Business Process

Design for Strategic

Management
Dubai, 26/12/2022

Dr Marko Selakovic
 THE OUTLINE
• Understand the principles and approaches that drive improvement and apply them in
all areas of an organization
• Develop inquiry and evidence-based problem-solving skills for the participants and
their organizations
• Ensure Government strategies and improvement activities and processes are tightly
linked at every level
• Ensuring proper dealing with opposite and conflicting strategies and frameworks
• Inspire the move from “controlling” to “enabling” in the management styles
 THROUGHOUT THE COURSE, WE WILL
• Learn how to implement continuous improvement strategies into your
organization’s work design, as well as change the way you think about your
own work and role as a leader within a particular area of improvement.
• Develop an understanding of how to go about creating and implementing
strategies aimed to improve; why strategies often fail; the psychological
reasons behind learning, change, and motivation; principles of good work
design; and how to go about problem-solving effectively.
• The course is participative and highly practical, using a wide range of training
and learning methods.

• The course includes mentoring, coaching, examples of best

practice, and tailor-made hands-on work
TAKEAWAYS

DAY 1

• An Introduction to Dynamic Work Design

• Identify the need for a contemporary
approach to the design of work
activities.
• The Four Principles of Dynamic Work
Design
• Apply the four principles associated with
Dynamic Work Design to an organization
of your choice.
TAKEAWAYS

DAY 2

• Apply the key principles of producing a

problem statement.
TAKEAWAYS

DAY 3

• Structured Problem Solving

• Produce the first half of a structured

problem-solving document.
TAKEAWAYS

DAY 4
• Designing Work for People

• Propose how an organization of your

choice could benefit from the
implementation of Dynamic Work Design
principles.
TAKEAWAYS

DAY 5
• Visual Management

• Design a visual management board and

complete your structured problem-
solving document
CORE • Dynamic Work Design is a set of
CONCEPTS AND principles and structures that
TERMINOLOGIES guide human behavior as work
moves through an organization,
including finding and fixing issues
and making improvements, all in
real time.
• It is particularly helpful in
intellectual work – strategy,
innovation, management,
technical and administrative –
where work is “invisible.”
CORE • Most organizations are good at
CONCEPTS AND designing static work.
TERMINOLOGIES • They can draw the org chart,
determine how they think work should
flow, and set internal policies.
However, static work designs don’t
account for what happens when work
starts moving through the system and
things don’t go as planned.
• When problems happen,
communications break down,
workarounds grow, response times
stretch, issues pile up, and projects get
delayed. New initiatives fall behind.
Costs rise. Frustration mounts. End
result: company is not achieving its
potential.
CORE • Make the invisible visible
CONCEPTS AND • Physical work is easy to track
TERMINOLOGIES because it’s visible, usually
repetitive, and easy to see.
Creative work is invisible and
more variable, so workflow is
harder to monitor. The trick of
dynamic work design is to
make invisible work visible, so
it can be systemized
CORE • Dynamic work design builds on a
CONCEPTS AND simple but profound idea: Things
TERMINOLOGIES don’t always go as planned, and
how an organization reacts to
those inevitable hiccups plays a
critical role in determining its
long-term effectiveness.
• It might be useful to think about
a work design as having two
components, one that is static
and one that is dynamic.
HR AS DUAL FUNCTION
Dynamic Work Design in Strategic
Management

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Dynamic Work Design - Contingency
• One of the most common variables in contingency theories is the
degree of uncertainty in the surrounding environment.
• When the competitive environment and the associated work are
stable and well understood, contingency theory suggests that
organizations will do best with highly structured, mechanistic designs.
• In contrast, when facing highly uncertain situations that require
ongoing adaptation, contingency theory suggests that organizations
will do better with more flexible, organic designs

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Dynamic Work Design - Contingency
• When the environment is unstable and uncertain, work is harder to
routinize and therefore organizations cannot rely on precisely
designed tasks.
• As an extreme example, an emergency room physician rarely faces
exactly the same situation twice in a given shift.
• Contingency theory holds that in unpredictable environments
organizations rely more on things like training and collaboration, and
less on routinization and careful specification.

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 Dynamic Work Design - Contingency
Organizations and their associated processes need to be designed to match the nature of the work they do!

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Factory vs. Studio
• The contingency approach gives managers a straightforward approach
to designing work: assess the stability of the competitive environment
and the resulting work, and then pick the best mix of routinization
and collaboration to fit the challenge at hand.
• If the work being designed is highly precise, then it is best to organize
it serially, or using the “factory” mode.
• If the work is highly ambiguous and requires ongoing interaction (eg.
designing new products), then the work is best organized
collaboratively, in “studio” mode.

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Toyota`s Andon Cord
• The Andon Cord was a rope. Just a rope.
• When pulled, the rope would instantly stop all work on the assembly
line.
• Anyone had the right to pull the cord at any time.
• Once all production was halted, a team leader would immediately go
ask why the rope was pulled.
• Then, together, the leader and the team could work to solve the
problem and restart production.

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 Toyota`s
Andon Cord –
factory vs.
studio
Four principles of Dynamic Work Design

1.Reconcile activity with intent.

Every organization is trying to solve a basic problem.

Ask:
Are your targets clear?
Will your visible activities meet your goals?

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Four principles of Dynamic Work Design

2. Connect the human chain through triggers and

checks.

Can you see a problem when it happens?

Is there a planned response and by whom?

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Four principles of Dynamic Work Design

3. Structure problem-solving and creativity.

If the activity doesn’t deliver results, why not?

What are you doing about it?

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Four principles of Dynamic Work Design

4. Manage optimal challenges.

How tough should the target be?

Are there too many or not enough?

Think of it like training for a race: a runner needs just

the right amount of challenge to improve and get
stronger.

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Four principles of Dynamic Work Design
• Think about your organization and how to classify it

•WORKSHOP!

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Factory
approach

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Studio
approach

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 Four principles of Dynamic Work Design

To keep things on track, incorporate a system of triggers (escalation

for help) and checks (meetings) to ensure that people know what to
do, when to ask for help, and who is supposed to respond to that
request.

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The ability to adapt and improve

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Questions?

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THANK YOU!