Succeeding in the hybrid, agile, digital, matrix

We have seen several organisation announcements recently as more and more companies restructure to adapt to a changed world of work.

In just one example from Novartis, a major healthcare company, this week, their announcement mentioned the need to be simpler, more focused, more integrated internationally, more cost effective, more agile and flexible, more customer oriented, more efficient, more digital, more innovative, more productive and more flexible.

These are all great objectives but doing all of them at the same time generates a huge amount of change. They are integrating some existing Business Units, creating new business entities and global functions and changing senior leadership.

At the same time, they mention the need to adapt to a hybrid environment and press ahead with digital initiatives.

Any one of these would create a significant challenge in evolving your way of working

• embedding a new matrix organisation across existing boundaries
• creating new business units and global functions
• introducing hybrid working at scale
• becoming both more integrated and more agile and flexible at the same time

We are hearing similar messages from many of our clients, the change is massive, and it will require significant developments in people capability. One thing we learned from the Covid period was that real resilience, flexibility and adaptability comes from skills and ways of working rather than structure – changing our organisation is just the start.

We think this is an accurate reflection of the dynamics that many organisations are now facing. It also relates very closely to the themes in our recent blog Time to update your leadership model for the new reality? and our new leadership model below.

If you work for an organisation introducing this level of change In ways of working we would love to have a conversation to find out how are you dealing with this, and we will be happy to share what we are learning from other great companies around the world. Let’s talk …