Organisation Design for Global Success with Antonis Kazouris SSP Group - OrgDev Episode 49

How can organisation design support an organisation with a big growth agenda? How can you leverage technology speed up design and make your organisation  more efficient? How can you use AI to create greater job automation and what are the pitfalls to watch out for? These are just some of the questions we ask Adonis Kazouris, Group Senior Organisational Design Manager, at SSP Group PLC in our latest podcast.

💼 About our Guest
Antonis Kazouris
Group Senior Organisational Design Manager, SSP Group PLC

Connect with Antonis here:
  / kazouris91 

Antonis Kazouris is a seasoned professional with extensive expertise in Organisational Design and Workforce Analytics. As Group Senior Organisational Design Manager at SSP, he has led global, large-scale transformation initiatives, including the development of global frameworks, the optimization of operating models, and the design of career progression strategies.

Prior to his role at SSP, Antonis gained significant experience in the consulting industry with Deloitte and WTW, specializing in Organisational Design, Employee Experience, and DEI strategy. He has delivered impactful insights and strategies to C-suite stakeholders across diverse industries, blending advanced analytics and technology with a deep understanding of organisational needs to enhance agility, efficiency, and employee engagement.

In addition to his professional work, Antonis is pursuing a Professional Doctorate in Evidence-Based Human Resource Management at Birkbeck University. His research focuses on the role of evidence-based decision-making in organisational design and its impact on effectiveness and employee performance. As an external researcher collaborating with King’s College London, he has contributed to advancing their DEI strategy and policies over the past three years.

Antonis holds a Master’s in Human Resources from the London School of Economics (LSE), underscoring his commitment to integrating academic research and practical application to drive meaningful change in organisations.

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Transcript

Transcript:
(00:00) hi and welcome to the org Dev podcast so how can organization design support an organization with a big growth agenda how can you leverage technology to speed up design and make your organization more efficient and how can you use AI to create greater job Automation and what are the pitfalls you have to watch out for these are some of the questions that Adonis kazur Our Guest today regularly works with within his role Adonis is a seasoned professional with extensive experience in organization design and Workforce analytics a His official title
(00:31) is group senior organizational design manager at SSP Group which is a leading food and beverage provider in travel locations worldwide you might know them through their brands up across nipp and ramen and Camden food company and I ow a debt of gratitude to Upper cross for fueling many of my trip home off your long day in London he applies expertise in employee experience people analytics organization design culture transformation and inclusion and diversity to help clients achieve their strategic goals and enhance their
(01:02) Workforce performance prior to SSP Adonis worked for several years in the Consulting industry with deoe and Willis Towers Watson where he specialized in organization design employee experience and Dei strategy delivering impactful insights and strategies to see sweet stakeholders across different Industries he has a masters in HR and organizations at London School of economics and this is where I met Adonis as we were giving a talk to the London School of Economics to potential OD practitioners of the future and Adonis was brilliant sharing
(01:32) his insights and experience as well he's a passionate learner and researcher pursuing a professional doctorate in evidence-based human resource management at burbeck where he explores the latest trends and best practices in the field of Human Resources so thank you so much for making time with on us and we're really looking forward to having a good conversation with you today thank you so much for having me Gary and Dany and I'm very excited to be here and looking forward to our conversation as well
(01:57) [Music] so just kick us off just tell us a bit more about the role that you're doing now and the work you do at SSP and it's a very interesting role and I think it's it's also quite a broad role as well and that was one of my key concerns when I moved from the Consulting industry into in into in-house and one of the key reasons why I was slightly concerned is because I've worked in house before before joining will Stars WatchON I used to work for Coca-Cola helenic botling Company I remember my my role actually
(02:32) being very busy and having pecks and lows but uh during the lows it was lows is to do and I was always probably looking for some additional activities just to try and uh make it to to 5:00 pm but currently at SSP I would probably say it's a it's such a fast pacing environment that it really reminds me the it reminds me of how rigorous the Consulting and the Consulting industry actually is in SSP there are we actually operate across every region that you can imagine we operate in napac we operate in EM we operate in Continental Europe
(03:11) UK and Ireland and North America and I think that's about 38 different countries right now and we're we're currently expanding into a couple more countries so you can imagine uh doing organizational design for all of those uh count at the same time can probably keep you very busy because I my role on a day-to-day basis can actually include developing Global OD Frameworks then having some uh some workshops or sessions with those countries probably having some more focused discussions and workshops on with some countries on
(03:47) right sizing uh their business or if we have actually acquired another businesses in a specific region or location I'm a bit more focused on that country for uh for the time being so it's a very busy role that always keeps me busy it has a great variety I mean I can probably work from a spectrum that comes from uh literally identifying job families within uh within our divisions and business units down to right sizing some of our units and the businesses to operate more efficiently and more effective so I'm
(04:22) really enjoying my current role and I think that uh there are so many the opportunities are actually countless right now which is what what I love about my my current position but it's so diverse and every day you have different stakeholders from all over the world that uh no day is actually the same well this has a like a huge role so you're working across 38 countries and how big's the team that you're working with the team actually the the global team is not that big it's actually four of us
(04:52) right now it's my manager who's the group uh director for organizational development I'm the senior manager for organizational design for SSP group there are two more uh two more people that are the people analytics team there's the group senior manager for people analytics and another analytics resource that we have uh in the team I would say we're we're a very leine organization and we tend to consider actually group resources and group employees because my role currently sits at group as as the center of excellence
(05:25) because SSP Works in a Federated model where the decision Mak processes and all of the key decisions are taken at the country or at the regional level we're just there to support the countries make the right decision by either by sharing best practices or by sharing actually some success stories from other countries and how some other countries and regions are overcome the say the same obstacles or the same hardles that they probably face at the at this point of time so it's more around sharing best
(05:57) practices and try to actually lead them to make the right decision which most of the times hopefully we do but this is why I think the transition from Consulting to this role was quite smooth for me because it's very similar to being a consultant but in this case you're an in-house consultant with uh 38 different stakeholders that want to actually improve their or effectiveness at the country or Regional level yeah so how how do you work out where to target your kind of you got limited resource limited time how do you work out where
(06:31) to target your efforts do you go out and find the work or do they kind of come to you and say come and help us we're doing this thing that is a great question I think I think it's a bit of both there are times uh like for example when we make a big acquisition in one of our regions that work actually comes and find us and there are some other times where we might have to actually go to the countries and uh share some new Frameworks or some new ideas that we've been developing in the background and
(07:02) try to get their Buy in or probably get their feedback or validation of the framework that we have developed and then slowly start implementing it across all of our business but uh it's a bit of both and that's why I think you need that uh Consulting mascle you need that background experience within Consulting in order to be successful in this role because you need to actually be persuasive you need to make uh you need to get people to buy in into your ideas and at the same time you need to offer great services so they can trust you
(07:34) again and want to work with you again and try to probably increase the r effective the r Effectiveness together and how much does the work vary across the different countries you work with so is there like a common definition of organization design amongst your your 38 countries or that they will have different interpretations of what that might look like that's another great question and I think that uh it really depends probably on the market activity there are some markets where you know are some of our oldest markets and
(08:05) there's o activity going on for a couple of years now they already know about organizational Effectiveness and they have already some kpi measures in place the UK and Ireland is one of those countries that I'm mentioning right now there are I think one of the most advanced regions in terms of organizational design and uh have and having a good understanding of organiz Effectiveness there are some there are some markets that we have actually entered uh at a at a later time or at a later stage and those markets are still
(08:39) at the early stages of organizational design but there is always the appetite there's always the appetite to see what the leading Market have been actually doing how are they approaching organizational Effectiveness what are their best practices and uh strategies that they have been implementing lately they want to hear those success stories because I think everybody's very passionate uh within SSP and I think that this is what is actually driving the business and is making the business so successful that everybody wants to
(09:11) perform well and they want to hear best practices and actually adjust them and Implement them in a way that they can uh they can actually be more effective and more efficient in their business and SSP is an organization in a hurry isn't it I think if you look online and you sort of see the headlines around it in the business news like it's on a real kind of growth spree so some of it's organic but a lot of it is through acquisition and not just traditional China of acquisition they they're requiring
(09:37) organizations are actually in some respects bigger than them aren't they are you directly involved in some of those things and what are you sort of seeing from from those kind of um from the work that you're having to do to to bring those organizations on board and get them performing at the level you need to get them performing at it is exactly as you're describing we have a phrase in SSP which is called we're moving at PACE this is the most SSP phrase that I've heard since my day one and it's part of the culture right it's
(10:04) part of thep culture that we're we're always on the Move we're always chasing the next big thing but we're not actually only fast at moving at speed we want to do things proper and this is where organizational Effectiveness comes in and highlights the importance of the work that we were actually doing there were a couple of occasions now back to the question that this has happened that we acquired actually organizations that are two or maybe three times larger than the size of of our country population
(10:33) and I've worked on a project like that earlier this year uh so I don't know if you but you might have seen it on the news SSP austr Australia which is part of our APAC business acquired uh one of our competitors called a and uh that business was actually three times larger than the size of uh the SSP business that we had at the time that made uh the Australia business I think our fourth or fifth largest uh population across SSP and uh obviously that was a big piece of work uh for us to try and solve what is
(11:11) going to be the new structure because the AR model was slightly different from the SSP model that we've been actually working on and operating on I think that was a very interesting project we worked for a couple of weeks together with uh the local business and the APAC leadership which meant I had to to jump on a couple of calls at 6:00 a.m.
(11:33) or 7 a.m. in the morning it's something that you have to do because of the time difference but I think that uh it's one of the few times even though I worked in similar Global projects in the past when I was a consultant I felt so close to the local team I felt I I really understood all of their needs how they needed to structure the new business that was all so inclusive of uh policies and practices that a has been using before because you can't suddenly M you know assume that everybody is going to follow the SSP way
(12:04) when you acquire a business is three times your size this is almost this isn't going to happen and it's almost sure that this model won't succeed so what we did is we had a couple of uh workshops very early in the morning as I said before for uh for a few months thankfully it was during the summer months so at least when I woke up the light the sun was out there was some Morning Light so I didn't feel that I was waking up in the middle of the night to facilitate a couple of workshops which was the bright side if you want to
(12:36) be optimistic about it but the workshops were actually really good because there was actually participation from both sides both SSP and a that helped me understand how both of the models actually worked the a model was a lot more operational than the SSP model there was there wasn't a big population uh within our support fun as we call them meaning there weren't many employees that were performing Finance HR or legal activities let's say in the side of things so we just ended up with a model that combined The Best of Both
(13:16) Worlds and both sides were actually happy when uh this was announced and implemented we're still trying to find you a few pieces here and there because obviously this isn't the same as any other country that we're operating it but uh it's probably the best solution for for Australia all of the employees are happy and uh this actually shows in the volume of sales for that particular country and region we love a bit of definition on here you're using the word model there when when you mean
(13:45) that do you mean operating model is what's your definition of it and so some people on watching this will be really familiar models for what for you is an operating model so the operating model for me is uh the framework let's say or the the model behind how a country is actually operating for example we might have uh some countries or some regions that might be focusing a lot more on volume of sales and this is driving the structure and uh how the reward system and everything else within that country
(14:17) or region is actually structured however in some other countries the focus might be something else it might be on individual performance on unit performance at all levels it might be Employee Engagement that is driving the operating model and it's just small things like that that in a Federated World play such a big importance that you need to always be aware of because there might be a global operating model at a high level but when you actually Deep dive into each of the countries or each of the regions you
(14:52) will figure out and find out that uh It's So Different At The Country level and at the regional level and this is because I think that you know this shows uh probably how diverse we are as an organization and uh how great uh Federated model actually works there's a few times we've worked with Federated models over the years like it's a different kind of Beast isn't it because it's about influencing and and really representing the value but you can't necessarily tell you have to sort of get
(15:21) buying is that similar to the model that you have at SSP is it is exactly that it's a I think it's an interesting model I haven't seen it all so when as while I worked in Consulting in many of the clients I worked with because most of the clients had a global model a global framework and that was it everything was strictly implemented in every country and region that was part of that organization even in even when I worked in Coca-Cola we had a global OD framework that worked for every of the 26 countries that we were operating in
(15:54) and that was it there we we weren't flexible with adjustments and local implications as much as we are right now which I think it's it's interesting because you can actually see that uh if you give the countries the freedom and the flexibility to have their own strategy their own model they can still produce the same results as other countries that are leading the market it's just that they're going to implement it in a different way to make up for some let's say local uh local implications or some uh let's say
(16:30) specific situations that are happening at a local level I think that this is great because this is how you actually embrace diversity this is how you build the trust across the business and uh this is how you you're actually showing that uh everyone has a fair chance to to accomplish the same goals but uh the way or probably the route that you that each country chooses to to achieve that that goal is different and it works it it actually works and the but that means that the guidance that uh we can give to the countries is going to be
(17:07) always different uh which makes uh which needs the role that I'm actually performing in to be a bit more flexible I need to be a bit more adjustable in certain occasions and I need to probably revisit some of the global Frameworks again and again after I receive feedback from the countries which I'm totally fine with but it's some that you know I'm experiencing for I wouldn't say the first time but something I've experienced here at SSP at such a such a high volume what was your journey into OD like how did
(17:40) you actually find it that's a good question I don't know if I'm allowed to say it but when I was at Uni back at the LSC almost 10 years ago OD I think was one of the classes that I didn't like I think it was because I found it so structured I found it so Theory based and so strict that I immediately told myself oh my God this is this is the worst uh module of the six that I've actually picked because you have to remember all of the theories you have to apply the theories it was a very theoretical uh module so the decision I
(18:18) actually made postgraduation is that uh no matter what happens I don't want to get involved uh with any of we love this cuz you you are the 47th person we've interviewed and every every single one person said it was cathartic I I saw OD for the first time and it changed my life and you're like no no it didn't in fact it made me go the other way that's really refreshing to hear it was it was exactly the opposite yeah because it was so strict there were so many rules uh way too many theories uh to to actually
(18:49) Implement and at the moment I think I felt a bit overwhelmed so I started my career into the field of Employee Engagement my first job freshh right after uni was uh with hipos Mori and I used to be part of the their Employee Engagement uh Team it was a very small team uh here in the London offices that was you know a part or an extension let's say of their friends team that used to run Employee Engagement surveys that was a lot of fun and uh this is when I started falling in love with employee insights because the the way I
(19:25) felt about it when I was looking at data analyzing uh survey data and deploy data is that uh I'm getting to find out all all the gossip that happens in other organizations first and then make an educated uh let's say guess or or make a presentation about this and Sh those results back and make some suggestions which felt great because at that at that point in time this is what uh this is the idea I had about Consulting in my mind so that was my first job my second job it was still the same I was uh work working on an
(19:59) employee engagement Ro for Coca-Cola helenic butling company and that was when I decided to move back to Greece where I'm originally from for uh for two years so moved back to Greece for two years had that in-house role which was still a global role it wasn't a local role I was actually responsible for 26 countries and uh I was managing end to end the whole Employee Engagement program for Coca-Cola heling botling company meaning that I had to to project manage everything from translations down to results releases and the presentation
(20:35) delivery uh which was great but as I said earlier it was a bit boring and I think that it got to me at the end when during times that it wasn't busy and this is when I decided to move back to London and uh move into Consulting one of the things that organizations do very badly is that they ask for the data from employees but then they don't do anything with it or anything meaningful and then over time it kind of erods trust doesn't it what what is the secret to actually taking that really precious
(21:05) data and and doing something meaningful with it I think the secret in doing in making something meaningful is action planning which is exactly as you said g a part that every organization completely misses because we're all so focused at let's focus at delivery delivery delivery let's get our results back most of the times uh the the engage survey results or server results are linked with some kpis so immediately that uh the whole engagement survey is focusing on getting those results hit my goals uh achieve my kpis and get my year
(21:44) and bonus and then repeat the same process for the next year and expect that my employees are going to be at the same level of Engagement even though we did nothing during that year I feel that this is wrong this is a very transactional way to look into a into engagement I feel that what organizations should be should be doing is designing effective action plans and then being very strict with their implementation meaning that uh there should be a central pro project management or Central governance for those uh action plans but should
(22:18) actually monitor the the progress for those action plans during the year probably have a couple of follow-up sessions with the countries with the managers just to check how are they actually dealing with the implementation of those action plans and then if you implemented uh all of the steps for those action plans it would be very interesting to see if engagement has actually increased for the next uh year for the next year survey or so but instead of that I think that uh what happened between 2018 and 20120 is that
(22:54) organizations moved into a model that actually listened more and more to employees more Employee Engagement surveys were launched in the form of P surveys every quarter or every four months and uh we stopped acting we we started listening we stopped acting and this is uh probably how engagement levels uh probably fell a bit more down the line sorry I interrupted your story so just I was just trying to ask that so what and what did you do after that what I did after that I moved uh back to London in early 2020 and started my
(23:31) career in Consulting joining Willie Stars Watson where I was leite consultant for employee engagement uh projects uh for for many clients and I manage a lot of big clients during that time uh across different Industries which was something very interesting because in Consulting normally you pick a line you pick an industry and that's it you stick with it by until the end of your career but uh things were a bit more more flexible there as I was working more and more on employee engagement service and results I
(24:04) realized the power of insights and it was at a time where artificial intelligence was on the on the rise it was something new and something fresh so I started taking in a couple more trainings on Workforce uh analytics and employee analytics and then opportunity I found an opportunity during the time with deoe to join their Workforce analytics team as a senior consultant so I immediately said yes because I considered this to be the next uh step of my career and as I worked at the ly as a senior consultant for Workforce
(24:38) analytics I realized that uh most of the key themes that I identified in employee data all had to do with the same thing decisions that uh were taken at a at the senior level and then then they were implemented poorly so we needed to actually redesign either a whole model uh or you know share the data to actually make them understand where some liabilities are within clients organizations and design the future State together and that's slowly when all of the pieces uh came together I was like oh my whole life I was actually
(25:15) trying to find the meaning into different parts of HR but what I was doing was actually contributing uh a bigger picture and that bigger picture is actually OD because uh if if you do o correctly if you do organal design correctly within organizations that means that uh you're actually ahead of the curve you don't need to go back and uh then solve all those uh problems that were created over time and you're you're always doing the right thing you're always checking the market you're always
(25:48) uh making sure that your employees are engaged and happy with that structure if not that probably means that this is the time to to make another uh to build another effective and efficient structure for your organization to make all the employees happy and satisfied and uh it all came together at that point and uh immediately thought oh yeah actually OD is not as bad as I initially thought it's a lot more interesting there is a a lot more space to do a lot to do more than just probably you know focus on the theoretical part and uh
(26:23) just change the structure and uh what I also understood from uh my my career and previous roles in Consulting is that organizational design is probably one of the most important parts of HR because the final sign off for a for let's say big oral change or a change in the operating model is always coming from someone who is very senior isn't it isn't coming always from the HR Director of an organization sometimes it might come from the CFO it might come even from the CEO directly so and I think it's an area that
(27:01) connects with other areas as well it connects with Finance it connects with technology uh so I think that yeah organal design in my opinion is actually sitting at the epicenter of everything within HR and uh that that's how I fell in love with it I was like my whole during my whole career I was actually avoiding the thing that uh I I'm currently enjoying the most if you are senior there's a lot of things that get signed off at senior level that senior people don't understand there's a there's a certain amount well that's
(27:30) makes sense is there an education element to helping them understand because because all designs are tradeoffs aren't they there is no such thing as the Perfect Design we have to learn to live with what we've what we're trading off and try and mitigate that as well but often it's painted as this is the solution that's going to change everything exactly you have to always be flexible you have to always listen you have to practice active listening when it comes to organal design I think one
(27:56) of the pitfalls or one of the challenges that we face as a field of OD practitioners is that uh we're always thinking about implementation and whenever you because I understand it it's not great when you design something uh with limited engagement with stakeholders then you present it and you you receive loads of feedback and then you have to go back and change it but I think that this is what the OD field is about you need to actively listen to other people you need to understand their challenges from a local
(28:29) perspective you can't understand the Challenge from a from a senior perspective because even in Consulting most organal design projects start uh when they kick off and they start you normally speak with someone who is very senior and they describe a problem from their perspective but when you speak to people at the local level you immediately understand oh that isn't actually the issue it is part of the issue but there is a bigger issue here so I think practicing active listening is always is important and it can lead
(29:00) you towards the right direction and you have to be flexible and yes most times you will need to redesign your original design a couple of times until you get to the perfect solution but we're talking about uh people here and job architecture and how their jobs you you're going to shape jobs for thousands of people in the future so you need to be cautious when it comes down to that and you need to be active you need to be flexible and listen OD practitioners playing a really important role aren't
(29:28) they between Bridging the kind of local experience and operational reality and that kind of strategic ambition so it's been a to work in both world and create that bridge I guess and I think that uh this is the point where you need to be very persuasive you need to actually influence people because after you get the local perspective you need to share that local perspective to your senior stakeholders because most of the times when you're in Consulting the serious stakeholders are the ones that are actually funding your project they they
(29:58) are the ones that are uh giving you the job to to do in their organization so you can't disappoint them you still need to deliver but when you deliver you always need to balance it you can't actually you know fully take one side and implement it the project like that because I'm sure that if you look at organizations that have implemented such a such projects top down most of those projects probably failed a couple of months later because of Employee Engagement or because of uh poor performance and uh bad results you need
(30:32) to combine both this is something I really enjoy this is something I love in my curent RO and how have you got any tips for people who kind of find that challenging how do you how do you kind of influence your senior stakeholders how do you manage that Paradox of meeting their needs but also telling them maybe something they don't necessarily want to hear yeah and and I think that this is pro this is probably one of the most challenging uh parts of uh of this job I think that you need to highlight of course uh some of the
(31:01) benefits of of their approach but at the same time you need to always position this as uh local implications or challenges that you have identified working with the regions or the countries uh why some of the the initial ideas can't be implemented uh exactly the same as we imagined but we need to adjust at certain level to satisfy the local needs uh and expectations and I think that this is where you need to do a bit of uh a bit of dancing as I say you need to prepare your choreography and be ready to dance with
(31:37) stic holders you need to take them through all of those challenges all of those concerns and Sh that uh if we go like like that like the way that we initially thought about and implement it top down heavy there are the it might fail in the future because let's say that we're working in a right sizing project we might say some costs in the first couple of months but probably one or two years down the line we might have lost some very important capability for a specific part of the organization because we didn't actually listen that a
(32:12) team were were delivering something that was business critical or we might actually lose some very important relationships uh between team and some other local stakeholders and that team was uh unique and only existed in specific country because it served that purpose so we need to always flag that we need to always approach this with caution and I would say always prepare numbers numbers I think are the are the silver bullets in those situations because if you present a number to senior stakeholder and explain that uh
(32:46) these are the concerns if we let's say take this scenario this hypothetical scenario of uh maintaining uh that specific team uh with within within our Organization for the next couple of years obviously this is going to be the cost but the benefit of maintaining that team as part of our business is going to be X or Y and I think that when you are when you are able to quantify that this is when you get the Buy in because you're working with very senior stakeholders I said before most of the times those stakeholders are not part of
(33:18) HR and having numbers I think is the Silver Bullet that uh allows you to move to the next step numbers are a senior managers love language aren't they absolutely especially when we're talking about uh profit numbers or sales numbers so you mentioned um AI earlier when you you were talking about kind of your your Workforce Antics how is that changing the work and the way that you work and the way that you do or design this is a very interesting topic and it's very close to my heart when when I when I
(33:47) joined uh birek University for my professional doctorate uh program I always knew that I wanted to to focus my my my resarch topic on AI because I think that this is the this is going to be the future this is going to revolutionize the way that we work it's going to change many things in the field not only of OD but the it's going to be probably as some people call it the the fourth Industrial Revolution and change everything about the way we work and take us to the future of work in the field of organal design still I think
(34:21) it's uh it's a bit baby steps because where AI has revolutionized the way we work it's more around what Workforce analytics and it's automating some of the calculations uh on people analytics and this is very helpful because it can save you time in in in terms of organizational design I think that that where it can be very helpful is that AI can run some very quick an some very quick analytics when you combine let's say organizational data Employee Engagement data uh performance data sales data when you combine different
(34:57) data sets and then AI can make some very quick suggestions uh for areas that you might want to look into I think it's more like I don't know it's providing you hints it's providing you with hints on where you might want to look into your organization because probably the data looks a bit more problematic here and there and obviously you can do this sort of work yourself but to me that sounds for a biger organization that this would be a two weeks maybe three weeks uh kind of work but now ai completely automate this process it can
(35:33) provide you with the right insights within literally minutes or seconds so I think AI is very helpful but it's not a a one size fit solar it's not a panaka you can't you can't use AI for everything yet you still have to actively look into the data yourself you still have to double check and the cross check information that is coming from AI because it's not like 100% % trustworthy yet AI can still make mistakes because at the end of the day AI is working on data that is coming uh actually from us
(36:07) we produce the data and feed that data into artificial intelligence and uh big algorithms and large language models so we always need to take uh AI suggestions with a bit of caution and uh try to figure out what works best for organization that way there are some pretty good tools though I I have to say right now but uh might work on artificial intelligence might not necessarily work on artificial intelligence that have revolutionized the way that uh organizational Effectiveness and organal design is performed in in organizations I'm a big
(36:47) Advocate I'm a massive fan of orvw I think it's an amazing tool it has revolutionized the way that uh OD professionals work on a day-to-day basis the way that you can uh analyze your data the way that then you can proceed to design a future State scenario and the future State modeling it's so easy and seamless and uh it can provide you with many insights uh and it's very visual as well because this is what an OD professional actually needs right an N professional needs a tool that can very seamlessly produce insights that
(37:24) they can then share with seniors Senior Management and Senior stakeholders and orvw can do that for you back to the question because I know that I'm getting very enthusiastic with orvw and all of those really is it because it it does things like you put like how many levels you want and it can quickly crunch the numbers and give you different scenarios so it it enables you to make more informed choices doesn't it and it does a lot of the analytics on your behalf is that right exactly exactly orue is
(37:50) amazing or is amazing I used or for the first time in my life uh back at deoe uh and uh we started using gview recently at SSP and it has worked miracles I think that uh it revolutionized the way that we worked and the way that we analyze data we run through data it's amazing because at the end of the day what your senior stakeholders actually want is a way to visualize immediately what is going to be the opportunity of a of let's say a suggestion that you're making and what are the alternative scenarios so they can make the most
(38:27) informed decision that uh that they can it's all about making databased decisions and uh where data is pointing uh that uh we should actually move to and then just one final question about AI because one of the things you've been thinking about is AI and things like unconscious bias that's that's the kind of thing that you you're thinking about aren't you in terms of the validity of it 100% and uh I've been working a lot on on the on the field of AI I've presented actually a big piece of my
(38:56) research last year here at the conference in mastr over the summer it was not unconscious bias it was more around uh artificial intelligence Ai and making uh and making decisions around uh resourcing so the whole concept was Ai and how some of the decisions that we make in our day-to-day bu in our day-to-day life and day-to-day business can actually affect employees and I did a very interesting experiment I've actually experimented a bit with uh with a big audience uh and uh asked them if they would prefer decisions in terms of
(39:34) resourcing meaning if you were to undertake a new project or a new opportunity uh and this decision was made uh by your manager a physical person or if this was if this decision was made by AI which one you would actually prefer more and you would find uh more uh more just interestingly enough but that was during The Early times of AI people still preferred the resourcing decisions to be made by their manager they preferred the human task allocation compared to AI driven task allocation and I think that this says a
(40:10) lot about uh our perceptions and unconscious biases as as well to move back into the unconscious bias uh topic now because AI is still something new for many people it might be a black box that we can't really understand we can't comprehend how it works and uh sometimes times we might think that it has all of the right Solutions and the right decisions for us some other times we might think oh yeah but what if AI is wrong you can see that a GPT can give you still wrong results it can provide you with wrong inputs what can we do
(40:44) during that situation and it's interesting because another another researcher Margaret Mitchell that I follow and she's very passionate about Ai and unconscious biases she has done a big research on that top and essentially where the the outcome of that research is that we need to trust algorithms we still need to trust uh Ai and everything however what we need to question is what kind of data are we feeding the AI because you need to imagine that AI is still is is a baby right it's behaving like you are
(41:20) behaving so if you're feeding the AI incorrect kind of data if you're feeding AI incorrect if you're making wrong calculations in the algorithm it was still going to produce wrong uh wrong assumptions wrong decisions and uh from some experiments it has been identified that uh there are still unconscious biases uh in the in the AI within algorithms and I think that the one that uh has stuck with me and it's an example I I'm sharing with everyone uh someone actually asked AI I can't remember if it
(41:53) was GPT or if it was another model but asked an an AI model it asked a couple of question about two k two kids a boy and a girl and uh he started asking more questions and challenging the AI about uh some classes uh that they enjoy at school and the boy enjoyed let's say maths and wanted to become a doctor and then the girl enjoyed more literature and wanted to become a teacher and this is clearly biased because of the data that has been fed into the algorithm the AI and AI clearly took the most popular
(42:30) opinion or what it identified in that data and produced those uh let's say those outcomes so we still have to take everything with a we have to challenge everything that AI says but at the same time we need to actively train them to become better and uh remove those unconscious biases yeah I think it's so important and my experience of chat GPT it presents things with such certainty as well you ask it and it you it's very certain that he got the right answer there's no doubt in his mind yeah but
(43:01) it's interesting when you challenge it because there were many times where I've used AI models not only GPT there there are a couple of other ones uh and you know I can say that I've used it either for my personal research or for my PhD and it provided me with some insights that I was looking for because I was looking for some specific stats and I was like okay can you give me the source and it gives me the source without like without a hyperlink I ask again can you provide me the source in hyperlink it
(43:27) does provide me with a hyperlink then I'm like okay can you tell me the website so I can go and look for it and there was no website it kept telling me lies but it it was actually writing down those lies and sharing them with me yeah what would you say some of the biggest lessons are that you've learned that you carry in that underpin how you you approach your work yeah uh I think that uh probably the biggest one especially in the field of organal design is approach things uh with empathy and always be onm minded I think that when
(43:59) you actually get the into the role of organal design and I think that I had this approach when I used to work in Consulting a lot more I was like oh I'm here just for this project I need to approach it that way get to the desired uh results or desired outcomes and then jump on to my next project it's not always like that because at the end of the day you have a big responsibility on your shoulders you're designing the future State uh of Within other organizations and you're designing jobs and how jobs are going to be structured
(44:33) for thousands of people so you have a big responsibility on your shoulders you need to be very open-minded you need to approach things very carefully you need to hear all perspectives that are on the table and even if some perspectives might not be on the table you need to actively look for them you need to listen to people you need to share those perspectives with the senior stakeholders because because there most of the times there are some key concerns that people have when it comes to organal design or uh restructuring or
(45:07) right sizing their business uh all those things so you need to always approach things very open-minded uh with L with loads of empathy and be an active listener I think that being an active listener don't just be there because you have that meeting in your diary and this is just another meeting that you have to go through before you implement your decision you need to actively listen what other people have to share why pro probably your suggestion might not work and then take that feedback try to adjust your work to it share them back
(45:42) uh with them engage with senior stakeholders share all of those outcomes with your senior stakeholders and try to find a solution that works for everyone don't look at OD like this is a like a project it's not a project it's it's bigger than a project you're actually you're an architecture of of organiz of different organizations and you're giving life to to positions within an organization so don't look at organal design and as as something that is a project that is on a project basis and
(46:17) and you're doing your doctorate obviously that's enough in itself but how do you invest in your own Learning and Development and you know do you plug it into a particular books or podcasts that you really enjoy yeah I think that you're right Garin what I found challenging for the past couple of years is that uh my personal time now with the professional doctor is very limited because normally I dedicate one day of my weekend and uh most of my evenings uh into getting this new this new kind of knowledge and uh understanding a bit
(46:50) more about future Trends about organal design artificial intelligence how those two worlds can actually work together and shape the future of work uh so there are many there are plenty of times where I can when I can find myself listening to other people's opinions and expert expert opinions and obviously your podcast is one of the best places to do that because you have the finest guests uh in the field of organizational development organal design with that can always share friends and New Perspectives uh so definitely your
(47:24) podcast is one of my sources to hear what's going on in the OD world but I think that other than that there are a couple of reports that are very trustworthy and normally I look into uh for example the har the Harvard Business Review reports uh I follow them on a weekly basis I try to see what's new in the world and they also have a podcast that they have the hbr idea cast which uh some some of the times share some good perspectives around the future of work and I find it also very helpful and uh from a broader HR perspective I try
(47:59) to keep up with uh some uh annual or biannual reports from the Loy like the latest uh Global human capital Trends uh uh it's one of my go-to places whenever I want to see what's happening in other organizations from a nature perspective uh McKinzie reports as well are really good to go through and uh read what's been going on and from uh from books I would probably say the renting organizations by Frederick laru is one of my favorite OD books that I've read recently I've read it last summer and it
(48:37) has still stick with me because there are so many interesting perspectives here about how you can shape the future of work within your own organization and uh what is the point for you to start so those are normally resources that I use on a day-to-day basis and on top of that I do try to automate my work and look for new let's say insights and resources using AI there are plenty of AI tools that you can use nowadays not only at GPT there are loads of AI tools that you can use so I try to utilize them as much
(49:12) as possible but still you know take everything I say with a pit of salt because some some sometimes AI tools might not be perfect they might give you resources that might not even exist so always always ask for a hyperlink if that hyperlink exists and has the same percentage use that otherwise please don't use it and then just the last question so one of the reasonably started the podcast was to inspire the next generation of OD practitioners so what advice would you give to somebody who's listening and thinking I I quite
(49:41) like the idea of getting started in or design where what advice would you give them probably the best advice I would give to someone who's uh starting their career now in organ organal design is to approach things uh with a with open-minded with an open mind try to probably look for uh for solutions that work for everyone not just solutions that can please the most senior stakeholder uh those are practical Solutions I think that have mentioned before but uh at the personal level I think that organal design organ design
(50:19) is actually many different things they need to probably find what organal design means for them for me for example it's the glue that uh brings all of the pieces together I can I now think of myself as a as an architecture who designing uh new roles within uh within larger organizations and changing people lives hopefully for the better I think organal design also has a deeper meaning so look for that deeper meaning what that deeper meaning means for them because it's not you can't think of rral
(50:49) design only as a job I think I'm a bit more romantic so I try to find a deeper meaning in in everything I do and I do this but I would uh challenge them to find to probably think about it themselves be a bit more skeptic and uh try to realize what organal design means for them and how do they envisage themselves uh in the next uh 3 to five years within the field of oral design uh and what is it that they want to accomplish because I think that when you think what you want to accomplish this is when you actually start to think
(51:23) about people and how you're changing people's lives for the better gives you it gives you meaning it gives you meaning and makes you more passionate about what you do I've really enjoyed this it's been really good really good and there's just so much good quality Insight that you're sharing and experience from the front line and it's it's really taken a different dimension to organization design Danny what's stood out for you from this conversation today where to start it's been such a
(51:46) fantastic conversation I think you you've shared so many brilliant things I think what you said earlier upfront about sharing success stories being really important way of kind of inspiring different parts of your organization to really get inspired about what's possible in terms of organization Effectiveness um the importance of kind of acting as that bridge between local teams and Senior leaders and kind of managing that Dynamic and then I loved what you said about the employee engagement results that yeah we're doing a lot of listening
(52:10) to employees but we mustn't forget to act and that's what really matters so those would be my three takeaways yeah ditto on that I think you know the insight and action part and putting governance around it because you only get two or three chances to ask staff and then they'll stop telling you as well the other thing things I loved with just the the power of persuasion of numbers and that they tell a story we have to feel comfortable using them and one of the last thing you you mentioned there which is there is a huge people
(52:36) element to organization design it's very easy to see it as a task but if you actually give it as you're giving life to roles and you creating a context for them to thrive and then you see it beyond the the immediate task and see that what you're doing has much more implication into the future is really powerful has been brilliant really enjoyed it if you want to follow your work you post some great insights on link what's the best way people to reach out to you I think definitely the best way is uh connect with me on LinkedIn
(53:02) I'm more than happy to you know share Insight uh read about other people's insights and Linkedin is a great platform to do so so please feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn well if you've enjoyed our conversation with Don we'd love it if you hit the like button the algorithm Gods love it even more if you subscribe to the channel the channel is growing all of the time and it just gives us an opportunity to invite brilliant people like Adonis who are out in the field making meaningful and significant change to share their
(53:29) stories and their insights as well so you could always catch these podcasts that come out weekly on all the regular audio platforms and on YouTube as well um please do subscribe to and if you feel someone would really benefit from hearing from adonis's insights on organization design then please feel free to share the video or the podcast with them directly but but thank you so much but most importantly Adonis we've made you late for your next meeting we know so please say sorry to the group of people you're letting down but thank you
(53:55) so much for making time with us and this is one of our last episodes before Christmas so we hope you have a lovely Christmas as well thank you so much both and I really enjoyed my time with you both as well it was amazing and you both also have fantastic Christmas and a lovely New Year [Music]