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Inconsistent Leadership is Hindering your Results

by Mike Brush | 2025-03-05 | Organizational Excellence Insights | 0 Comments

Inconsistent leadership is hindering your results Effective leadership can transform team dynamics, create a culture of excellence, and fuel long-term success. Strong effective leaders are the grease that keeps a large organization moving forward. The challenge for...

Process, Structure, and Getting Things Done

by Ed McMahon | 2025-02-27 | Organizational Excellence Insights | 0 Comments

Process, structure and Getting Things done My consulting career started in the heyday of business process reengineering. Hammer’s excellent book “Reengineering the Corporation” had most executives thinking about processes and their (sometimes negative) effect on their...

The Business is Struggling: What’s Next?

by Mike Brush | 2025-02-20 | Organizational Excellence Insights | 0 Comments

The business is struggling and I’m not sure what to do about it You have built the right strategy and brought together a strong team, but the business does not seem to be able to deliver to the level that is required. Something keeps getting in the way of achieving...

The Importance of Organization Structure

by Mike Brush | 2025-02-10 | Organizational Excellence Insights | 0 Comments

The importance of organization structure Businesses operate to serve markets, deliver profits and create value for shareholders. To accomplish these objectives, the business’s organization structure must support the delivery of the strategy. All parts must be in...

Why “Culture eats strategy for breakfast” is misleading

by Ed McMahon | 2025-02-05 | Organizational Excellence Insights | 0 Comments

Why “Culture eats strategy for breakfast” is misleading I’ve never liked Drucker’s assertion that “Culture eats strategy for breakfast”. Let me tell you why I think it’s misleading at best, and downright dangerous in some cases. And if you’d like to see a little more...

Effective Teams: What you can do for your Team

by Ed McMahon | 2025-01-27 | Organizational Excellence Insights | 0 Comments

The three most important things you can do for your team If you’re a manager in an organization of any size, it’s almost certain that you interact with, manage, or are on a team of some nature. Teams are a fundamental, foundational element of how work is distributed...

Organizations that Work

by Aidan McMahon | 2024-12-19 | Organizations that Work | 0 Comments

As we wrap up our series organizations that work, we want to extend a heartfelt thank you to everyone who followed along and shared their thoughts. This series has been a journey of exploration and discovery, and we’ve loved diving into topics that matter to you....

Management Resource Planning and Succession

by Ed McMahon | 2024-12-05 | Organizations that Work | 0 Comments

Management Resource Planning Management Resource Planning (MRP) is one of the most important general management functions of the management team—managing the talent pool to ensure the sustainability of the organization in the long run. One of the guiding principles...

Manager Once Removed

by Mike Brush | 2024-11-26 | Organizations that Work | 0 Comments

The manager once removed role has a huge impact on the effectiveness of your business Earlier in our organization design series CORE provided an overview of the 3 tier management system made up of employee, manager and Manager once Removed(MoR) roles (The...

Team Success

by Mike Brush | 2024-11-20 | Organizations that Work | 0 Comments

Are you setting your teams up for success? Teams are the primary vehicle for getting things done in business today. We use various types of teams, from natural or collateral teams reporting to a common manager to agile self-organizing teams that come together for...

The Case for Strategic Organization Design

by Mike Brush | May 21, 2024 | Organizations that Work

Strategic organization design is the process by which the CEO creates the conditions within the organization to deliver the strategy. It creates the linkages across organization structure, leadership and leadership capability, and innovation in the knowledge economy....

Pain Points and the Cost of Poor Design Pt. 2

by Ed McMahon | May 13, 2024 | Organizations that Work

In the last article of our series Organizations that Work we introduced the idea of a Pain Point and shared three of the six Pain Points we hear most often, together with case studies that demonstrate how effective organization design can address a number of business...

Pain Points and the Cost of Poor Design

by Ed McMahon | May 7, 2024 | Organizations that Work

In the opening article of our series Organizations that Work we established that poor organization design gets in the way of creating value. We also proposed that restructuring in a deliberate way, using a proven process and scientifically valid tools, will align...

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Articles by Category

Organizations that Work

by Aidan McMahon | 2024-12-19 | Organizations that Work | 0 Comments

Management Resource Planning and Succession

by Ed McMahon | 2024-12-05 | Organizations that Work | 0 Comments

Manager Once Removed

by Mike Brush | 2024-11-26 | Organizations that Work | 0 Comments

Team Success

by Mike Brush | 2024-11-20 | Organizations that Work | 0 Comments

Management Teams

by Mike Brush | 2024-11-13 | Organizations that Work | 0 Comments

Building effective general management teams I once worked for a company whose unofficial nickname was the “drive-by shooting company” referencing the frequent turnover of its senior executives, where almost monthly another VP or two found themselves out on the street....

How to Build Effective Teams

by Ed McMahon | 2024-11-07 | Organizations that Work | 0 Comments

How to Build Effective Teams We have been working to help teams work better together for more than 30 years now. This work is borne of our passion for what we call highly effective teams, the definition of which has been, until very recently, subjective. I discovered...

Lateral Work

by Ed McMahon | 2024-10-30 | Organizations that Work | 0 Comments

Lateral Work A while back as part of our ongoing series “Organizations that Work” we wrote about what we call “Cross-Boundary Work”—which is work that requires two or more employees, who report to different managers, to collaborate to produce an output neither of them...

Task Assignment and Role Accountabilities

by Mike Brush | 2024-10-21 | Organizations that Work | 0 Comments

Matching task assignment to role accountabilities Over the last few weeks, we have discussed how complexity is a key factor in organization design and the importance of aligning accountability and authority into roles. The last piece of this puzzle is ensuring that...

Decision Authority & Accountability

by Mike Brush | 2024-10-16 | Organizations that Work | 0 Comments

Accountability & Decision Authority Leaders say accountability is important. Executives tell us that accountability is important to the success of their businesses, and for good reason. A culture where accountability is used constructively will deliver...

Work Complexity

by Mike Brush | 2024-10-08 | Organizations that Work | 0 Comments

Addressing work complexity through organizational design The world is becoming more complex with events moving faster than ever. Business leaders must respond effectively and navigate social, environmental, economic, and political realities while delivering value to...

The 'C' Suite

How Continuous Learning makes you a Better Leader

by Ed McMahon | 2022-12-08 | The 'C' Suite | 0 Comments

A short while ago we wrote a blog as part of our series Organizations that Work titled “Our Unique Approach to Align Organization Structure with Strategy” – a blog post that explained our three-step process designed to align your organizational structure with your...

The Social Dimension of Work and its two Critical Features: Innovation and Culture

by Ed McMahon | 2022-05-11 | The 'C' Suite | 0 Comments

The Social Dimension of Work Originally posted at the beginning of the pandemic as “There's More to Work than Work”, I believe two years later these tips regarding the social dimension of work still resonate, especially as operations begin to ramp up during the...

The Great Decompression: 5 pro tips to getting back to the work you love

by Ed McMahon | 2022-04-21 | The 'C' Suite | 0 Comments

Business leaders around the world have been forced to adjust their priorities in countless ways, and in some cases completely re-invent how they work, to deal with the many impacts brought on by the COVID pandemic. Perhaps the most frustrating, time-consuming, and...

COVID may have changed the way we work…forever

by Mike Brush | 2020-12-16 | The 'C' Suite | 0 Comments

Leaps in productivity, the disappearing boundary between work and home life, virtual collaboration… our approach to work has changed fundamentally, and perhaps permanently.

Are you ready for the COVID Reset?

by Mike Brush | 2020-09-02 | The 'C' Suite, The HR Professional | 0 Comments

COVID-19 has been with us over 6 months and we now have one full quarter of pandemic business results and a sense of what is ahead of us. One thing is certain, COVID has changed how we as individuals and businesses interact with the world. In “The Great Reset,” (Globe...

Business as (Un)usual

by Ed McMahon | 2020-06-04 | The 'C' Suite, The HR Professional | 0 Comments

For most of the working people on the planet, the COVID-19 pandemic has brought unprecedented changes to the workplace over the course of the last 8-10 weeks. For the majority of those who remain working at some capacity (50%? 100%? 150%?) the approach to work—from...

There’s more to work than work

by Ed McMahon | 2020-06-03 | The 'C' Suite, The HR Professional | 0 Comments

COVID-19 has forced companies worldwide to change how they work—a change that many experts suggest could be permanent. Most people would agree that more than “work” happens at “work”. We take the time to define “work” when we are engaged with our clients and to...

Preparing for a sustainable return, part three: Post Lockdown

by Mike Brush | 2020-05-24 | The 'C' Suite, The HR Professional | 0 Comments

With the onset of COVID-19, work life has been stressful for all of us. When it became evident that the COVID-19 pandemic was not something that could be confined to Asia, businesses began adjusting how they operated starting with restricting travel and asking...

Preparing for a sustainable return, part two: Sustainment

by Mike Brush | 2020-05-21 | The 'C' Suite, The HR Professional | 0 Comments

Preparing for a sustainable return, part one: Containment

by Mike Brush | 2020-05-19 | The 'C' Suite, The HR Professional | 0 Comments

The HR Professional

5 Tips to Help Manage the Shifting Demands of the Current job Market

by Sylvia Klarer | 2022-06-14 | The HR Professional | 0 Comments

Coming out of COVID, we have seen a lot written about how to bring employees back into the office and accounts of the Great Resignation. Together these movements have created a hot job market, and as a result, we are seeing more employees flexing this...

Challenges of Bringing People back to the Office and how to Overcome them Effectively

by Mike Brush | 2022-05-25 | The HR Professional | 0 Comments

Who would have thought returning to the workplace would be so hard? Two years ago, I wrote a blog on the significant adjustment to working remotely. It was still early days in the pandemic and the piece provided an optimistic viewpoint on how we were successfully...

5 Pandemic Tips for Managers that Actually Hold up Two Years Later

by Ed McMahon | 2022-05-04 | The HR Professional | 0 Comments

Originally posted at the beginning of the pandemic as "Business as (Un)usual", I believe two years later these tips still resonate, especially as operations begin to ramp up during the "return to office" that many organizations are undergoing. For most of the working...

What is a Crossover Manager and why Should I Care?

by Mike Brush | 2022-04-27 | The HR Professional | 0 Comments

When leaders ask my advice regarding a performance issue in their organization, I eventually find myself searching out the crossover manager related to the issue. Understanding the concept of the crossover manager will enable you to resolve issues and increase the...

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