There are Three Sources of Power That Can Create Competitive Advantage For Your Enterprise:

• Power of Organization Design
• Power of Clear, Complementary, Aligned Strategies & Goals
• Power of Collaboration

Does your organization's infrastructure enable your success or is it an obstacle to getting the right things done?

One of the greatest challenges for corporate leaders and strategists is creating integrated human and organizational systems that enable the successful achievement of business and technical goals and objectives. In an era of significant and increasing globalization and complexity, coupled with the demand for doing most everything faster and cheaper, an organization's infrastructure must also support collaboration, innovation, communication, continuous improvement, and reinvention if your company is to be competitive.

Is your organization structure an anachronism?

While we live in an age of rapid change and technological development, the fact is that organization form and structure have changed very little over the centuries and are hopelessly out of date. Most contemporary organizations are built on the dual pillars of bureaucracy and hierarchy. These are ancient organizational forms that have their origins in military, governmental, and religious systems that placed a premium on stability, control, and rules. Though we need some of each, these are not organization designs of which creativity, initiative, fast response, and innovation are made. Your organization's design may, in fact, be obscuring obstacles that make it difficult and expensive--or even impossible--for even the most talented employees to do the things and get the results that you require of them.

Most organizations just layer new processes on top of old, outdated structures and then wonder why they aren't getting the benefits they'd expected.

Layering more recent organization forms on an old structure: teams on top of a steep hierarchy, or continuous reorganizations, for example--does not change the fundamental characteristics of that foundation or the likely outcomes. So even though there are some benefits and improvements that can be traced to structural and process enhancements, because they are still impeded by the hard-wired attributes of the underlying form, the results are often less than promised, and the ROI is disappointing.

Form follows function

In order for today's organizations to respond competitively and successfully in the current environment, their infrastructures must match, support, and drive their missions, strategies, values, and technological imperatives.

Infrastructure is the fundamental system of resources (human, technical, physical, financial), cultural elements, processes, and structures on which organizational capability and competence are built and enabled. Because infrastructure often operates in the background, this unique combination of important variables is taken for granted. It doesn't get enough attention, and its value as a way to leverage results is diminished. Instead, it gets in the way, and infrastructure as obstacle may be overlooked.

In fact, an optimal infrastructure is essential to the success of the enterprise and is a source of competitive advantage for your organization or company.

Through careful, systematic attention to the:

• Power of Organization Design
• Power of Clear, Complementary, Aligned Strategies & Goals
• Power of Collaboration

we can help you can create, leverage, and evolve a human and organizational system that enables and supports the requirements and demands of today's marketplace.

*Lighthouse Photos by Jeremy D'Entremont, www.lighthouse.cc