What makes organizations what they are? Why are some organizations radically
different than other organizations? As a
CEO or senior staff executive, it’s up to you to understand and help lead your
organization—but how do you do it? Are
you responsible for a specific outcome in your organization, for example, innovation
and constructive change? Are you thinking
of a career change? Perhaps you’re
considering an organizational change, and are thinking about how to find an
organization aligned with your own experience and values.
If you fit any of these situations, a McKinsey Quarterly
article may be interesting. “A Watershed
in Thinking About Organizations” is an April 2008 McKinsey article that
revisits their 7-S Framework, introduced in the 1970s. The interactive article, the first in a
series, “reflects on 7-S…introduced…to address the critical role of coordination,
rather than structure, in organizational effectiveness.” Readers can click on any of the seven
elements in the framework and listen to McKinsey’s description of the element.
The article can be found here:
The article goes on to note “While an increasingly complex
business environment has rendered some (organizational) models obsolete, others
have endured.” McKinsey says the series
presents “frameworks that are as relevant today as they were when first
created.”
The 7-S framework “maps seven interrelated factors that
influence an organization’s ability to change—shared values, skills, staff,
strategy, style and systems—and shows how these forces interact”. The framework suggests that achieving
progress in any one part of the framework “will be hard to achieve without
progress in the others.”
The 7-S framework provides an excellent model for evaluating
and understanding an organization. And
it provides a useful method for analysis of one’s preferred individual
leadership traits.
Here’s an illustration of the 7-S framework:
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