The website of the McKinsey consultant company offers a description of several interesting tools which can provide their users with useful insights. Let’s see what modern technology can bring to top managers in various industries.
Diagnosing organisations
Organisation charts usually enable us to visualise the structure of a given company. However, what if the organisation is fluid with the majority of its staff rotating among various teams? In that case the traditional org chart is no longer enough.
When agile organisations are spreading, teams become increasingly flexible and you need something that reflects this fact.
Therefore OrgLab was created – a tool that helps with the visualisation of organisational structure. This is appropriate especially when a company needs to reorganise, wants to acquire another business, or is planning a transformation.
No boxes but amorphous shapes
Five years ago this tool began by depicting organisations as boxes connected with lines. It has since been refined and now shows the whole organisation according to how work actually gets done, namely by teams and projects. That means it is based on amorphous shapes that encompass individual employees. The result is a visual resembling unicellular organisms.
This tool helps managers to find out whether teams are the right size. They can assess whether there are effective structures in place and whether necessary skill sets are missing. With this tool, processes can be better understood: work flows are visualised as well as decision points. For example, if you are responsible for the onboarding of new customers, you can use this tool to see where there are points of key decisions, be these in sales or the finance department.
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