from whom"); (2) The risk (frequency, severity) of not receiving the support required has been estimated with X ("Risk of not receiving it"); (3) Activities to ameliorate that risk have been planned and agreed with X and ("Activities to to ameliorate frequency, severity") (4) A useful (if lower) level of performance has been committed to be provided at reasonable cost even if X fails— "insurance" ("What is to be achieved if dependency fails"). In any role there should only be one of two material dependencies. This is not about hiding behind every person a role interacts with.

4.2 Classify role components and required outputs into retained and delegated

We now take the SE role and break it in down into sub roles. Note if the process has been applied higher up in the organisational hierarchy then we can use the delegation map for the team that this SE role belongs to as context. But it is not mandatory.

First we break it down into those outputs that the SE will directly produce (with or without assistance) and those that will be fully delegated to sub roles to be their direct outputs (and can in turn be delegated or not). Note the SE still retains responsibility for their outputs whether delegated or not. Direct outputs are often done with the help of staff: assistants to an executive in getting an executive's own responsibilities done (with possible input from others). Direct delegation by an executive to a subordinate of a key piece of responsibility sets up a line role. (See step 1 in figure 4)

4.3 Analyse retained and delegated into sub-roles with required sub-outputs

Second, we analyse and group the roles into sub-roles (see step 2 in figure 4). Outputs are to be grouped into related clusters and then made the responsibility

of a role typically by commonality of skill (e.g. marketing versus administrative skills).

This is a most important step. A "messy" analysis and grouping means messy roles and messy relationships that people struggle to understand. Simple is best. To ensure simplicity, use the test of defining and describing the organising principle (see figure 5). There should be only one within each of the line and staff halves of the outputs— that is clear, simple and comprehensible. There should never be more than two, otherwise no one outside the team will understand the organisation (and people in it will struggle as well!).

4.4 In parallel, decide whether to make or buy

A role responsibility for producing the grouped outputs can be assigned internally to the team. It can also be assigned externally to the team, but inside the organisation-as-a-whole, to a shared service provider. Finally it can be assigned externally to organisation-as-a-whole. This choice is known as the "make versus buy" decision. Sometimes it is mandatory, e.g. as a matter of policy all purchasing will be done through a central shared service purchasing team. Sometimes it is not.

Whether the assignment is to an internal or external provider the relationship is then of customer/supplier rather than superior/subordinate.

As a result the SE has analysed her total set of her responsibilities into

• Those as direct outputs o Retained without assistance o Assisted by her team (as superior/subordinate) - By a TS staff team member o Assisted externally to her team (as customer/supplier)

By a TO outsourcing supplier

By a TS shared service supplier

• Those as delegated direct outputs (line) delegated o Internally to her team (as superior/subordinate)

To a TN line team member o Externally to her team (as customer/supplier) To a TO outsourcing supplier TS shared service supplier Then the SE takes her completed delegation map and elaborates the grouped outputs into role responsibility descriptions (figure 1 ) and scorecards (figure 2), one for each sub-role.

4.5 Integrate sub-roles and sub-outputs and their interdependencies The roles in the team have to work together to get the SE's responsibilities discharged (and without requiring heroic effort). In fact, we want to make success "unavoidable." One key sub step to doing this is to make explicit the role interactions at the team level. We do this by using a peer interaction matrix (figure 6). To complete the peer interaction matrix the SE considers each role she has defined in turn and writes down in the relevant column any critical support required from another role (in the appropriate row) or from all roles (in the last row). She then checks for each role across each row that the scorecard acknowledges critical support that that role must provide. A few iterations may be required to make sure the roles mutually reinforce each other.

In the case that the roles are already filled (evolution of an existing team) each role performer fills out their column and their row and then reviews with each of their key peers the entries they have made. Usually this leads to much better understanding and alignment by stopping things "falling between the cracks."

4.7 Validate the design against the design criteria and demonstrate optimality The SE has now produced (on paper) • A delegation map with each sub-role's sub-outputs • A role responsibility description and score-card for each sub-role

• A peer interaction matrix

These can now be reviewed:

• Does the delegation map add up to the SE's role? • Do the set of role responsibility description and scorecard for each sub- role add up to the SE role responsibility description and score card?

• Is there any overlap?

• Do the sub-roles implement a simple, clear, understandable organising principle? • Is each role responsibility description and score card reasonable and attractive? Are the dependencies identified and reasonably managed?

• Do the interactions make sense? Are there too many? Can they be simplified?

• Is the organisational design a good one? Is it optimal against the criteria developed in the assess step?

5. Develop

On the assumption (for exposition) that the paper design is done before the roles are filled we now move to the develop step.

5.1 Fill roles

The method of the present invention is relatively standard here. Filling roles typically involves competency base interviewing.

5.2 Validate roles-as-filled (if necessary return to the design step)

Check that particular characteristics of staff appointed do not change the optimality of the answer. Some tinkering to match roles-as-designed to people- as-recruited is valid here.

5.3 Set up system for performance appraisal and development

Both staff and suppliers (internal and external) are appraise and develop. The method of the present invention is relatively standard here since it is the content (as set out above) of the system for performance appraisal and development and not its process (beyond a threshold of competence) that makes the difference.

5.4 Operate Just run the business.

6. Maintain

This step is run periodically (e.g. every six months) to keep the organisational design humming along.

6.1 Appraise performance-in-role and develop performers-of-role

Operate the system for performance appraisal and development using the content developed above.

6.2 Keep design up to date

As the business plan and execution evolves by means of the feedback mechanism, keep the design up to date (e.g. role responsibility descriptions, scorecards, peer interaction matrices, delegation maps, organising principles).

6.3 Where/when appropriate repeat from "assess"

When the SE forms a judgement that she is not happy with performance as-is, or opportunity cost will become too high, then start the cycle again.

7. Extensions

It is to be understood that various alterations, additions and/or modifications may be made to the steps previously described without departing from the ambit of the invention.