Was the Matrix better?
World Bank’s IEG recently published a evaluation report on some of the organizational changes that happened under World Bank President Kim;
Certain aspects of the new operating model are valuable, especially its enabling of global knowledge flow; these are the effect of setting up Global Practices that operate more globally than before and Global Theme Groups that provide useful strategic directions and coherence to cross-cutting priorities. Establishing Global Practices improved knowledge flow and staff mobility across Regions, mobilized expertise for clients, and, sometimes, deepened expertise in operationally relevant areas.
However, the model’s structure and processes tend to inhibit collaboration and cause inefficiency, fragmentation, and internal competition. Some Global Practices lack coherent and systematic approaches to managing and investing in knowledge. If left unaddressed, these issues can cause risks to the World Bank’s ability to deliver for clients.
For Discussion: Comment on the difficulties of Reorganization in large bureaucratic entities.
Here is a good aphorism: your organization is perfectly designed to give you the business results that you have today. If you want to improve those business results, chances are you need to change an aspect of your organization: the structure (how you align people to deliver a particular set of objectives); the processes (how you go about doing this); or the people themselves (by redeploying them against different objectives, developing them, bringing in new talent, or reducing the number of activities, and hence people, if inefficiency has set in). Perhaps you need to do all three. But this seemingly obvious aphorism has a deeper truth: if you are not clear on the business results you want to change, you will not know where to change the organization, and you had better not start until you do.
— Heidari-Robinson, Stephen. ReOrg: How to Get It Right
Related:
Knowledge Flow and Collaboration Under the World Bank’s New Operating Model
