TD Magazine Article
Modify your company’s social architecture to create a more connected, collaborative, and innovative culture.
Sat Feb 01 2025
The goal is not just retaining talent but also fostering deep engagement between staff and the organization. That entails building organizational resiliency—the ability to sense and respond to change quickly—in the face of constant disruption. Doing so demands a connected, collaborative workforce.
As author Alexander Den Heijer said, "When a flower doesn't bloom, you fix the environment in which it grows, not the flower." Instead of focusing on changing individuals directly in an effort to make them connect and share, company leadership should change the systems in which people work.
Every company, large or small, has a design that it creates or copies. The design is often a simple hierarchy or chart showing who sits where—but that is overly simplistic and incomplete. A better way to understand organizational design is to think of it as a series of questions such as:
Who gets to make decisions?
How will people grow their skills?
How will individuals complete their work?
Organizational design has seven main elements (see Figure 1), and within each one are systems of rules, processes, and protocols to maintain them. Most organizations still default to systems that prioritize control and efficiency, but that approach stifles collaboration and innovation. Rethink that design to foster new norms of cooperation and collaboration to build resiliency.
How did we get here? Historically, organizational design was the answer to a communication problem. Before modern technologies, businesses relied on hierarchies to manage information flow. Leaders at the top made decisions, and information traveled downward in a controlled way. That design was the default process when communication was broad, change was slow, and work was consistent (creativity, innovation, and agility were not necessary).
However, as companies grow today, the energy of early social connections dissipates. If openness and transparency are not inherent attributes, organizations experience social atrophy: a weakening of interpersonal connections, which leads to a decline in innovation and engagement. As businesses expand, they add departments, divisions of labor, specializations, and layers of management. That creates a rigid hierarchy where communication flows upward and downward rather than laterally. Further, informal, cross-functional collaboration diminishes, leading to isolated teams and a "that's not my job" mindset.
The cause of social atrophy isn't just growth but also the inability of systems to evolve alongside it. Such systems, which companies originally designed to manage communication, begin to control behavior, prioritizing efficiency over collaboration. For example, systems that reward individual achievements over team success discourage collaboration. Similarly, top-down decision making can leave employees feeling disengaged, which reduces their motivation to share ideas.
Leaders are key to shaping systems, but instead they often leverage only their influence in futile attempts at changing behavior directly through incentives, edicts, and program demands. That approach often fails due to several factors:
Short-term focus. Direct behavior change efforts usually result in temporary improvements. Without systemic reinforcement, employees revert to old habits.
Reliance on compliance. Employees may follow directives out of obligation but lack genuine buy-in. That leads to disengagement if the efforts seem disconnected from their daily work.
Lack of reinforcement. Collaborative behaviors need continuous support. But employers rarely provide mentoring, coaching, or training in effective communication or conflict resolution nor dedicated time for cross-functional projects or peer reviews without the pressure of other work responsibilities.
The root of the problem is that such initiatives ignore systemic barriers. Training, edicts, and mandates can't overcome systems that promote competition or rigid hierarchies. Even well-intentioned leaders, managers, and employees are limited by systems that don't support collaboration.
One of the first steps leaders can take is to engage staff in conversations that uncover how systems are truly functioning. Employees' actions, for example, best illustrate systems such as culture. Leaders can ask the following questions.
Who helps you with your work?
What tools do you use to share information? Are they helpful?
Do you believe people throughout the company recognize and value your contributions to team efforts?
Those queries signal openness and provide insights into whether the systems behind the actions are supporting or hindering collaboration.
However, when change moves to a higher level—involving workflow rules, processes, and protocols—companies don't need to overhaul their entire system. Instead, they should focus on enhancing systems that encourage connection and improving those that hinder it. For example, if a knowledge management system isn't resulting in better solutions and just-in-time answers, the company should adjust it to make sharing easier and more rewarding. That could involve incorporating knowledge sharing into performance evaluations or making collaboration tools readily available.
Modifying social systems doesn't require specialized skills. It involves a straightforward process that examines the seven elements of organizational design.
Identify and articulate the organizational design. Clearly define the current elements of the company in terms of employee behavior rather than organizational offers or intentions—what staff do, not what the company provides to them. So, instead of listing the number of days of training or types and resources the organization provides, focus on the actions and activities in which employees are engaging.
Evaluate the systems' impact on social connection. Assess how each system helps or hinders collaboration and interpersonal connections. For example, an articulated talent development element revealing that it has opportunities for improving openness and transparency may appear as:
"Employees participate in training and development opportunities, though only some actively seek out mentors and coaches. Managers give feedback during performance reviews, but it is less frequent in day-to-day interactions. While some employees share their learning experiences with colleagues, others prefer to keep them to themselves, feeling unsure about how peers perceive their efforts."
Map system interconnections. Show how different systems interact and influence each other. That way you can identify areas where one change could have a positive or negative impact on another area or the business. For instance, business processes could see a positive impact because, as mentoring strengthens collaboration, business processes could become more agile and collaborative, with teams working more closely together and more effectively sharing knowledge. However, if mentoring requires additional time commitments, it could disrupt existing business processes or overload staff, causing delays in project timelines or reducing overall productivity.
Select a starting system. Here, the choice could be the system with the greatest influence on social behaviors, the most immediate need for change, or the lowest hanging fruit. With regard to the mentorship program, for example, enhancing that component of the TD element to ensure mentors provide continuous feedback would immediately reinforce transparency and a learning culture, affecting broader training participation.
Decide on stabilization or modification. Determine whether the system in question requires stabilization to maintain positive behaviors or modification to remove barriers. In the case of TD, the feedback system may require modification to encourage peer-to-peer feedback in addition to mentor feedback with consistent tracking of development milestones to reinforce a culture of openness.
Conduct an impact analysis. Analyze the potential effects of stabilizing or modifying the system, considering both risks and benefits. For instance, modifying the feedback system to include peer feedback could increase employee engagement and collaboration, but it may also overwhelm employees if leaders do not properly manage it. The potential benefit is a more dynamic, transparent environment, while the risk could be feedback fatigue or inconsistent quality of feedback from peers.
Develop an execution plan. Using a social-business canvas (see the next section), the execution plan outlines how to integrate peer feedback into the existing mentorship program. That could include workshops on giving and receiving constructive feedback, setting up regular peer feedback sessions, and ensuring mentors encourage open sharing of development experiences. The plan would also define success measurements such as increased participation in feedback loops and improved collaboration.
Communication is the foundation of social connection, and tools that foster conversation and collaboration are essential. The social-business canvas serves as an interactive, one-page framework that enables change agents to align their efforts with the company's social goals (see Figure 2). It helps strategize, track, and adjust initiatives aimed at enhancing collaboration, ensuring that teams can work together more effectively.
The canvas organizes strategy through a series of focused questions designed to uncover opportunities for systems change. By addressing the questions, teams can align their efforts with the company's social objectives and set the foundation for fostering collaboration. After completing the canvas, the focus shifts to developing the modifying solution based on the following criteria.
Stimulates widespread communal, cooperative, or collaborative behavior. The solution must promote actions that involve collective efforts across the organization.
Influences behaviors indirectly. Rather than dictating behavior, the solution must alter the systems and processes that shape those behaviors, enabling collaboration to organically occur.
Encourages participation through greater transparency and openness. The solution must foster an environment where open communication and participation are natural outcomes of the new system design.
Emphasizes long-term outcomes over short-term results. While immediate results are important, the primary focus must be on sustainable changes that drive lasting improvement in collaboration and engagement.
Enhances the impact of the traditional approach but does not replace it. The solution must complement and strengthen existing practices.
Those criteria guide the implementation of any system modifications or engagement strategies that the social-business canvas identifies. The result will be changes that promote collaboration and are sustainable and align with long-term goals.
To illustrate how leaders can apply social principles to foster organizational change, consider the case of CEO James Daunt and his approach to revitalizing two struggling booksellers: Waterstones in the UK and Barnes & Noble in the US.
According to the Inc. article "Barnes & Noble's New CEO Just Revealed a Brilliant Plan to Save the Company," both businesses struggled mightily due to competition from Amazon, declining physical store traffic, and shifts toward digital books. Barnes & Noble specifically suffered from over-expansion and high costs. It had strayed from its core purpose by prioritizing cafés and knickknacks over books. As a result, both sales and the company's identity suffered.
Daunt's method, while not deliberately aligned with a formal social architecture framework, demonstrates the power of social connection in driving lasting change though systems change. To turn things around at Barnes & Noble, he rooted the strategy in empowering local decision making and fostering a deeper connection between stores and their local communities.
Let's break down Daunt's approach through the lens of a social-by-design solution framework.
Stimulates widespread communal, cooperative, or collaborative behavior. Daunt gave store employees the decision-making authority to determine which books to stock. By encouraging store managers to tailor their offerings to local customer preferences, he fostered a cooperative environment that required both staff and customers to engage in direct, meaningful exchanges, a departure from typical, transactional relationships.
Influences behaviors indirectly. In the past, staff at the headquarters made decisions, with local managers having limited input. By shifting that system, Daunt empowered managers to make decisions based on customer needs, which indirectly influenced behavior and fostered a customer-focused culture.
Encourages participation through greater transparency and openness. Enabling managers to make stock decisions led to inviting customer participation in shaping the store's offerings, which increased engagement and loyalty.
Emphasizes long-term outcomes over short-term results. Daunt wasn't concerned with immediate profits from gimmicks. Instead, he focused on creating spaces where customers wanted to spend time, resulting in building long-term relationships.
Enhances the impact of the traditional approach but does not replace it. Rather than dismantling the entire business model, Daunt improved what Barnes & Noble was already doing well: selling books.
While Daunt likely didn't consciously apply a social-by- design approach, his actions mirrored its principles. The approach improved sales; resulted in 30 new store openings; and reinvigorated the social dynamic between staff and customers, fostering collaboration and a sense of shared ownership within each store.
His strategy demonstrates how, with one simple modification to a long-standing system—shifting of an organizational system through empowering employees—leaders can establish environments that foster collaboration, innovation, engagement, and ultimately business success.
The future of work demands organizations that are social by design, where systems support collaboration, connection, and continuous improvement. Leaders are essential to reshaping those systems, not through temporary behavior change initiatives but by transforming the systems that guide employee behavior. Through thoughtful assessment and targeted modifications, companies can create environments that unlock the potential of a connected workforce, enabling them to innovate, adapt, and thrive in an ever-changing world.
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