This course is part of the Leading: Human Resource Management and Leadership Specialization
Organisational design: Know your organisation
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About this Course
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When you become responsible for leading an organisation as a whole, your most important leadership challenge will be enabling your organisation to deliver on its strategy, whilst also ensuring that it remains sufficiently agile. This requires significantly more of a leader than the effective application of people related leadership skills. It also involves making tough decisions on the desired structure, culture, systems, and people practices of the organisation. In this course you will learn how to enable successful strategy execution through the design of these foundational elements of organisation.
Syllabus - What you will learn from this course
Week
1Organisational alignment
Welcome to your first week of the Know your organisation course. Have you ever wondered what it means to be more strategic as a leader? What differentiates a leader from a strategic leader? Of course, this label can mean all sorts of things; some people seem to have started using it simply because it sounds good! But when it comes to leading an organisation, being "strategic" does have a specific meaning. It is about ensuring that your organisation is fully focused on executing its business strategy. What does this involve exactly? How do you make sure that your organisation can deliver on the business strategy? This week you learn to understand the organisation as consisting of a number of elements: people, structure, culture, and systems. Each of these elements will be covered in depth in weeks 2-5 of the course. In this first week, you will take a broader perspective across them as a basis for understanding the importance of aligning them in such a way that they can enable the execution of the business strategy. This focus on alignment brings us to the central concept for this week: key capabilities. This week you will learn what key capabilities are, why they are so important for strategically focusing your organisation, and how you can identify them. If you learn to master the ability to clearly define a set of key capabilities for any given strategy, and are able to align your organisation to these, you will become a truly effective leader, worthy of the term "strategic".
7 videos (Total 28 min), 10 readings, 2 quizzes
7 videos
Week 1 Outline - Organisational Alignment1m
Organisational alignment6m
The importance of key capabilities5m
How to identify key capabilities3m
Value chain analysis5m
Habit corner – sample2m
10 readings
Course overview1m
Learning activities and assessment1m
Which continent do you hail from?1m
Preconceptions: Is it time for change?1m
Explore organisational alignment20m
Explore key capabilities20m
Explore value chain analysis20m
About the habit corner1m
Habit corner task – sample1m
Week 1 graded peer review1m
1 practice exercise
Recall: Organisational alignment15m
Week
2Organisational culture
What do you think is the most challenging aspect of making sure that your organisation can deliver on its business strategy? Many senior executives would definitely say: "organisational culture". When your organisational culture works to support your business strategy it gives you a huge advantage; when it doesn't it can spell disaster. So what is "organisational culture" exactly and what is so challenging about it? And how do you know if your culture is aligned with your strategy? These are some of the key questions that you will grapple with this week. You will learn to apply a powerful diagnostic tool for identifying your predominant culture type, and for assessing whether you should try to change it or not. You will also learn a number of important change levers that you can influence if you do decide culture change is needed. Be careful though! The road of culture change can be treacherous. This week you will learn how to navigate it better.
5 videos (Total 29 min), 4 readings, 2 quizzes
5 videos
What is organisational culture?3m
Why organisational culture is important5m
Types of organisational culture7m
Levers of cultural change10m
4 readings
Explore organisational culture30m
Explore strategic fit40m
Explore culture change30m
Week 2 graded peer review10m
1 practice exercise
Recall: Organisational culture15m
Week
3Organisational structure
What would you do first if you wanted to fundamentally change the direction of your organisation? Well, if you are like most leaders, you would definitely consider changing the structure of the organisation. But when you dig a bit deeper into this topic, you will quickly discover that there are a huge number of structural options to choose from. So how do you know which option is best? What are the main types of organisational structure, and what are their advantages and disadvantages? How do you make sure that your organisation structure enables your business strategy, instead of making strategy execution more difficult? These are the key questions that you will engage this week. You will learn about the key trade-offs involved in organisational structure decisions, and how to balance these trade-offs in relation to your business strategy. And you will learn to apply a powerful 4-step process for developing an effective organisational structure for your organisation. Even if you are not in a position yet to directly influence the structure of your organisation, wouldn't it be great to at least know what the structure of your organisation should be, theoretically speaking? This week is focused on just that.
4 videos (Total 25 min), 2 readings, 2 quizzes
4 videos
Key trade-offs in organisational structure7m
Types of organisational structure6m
Advantages and disadvantages of different structure types8m
2 readings
Explore key trade-offs20m
Explore types of organisational structure40m
2 practice exercises
Recall organisational structure15m
Week 3 Graded quizm
Week
4Organisational control systems
What are systems for exactly? This can be quite a tricky question because it obviously depends on the particular system we are talking about. Yet, from a management perspective there is a straighforward general answer to this question: systems are there to control performance and risk. This week you will learn what this means exactly, and what the most important implications are for how you design your systems around your business strategy. You will learn to understand systems more broadly than just IT systems, and how to deploy them effectively to manage and control performance and risk. An important part of this involves deciding on the key indicators that you want to track, and how you want to report information that is strategically relevant. Too many business leaders drown in numbers to the point where they can't see the wood from the trees. This week is focused on helping you design systems that can keep you focused on seeing the wood instead of the trees.
3 videos (Total 15 min), 2 readings, 2 quizzes
2 readings
Explore types of control systems20m
Explore the balanced score card30m
2 practice exercises
Recall: Organisational control systems15m
Week 4 Graded quizm
Instructor
Jaco Lok
Professor of StrategyMacquarie Graduate School of Management, Faculty of Business and Economics
About Macquarie University
Macquarie is a hub of inspired and unconstrained thinking. Macquarie was founded with a unique purpose: to bring minds together unhindered by tradition. Created to challenge the education establishment, Macquarie has a rich track record of innovation. Macquarie actively shapes the complex issues that define the future of humanity.
About the Leading: Human Resource Management and Leadership Specialization
In this specialisation you will strengthen your capability to effectively lead your people and organisation in an increasingly competitive and complex work environment. Through four themed courses, you will learn how to motivate by creating meaning at work and to harness the power of conflict, diversity and teamwork to innovate and increase productivity. You will strengthen your leadership skills and your capacity to adapt and align your organisation. Learning from psychology, sociology and organisation science will help you inspire, influence and drive change across your organisation so that you can position yourself and your organisation to taking full advantage of emerging opportunities.
This involves learning how to: Apply key principles of organisational leadership to develop and evaluate strategies for attracting, motivating and resourcing talent; Take a strategic perspective in designing and aligning competitive, sustainable organisations; Meeting the challenge of interruptive complexities through agile shifts between different leadership styles; Creating vision and meaning to drive change and influence.
Frequently Asked Questions
When will I have access to the lectures and assignments?
Once you enroll for a Certificate, you’ll have access to all videos, quizzes, and programming assignments (if applicable). Peer review assignments can only be submitted and reviewed once your session has begun. If you choose to explore the course without purchasing, you may not be able to access certain assignments.
What will I get if I subscribe to this Specialization?
When you enroll in the course, you get access to all of the courses in the Specialization, and you earn a certificate when you complete the work. Your electronic Certificate will be added to your Accomplishments page - from there, you can print your Certificate or add it to your LinkedIn profile. If you only want to read and view the course content, you can audit the course for free.
What is the refund policy?
Is financial aid available?
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