Org Insights: The magic key to unlocking successful leadership

Today’s business landscape is dynamic, with organisation transformation an ever-present occurrence. Amongst the most significant transformations is the restructuring of leadership. Whether it’s driven by mergers and acquisitions, novel business strategies, or changes in the competitive market, restructuring your leadership team can create huge ripples of impact on your organisational growth.

The best way to ensure this restructure is successful? To take a data-driven approach. This involves conducting an organisational insights phase to gather data on the current state, workforce, and performance, and using that data to inform decision-making.

While it can seem like a laborious or even invasive process, we’ve seen organisational insights impact the way business is done with some of the big dogs. Let’s look at Microsoft. In 2017, the company launched a pilot program called Workplace Analytics, designed to help managers and employees better understand how they were spending their time at work.

Microsoft was able to gather data on how employees were using tools like email, chat, and meetings, and how these activities correlated with productivity and job satisfaction. It also allowed managers to identify patterns of behaviour across teams, helping them make more informed decisions about resource allocations and workload management.

But more specifically, the biggest benefit Microsoft saw were drastic improvements to their hiring process. From these insights, the company found that its most productive employees tended to have larger networks within the company, suggesting that social capital was an important factor in job performance. Based on this, Microsoft began to encourage managers to consider a candidate's network and social skills when making hiring decisions, in addition to their technical skills and experience.

Organisational Insights looks at not only the ‘gaping holes’ but the ‘untapped potential’. Here are some key ways that organisational insights can help to ensure successful leadership restructuring:

1. Identifying Skill Gaps
   One of the most significant challenges in leadership restructuring is ensuring that the right people are in the right positions. Going through this process, organizations can identify skill gaps within their leadership teams and develop strategies to fill those gaps - such as recruiting or upskilling in different capability areas.

2. Optimizing Workflows and Processes
   Leadership restructuring often involves changes to workflows and processes. To ensure that these changes are successful, we need to understand how work is currently being done and where bottlenecks or inefficiencies exist. Through this process, data can be gathered on how work is being done, where delays or roadblocks occur, and which processes are most critical. This informs decisions from workflow and process changes, to training and development.

3. Improving Employee Engagement and Satisfaction
   Leadership restructuring can be a challenging time for employees, who may feel uncertain about their roles and the organization's future. To minimize the impact of leadership restructuring on employee engagement and satisfaction, organizations need to understand how employees are feeling and what they need to stay motivated and engaged.
   Through employee surveys, focus groups, and other feedback mechanisms, organizations can gather data on employee sentiment and use that data to inform decisions around leadership restructuring. For example, an organization may find that employees are concerned about the lack of communication from leadership or the potential impact of restructuring on job security. With this information, the organization can develop strategies to address those concerns and maintain a positive and engaged workforce.

Leadership restructuring can be a challenging time for organizations, but with a considered approach it can also be a huge opportunity for growth and success. By conducting an organisational insights phase, this arms organisations with the data needed to inform decisions around leadership restructuring, ensuring that the right people are in the right positions, workflows and processes are optimized, and employee engagement and satisfaction are maintained.