Josh Bersin on Organisation and Job Design
I enjoyed this review of organisation and job design from Josh Bersin at JBA (Josh Bersin Academy). Josh suggests that having one standard model organisation design has now been consigned to history. I think that’s true, though actually I don’t think it was ever false. It’s just that a lot of organisations have done really poor OD work. There have always been opportunities for horizontally focused design, like the Genius Bar, especially in service work.
Of course, vertically focused design will often be appropriate too. Eg, I like Josh’s suggestion that every HR person needs to be a ‘genius’, and I certainly think HR practitioners need to invest very seriously in their development, and Academies like mine and Josh’s can play a critical role here. However, I think Josh really meant a Genius, as in the bar, ie organised with a horizontal focus, and I don’t think that’s true.
I like Dave Ulrich’s point on this – that having a team of generalists is a bit like a stew of beef, chicken, pork and fish, ie not the nicest meal. In many areas, we do need specialists, and enabling them to deal with complex business problems means bringing them together in horizontally focused teams. But in teams of specialists, each bringing their own unique perspectives, not just interchangeable generalist Genuises.
The other two main organisation forms: communities and networks (including the ‘networks of teams’ form which Josh promotes) will often be relevant too. Communities are particularly relevant for the clustering of skills that Josh describes.
Josh then moves onto job design. I agree that we often over specify jobs, however, we do still need defined jobs for the vertically focused organisations or parts of organisations I refer to above. So we do need broad roles (the job categories Josh talks about) – some people will have jobs within these roles, others jobs which are the roles.
Jobs don’t disappear, they just get constructed differently – see the slide from the Strategic HR Academy’s Job Design course:
The most interesting part of Josh’s analysis is when he moves onto skills taxonomies. Again, I’d suggest this is not completely new – good job design has always focused on bringing together skills just as it has tasks. However, today’s AI based technologies definitely provide ways to identify and manage skills at a much granular level. This isn’t always going to be required of course – which is another reason that jobs aren’t going to disappear.
And actually, the shift towards skills is really just a continuation of the one from generalists to specialists. For the last couple of decades, we’ve needed specialist people in specialist jobs rather than just Geniuses in generalists ones. The main need now isn’t a return to generalists but the continuation of increasing specialisation, or at least granularity, by being able to identify and manage individuals according to their personal skills and capabilities.
Josh says he’ll be running organisation design training in his Academy later in the year. In the meantime, you may be interested in:
Organisation design for modern, compelling and effective working
Job design for good work and higher productivity
Jon Ingham
HR Strategist, Trainer, Learning Facilitator at the Jon Ingham Strategic HR Academy
