Solutions

Fundamentals of the Modular Organisation

What makes the influenza virus intangible? Why are terrorist organisations so hard to catch? Why, after decades, is Lego still a success?

They make up a continuous link of shapes or small and reusable blocks, communicating with each other, but still, employable in several different ways. The blocks provide the action; it’s the glue between the blocks that holds the intelligence. In this respect, change does not mean reinventing oneself over and over again, but deploying trustworthy components differently. These days, Lego blocks are used to facilitate management workshops, or even to… prevent ram-raids.

Fundamentals of the Modular organisation:

Design business services

In product design ‘commonality’ is a contemporary notion: the search for reusable components, the optimum reusage of known functionalities. Similarly, we ask ourselves which components of our organisation can be considered as building blocks, each one with unique input, output and quality levels. Is it activities that recur within various processes, or functionalities within our own IT systems? Or, are they profiles and skills of our versatile employees? By subsuming these building bricks in business services, we can flexibly arrange and adapt the organisation. This way, outsourcing, alternative collaboration models and cost variabilisation can be implemented rapidly.

Build, use, reuse

Having the building bricks of the organisation cooperate flexibly, allows us to respond to the needs of a segment more promptly, by creating custom processes. After all, this means establishing connections and service levels between activities, rather than designing specific blocks.

Connect

In one respect, it's the building bricks that deliver the output; finally, it's the architecture ensuring that the efforts lead to the objective. The architecture determines how units collaborate, what their sequence and dependencies are, which business rules apply. It’s the architecture, made up from components itself, stabilising that change. This manifests itself in terms like Service Oriented Architecture, or the Service Oriented Organisation ... .

Best practice: Philips the Matrix Master