#021 The impact of remote work on organisational design | Desereé van den Berg

Desereé van den Berg, guest · [05:29]The world of remote work, do I need to say more than that? so I think, yeah, for us as a class, we, we sort of had that first two weeks together, and then we also had to, we, we, the COVID pandemic in South Africa and sort of in HR leadership, I was the one tasked to sort of deploy both our Cape Town and Joburg offices immediately home within, I think, two to three days, and suddenly we had to adjust to a complete remote world of work. So as a HR practitioner and a people practitioner, I mean, that was just for me, how can I not do something on remote work? so I started actually throughout the two years in my MBA journey with all my position papers, touching on something around remote work or where I saw in, when I did that, for example, viable systems modeling, when we did that paper, also saw the impact of what remote work has on, divisions and on parts of the organization. so that really intrigued me throughout the two-year process, in the middle of the pandemic. And doing all the reading around remote work and hybrid work models, and literature that started to come out about it and what organizations were really grappling with. And that's why I came up with my research topic is to understand how remote work impacts on how we design our organizations going forward post-pandemic.

Desereé van den Berg, guest · [08:29]So I was very brave. I thought at the time maybe a bit stupid. So I tackled a research methodology that we didn't necessarily go into much depth, during the course, but I found it extremely exciting and, and such a rewarding experience. So I decided to do grounded theory, and in particularly constructivist grounded theory. So grounded theory is really about building theory from what emerges for you out of the data, but that that theory is grounded in, in the data and, and what you find during your research. But constructivist grounded theory, there's three types that I won't go into detail about, but I am particularly decided to go constructivist grounded theory by Cathy Chammas, in particularly because, because I'm a practitioner in the field and I work with people in remote work and strategy all the time, I felt that I couldn't remove myself completely from the process. And constructivist grounded theory, I think, recognizes the fact the researcher cannot completely Be removed, from the research process, and that worked quite well for me.

Petro du Pisani, host · [09:34]So after you went through all of that, how many people did you interview?

Desereé van den Berg, guest · [09:37]Yeah, so I interviewed twelve people, and yeah, you, you can appreciate, and I think fellow students will appreciate it, like I ended up with close to a thousand five hundred, I think, actually codes that I had to work through. so it was twelve one hour, one hour interviews that I conducted.

Desereé van den Berg, guest · [10:34]My initial, when I went into it, what the preconceived idea was, is that I'm going to have this huge aha moment in terms of how remote work impacts on organizational design. So there's various frameworks and recipes, if I can call it that, out there in terms of organizational design. And I thought I was going to come out by saying, these are the sort of components of organizational design, and explicitly this is how remote work impacts on, on all of them. So that definitely did emerge in my paper. So I definitely got out of the paper holistically how remote or hybrid work impacts on strategy, how it impacts on processes and systems, how it impacts on IT, how it impacts on organizational capabilities like learning and development, like leadership, like talent. so all of that did come out in my paper, and I could elaborate on all of that. But I think at the end of the day, for me, my theory around it was quite surprising. The first one in particularly that stood out for me is the understanding of organizational design in organizations. A lot of people still see organizational design as an organogram. It's like people sitting in a room and we draw a picture on the board and, and we have to fill blocks. And it's much more complex than that. It really touches each and every single part of your organization. A organogram might be the end of it or one of the, or should be one of the outcomes, let me rather say that, but it's a much more complex. It touches every part of your organization. And there's a clear lack of understanding, not only in organizations by leadership about it, but also funnily enough, even in the practitioners that was took part in my study, a lot of them asked me, so what do you mean when you ask me about organizational design? Which, which was quite surprising. I, I thought practitioners knew automatically. So that was a surprising finding. so there's definitely a lack of teaching in educational, in academic programs on organizational design. And organizational design and strategy was the second thing. They are so interconnected that I actually wrote a part in my paper to say, for me, organizational design is strategy and strategy is organizational design. The one doesn't, cannot stand without the other one. They are so interconnected. You can't think about strategy without thinking about organizational design, and you can't think design without thinking of strategy.

Desereé van den Berg, guest · [13:02]Then another finding, maybe more towards in particularly remote work, is at that stage we were two years post the pandemic. Remote work is most definitely not a new concept. If you go back in literature and you search, it goes back to when women started entering the workplace decades ago, and they started to ask for work flexibility. But we sort of ignore it, and we don't action it. So there's no, no clear and concise decision-making that organizations are making on remote work post the pandemic. Government used to dictate to us, everybody must go home now, or you can bring a certain part of your workforce back to the office. And now suddenly that, that instruction is no longer there forced by government, organizations struggles to make actual decision about it. And then another finding was where organizations are making decisions about it, they're making it on the wrong level. They're pushing it down to HR teams, for example, and say you have to deploy people home and you have to put a new performance management system in place, and IT must make sure they're all connected. It's such a disruptor that you have to make that decision on a strategic level. I like to use the metaphor when I do talks on it. If you as an organization decide to expand your business into Africa or even into a different province, you make that decision on a strategic level. And then you strategically look at how you're going to execute that across your organization. And you talk about all parts in your organization when you execute that strategy. If you think of hybrid or remote work, is you're actually making a decision to expand your business into people's homes or coffee shops or satellite offices. So how can you not make such a disruptive decision, not on a strategic level? So that's definitely lacking. And then also throughout the whole process, and then maybe the last key finding for me was there's still the lack of strategic capabilities we have in our organizations, because we are ignoring these dots on the horizon. We're ignoring the workers asking for flexible working arrangements and, and to have more balance. So that strategic capability is clearly lacking, and then the organizational design or, maybe a, a more common word that's also used is systems thinking and design thinking that's lacking in our organizations, because we don't understand how things interconnect and interrelate to one another. So we make decisions somewhere in our businesses, or in our organization, and that one change has got a ripple effect throughout the organization, and then we struggle to understand why we're not achieving our objectives or why our strategy is failing.

Petro du Pisani, host · [16:19]It's about how do you work effectively together when some people are from home and some people are, are not. And one of the things that I saw, because we had to very quickly, give a lot of our training online, so we had to very, and then people would not pay attention. a lot of that training has not stuck. You know, two years later, we go, well, remember we did this training two years ago, and they go, they don't even remember being in the class, you know, even though there's a recording of them being in the class, or the little bubble being in the class, at least. people are not remembering that they actually were in the class. I think it's got a huge impact on that. So, for me, it's like, how do we make sure that people effectively Form part of a team while they're sitting at home, you know, how do we make sure that that happens? Do you have any thoughts around that?

Desereé van den Berg, guest · [17:06]For me, it's again a design discussion and understanding how simply doing training and online is not going to be a solution for delivering training, for example, or just having Teams meetings now online or having brainstorming sessions online is going to foster engagement and that collaboration. As you have to be deliberate in your design. You have to be deliberate if you do hybrid, for example. You have to say who needs to be together at what times physically or online and bring that into your design. You can't just simply say pick two days or pick three days when you want to work remote. That has to be done creatively and purposefully through design in how you, how you design those engagements.

Petro du Pisani, host · [22:32]So now that you've gone through all of this work and everything, and, and this podcast is called On Change, so it's about, how you as a person has changed. So how's this work and this, this studying, and EMBA actually changed the way you think and the way that you work?

Desereé van den Berg, guest · [22:50]key parts for me, again, it's really a truly transformational journey. It's, it's not a cliche, it's not a marketing gimme on the, on the, on UCT's side. My thinking has changed completely in how I, how I look at an organizational challenge or a problem in the workplace. I think as executives, we sometimes think that we've got the answer and that we know most of it, but going through the various models and thinking processes and multiple perspectives and doing the research, I ask different questions when I get a problem. And I look at it more holistically. And I'm still surprised sometimes with what the answer is at the end of the day to a problem. And I think the position papers and even the dissertation has taught us that quite nicely, as you, you go into it thinking you're going to know what the outcome is, but then once you've gone through the process, you are surprised by the end result. And the same apply for me and how I approach problems and challenges in the workplace, is not to have that immediate preconceived idea of what the solution to a challenge is. So that was the first thing. And then the other thing is maybe the softer leadership things. I live better or I live more with intent. I do intentional living. My boundary setting, is much, very much different to what it used to be before. I'm mindful of what I allow and what I don't allow, and what I give my time and my energy to than what I used to before. I'm much more grounded in my thinking and The reflection still as a daily practice allows me to change my behavior as I reflect on things that's happened during the day. so truly a transformational journey, not only from a practical skill leadership, or management competence perspective and problem solving, but also how I show up every day and how I am every day in how I go about life and how I go about things.