Ensure that all parts of your business work in harmony
The 7S Framework
How to ensure all parts of the organization work in Harmony?
An important question would be how well your organization is positioned to achieve your objectives, for answering different approaches exist looking for internal and external factors and even the congruence in between.
In the early 1980´s McKinsey developed in the seven internal aspects for an organization that needs to be aligned and will result on Improving performance,departments alignment, and certainly a strong driver to implement the company’s strategy.
Strategy - Planning to maintain or build competitive advantage
Structure - How the company is organized and reports
System; Procedure that staff members engage to get the job done
Shared Values - they related to work ethics
Style - Meaning Style of leadership adopted
Staff - Employees
Skills- Competencies of employees
The 7 elements involve interdependence in the following factors that are categorized as soft and hard.
Hard; Easier to identify and managers can influence them (Strategy,Structure,Systems)
Soft; More difficult to describe or less tangible / Influence by culture (Shared Values, Skills, Style, Staff)
How to use the 7's model?
If you want to perform well as organization, then you need to align this model to reinforce mutually the elements.
The model can work from process restructuring, mergers, new system implementation change of leadership or also to move an organization form point A to point B so that you will be able to identify gaps and work on plans to reduce them.
Moving an organization is not that simple but with this model you will get a framework to better understand the organization, steps to support the people with right knowledge, skills and experience.
Some of the questions you have to ask to understand your situation.
Strategy:
• What is our strategy?
• How do we intend to achieve our objectives?
• How do we deal with competitive pressure?
• How are changes in customer demands dealt with?
• How is strategy adjusted for environmental issues?
Structure:
• How is the company/team divided?
• What is the hierarchy?
• How do the various departments coordinate activities?
• How do the team members organize and align themselves?
• Is decision making and controlling centralized or decentralized? Is this as it should be, given what we're doing?
• Where are the lines of communication? Explicit and implicit?
Systems:
• What are the main systems that run the organization? Consider financial and HR systems as well as communications and document storage.
• Where are the controls and how are they monitored and evaluated?
• What internal rules and processes does the team use to keep on track?
Shared Values:
• What are the core values?
• What is the corporate/team culture?
• How strong are the values?
• What are the fundamental values that the company/team was built on?
Style:
• How participative is the management/leadership style?
• How effective is that leadership?
• Do employees/team members tend to be competitive or cooperative?
• Are there real teams functioning within the organization or are they just nominal groups?
Staff:
• What positions or specializations are represented within the team?
• What positions need to be filled?
• Are there gaps in required competencies?
Skills:
• What are the strongest skills represented within the company/team?
• Are there any skills gaps?
• What is the company/team known for doing well?
• Do the current employees/team members have the ability to do the job?
• How are skills monitored and assessed?
Finally
With all the information gathered gaps must be examined and also inconsistencies between elements.
What are the first steps to be taken? Shared Values is a strong support that has to be in accordance with strategy and structure , when looking for hard elements look how well they support each other ,regarding soft elements do they really support hard elements?
The McKinsey 7Ss model is can be applied to almost any organization and could really help to move forward.
