The Organizational Engineering as a Leadership & Innovation framework

All Art is a problem of Balance between two opposites.

Cesare Pavese

I start with an ancient fable:

For six years, Siddhartha (Buddha to friends 😊) and his followers lived in silence and never left the forest. To drink, they had rain, food, they ate a grain of rice or a broth of moss. They tried to master suffering by making their minds so strong that they forget their bodies.

Then one day, Siddhartha heard an old musician on a passing boat, telling his student...

"If you stretch this rope too tightly, it will burst; if you let her loose too much, it won't touch."

Suddenly, Siddhartha realized that these simple words contained a great truth and that during all these years he had gone the wrong way.

"If you stretch this rope too tightly, it will burst; if you let her loose too much, it won't touch." – the phrase continued to echo in his mind.

A villager offered Siddhartha a bowl of rice. And for the first time in years, he ate properly. But when the ascetics saw their master bathe and eat like an ordinary person, they felt betrayed, as if Siddhartha had given up the great search for enlightenment.

As they retired, Siddhartha said:

"Learning is to Change. The road to Evolution is on the Middle Path. It is a Path consisting of all the space between all opposite ends."

The Middle Way was the great truth buddha discovered, the path he would teach the world.

Now, I have a real story

From the beginning of my professional career to the day to this day, whether working on behest of others, whether as a facilitator, coach, or trainer, I have been witness to a common challenge that I find in People and Organizations – Separation and Extremes:

• People who have great energy, willingness to learn and make things happen, but processes, leadership, culture, and technology do not accompany and enhance this wealth;
• Processes, methodologies, and state of the art technologies, but that do not provide the potential wealth and value because their contextualization and involvement with people are not carried out, thus creating many antibodies.

What often arises is a gap of evolution – we know everything we need, but we don't know/can apply. 

I am lucky to be able to work on several topics, some of them unrelated – Coaching, Design Thinking, Advanced Engineering, and Automotive Quality Projects. Business Models and Customer Development. Innovation and Culture. There has always been someone who has guided me on these themes and inspired me. Gratitude!

I started to insert coaching and facilitation elements in FMEA and IAFT16949 (automotive industry) formations. I tried using 8D's (Problem Solving) in process reengineering projects in IT and Utilities organizations. I used Customer Journey and Design Thinking models in coaching sessions for leaders who wanted to put in images their processes of reflection and leadership strategy and team management. 

A true mix of themes. 😊 

The Leadership and Management of an Organization is a hybrid and simultaneous approach of People [Coaching/Mentoring] + Innovation [Design Thinking + Customer Development+Problem Solving] and Culture [Management 3.0 + Liberating Structures + Culture by Values]. 

It goes through integrating several "Paths of the Middle". 

Coaching and Design Thinking being my greatest professional influences, from the beginning I noticed many points and purposes in common.

A few years ago I began to imagine a Path, which could serve as a guideline for leadership and organizational development processes, inspired by these approaches. 

I did some scribbles, asked for the help of designers, gave him a few touches, made some blends, I was writing on the blog how this could work (more generally or specifically) and experiencing it in my projects and interventions. 

After a few years of fermentation and aging, like wine, here is the officialization of ORGANIZATIONAL ENGINEERING [EO], after the "validation" of the market.

ORGANIZATIONAL ENGINEERING® is an integrative roadmap for the development of People, Organizations, Culture, and Business Ecosystems. It acts as a driver for identifying opportunities or challenges, which in turn are triggers for new ideas or projects for the development of Human Capital and Organizational Innovation.

Let's then explore this:

PURPOSE AND CHALLENGE

Having a defined and concrete purpose activates feelings of trust and tranquility in our limbic system, which generates emotions. The Clarification of Purpose and Challenge is for me one of the most important stages of any Process of Transformation and Personal and Organizational Innovation. Unfortunately, it is the most neglected.

EXPLORE, OBSERVE AND MAP

We always find out who knows what to do, by logic or ego. 😊

So exploring, looking around, talking to us and others is a fundamental process for having a crystal clear vision and notion of reality and the current state of things. 

This implies the neutral and compassionate act of observing, without great judgments or prejudices. Take the helicopter, increase the field of view, observe ecosystems, and identify interactions, in a wide-angle of 720 degrees: 360° internal + 360° external.

INSIGHTS

At this point and through the previous two steps we must already make clear some conclusions. What has become clear through the exploring phase? Does it work with what we thought? What are the dimensions for which it makes sense to create solutions and impacts for ourselves, for teams, customers, so that everyone has their pains and gains "resolved"?

IMAGINE AND DRAW A BETTER FUTURE

Now, yes, it's the right time to create something or imagine solutions to a particular challenge and problem.

EVERYTHING is possible to be imagined and only A FEW things can be implemented, and everything is fine. 😊

Individuals, Teams, and Organizations typically start here and ignore the previous steps and the previous sentence. That is, we stagnate in our Personal and Organizational Innovation because if we start only at this stage, we do not provide the beautiful, but also (confess) the painful process of putting everything into question, we included.

VALIDATE AND PLAN THE NEW REALITY

A great solution is not enough. Innovation only happens when an idea is technically feasible, desirable, financially viable, and taking into account this net world and the latest events, which can quickly adapt to new business and delivery models.

So here we have to experiment, prototype, and define the criteria of success and failure.

LIFT-OFF!

It's easy here. It's making happen, refine, update, and then look for the next challenge and purpose. 😊 

In recent years, I have tested this roadmap for individual projects and with teams, organizations, and partners, in different contexts and themes. I also use it myself to give my best to get to my answers and solutions, or to design the contents/activities and delivery of my projects.

Organizational Engineering almost always got it right. As roadmap worked almost always well as a reference to go through complex territories as they are a Human Being, Team, Organization, Business. 

The methodologies and tools used in each phase must be customized to the theme, challenge, person, team, organization, etc. Here we ask empathy and co-creation with customers. 

ORGANIZATIONAL ENGINEERING® AS A GALAXY

Organizational Engineering develops and innovates a set of dimensions, active principles, and ecosystems of the Professional and organizations that exist by themselves and whose elements remain united by mutual interactions, in key themes that function as constellations or solar systems:

Some examples of application:

LEADER EVOLUTION - Coaching and Mentoring processes where Self Leadership, Priority Setting, and Decision Making work. Leading and Imagining a new future in an organization is still often a solitary process and this Organizational Engineering roadmap can serve as a guide to make crystal clear and motivating a process that is complex and dense. [Self Leadership, Coaching, Mentoring].

BUSINESS TRANSFORMATION – Any context that implies a multidisciplinary reflection and work to solve problems, identify opportunities, create products, work on our value proposition and customer development or simply imagine how to work better. [Design Thinking, Problem Solving, Innovation, StrategyTools®, Customer Development]-

CULTURE AND WORKFLOWS – 85% of organizational challenges are systemic and related to communication, the definition of responsibilities, inconsistent information, and degraded communication flows. It is Meaningful Conversations & Design that lead to the best Reflections, Decisions, and Distribution of Responsibilities and Tasks. [Design of Cultures and Teams, Definition of Responsibilities, Team Development, Culture by Values]-

We are facing a cycle of change and vertiginous expansion and impermanence, associated with the development and transformation of the concept of what is a PROFESSIONAL, ORGANIZATION, PRODUCT AND SERVICE AND CUSTOMER.

Organizational Engineering is a way I found to "fight" that common challenge of Separation and Extremes, which I mentioned at the beginning, which still causes a lot of damage. Since you baptized a great friend of mine, that's my professional scene. 😊

Organizational Engineering actually intends to create and strengthen the Integration, Reconnection, Balance, and Joy (not exactly Happiness) of Professionals and Organizations.

This is my Middle Path proposal. And I intend to continue to walk this path and its trails in the near future. 

May the Opportunities, Challenges, People, and Organizations come to go through it with me. 😊 

Best and Stay Safe,

Hugo