Having the right structure in place is crucial for any charity to deliver its support and services effectively. And to get that right, you need to consider your organisational design.
Nine Feet Tall Partner and third sector lead, Tiggy McCool, was a guest on the Third Sector podcast, alongside Iain Heaton, deputy CEO and CFO of Blue Cross, discussing successfully navigating a restructure.
In the episode, Tiggy explains the concept of organisation design: “how do you make sure that the structures, roles and capabilities that you have in the organisation are fit to deliver your strategic goals and objectives.”
She shares the steps in Nine Feet Tall’s approach to organisational design, as detailed in our charity organisational design guide. She highlights that agreeing on your design principles from the outset is key to ensuring effective delivery.
Iain shares insights from Blue Cross’ restructure, which was completed in 2023, “but the thinking had been there for a couple of years,” he explained. When mapping their restructure, one of their key principles was looking at what it would deliver in terms of pets the charity could better help.
Blue Cross now has more people employed in rehoming teams, but the roles are very different, moving from generalists to more specialists. This has helped to increase the number of pets the charity can help dramatically over the last two years.
Evidence equals efficacy
“You’ve got to have a framework or a structure when you’re looking at these pieces,” Iain said. “Before you go into implementation phase, [you can then] be really confident that the end goal you’re aiming at is based on evidence and research and certainty as much as possible.”
Tiggy agrees, commenting that “designing based on assumptions is dangerous, so actually going and collecting facts and evidence and consulting is really important through that design phase.”
Tiggy adds that governance is important within any project of this nature, and recommends planning a series of checkpoints to ensure you’re still on the right track and giving you the opportunity to re-align if necessary.
“Making sure that you’re testing and checking all the time is really key and it leads to much better results,” Tiggy said.
Communicating with clarity
In a restructure or any change project, clarity is key, particularly around job role changes and redundancies.
“It’s really important to be as open and honest as you can, as early as you can be,” Iain said. “If people can see a compelling reason why, they understand things better.” For charities, everything should link back to the charitable objectives and how any change will support these.
Tiggy recommends establishing communication principles from the outset, so everyone is on the same page and has a level of understanding of what is to come and how it will be shared with them.
“If you can share that early on it gives confidence, not only to teams on the ground but also to leaders who are having to communicate or not communicate something because they can refer to those principles,” Tiggy said.
Taking a holistic approach
Iain took a number of learnings from their organisational restructure, including to think across all teams. Although Blue Cross’ changes were to its rehoming teams, the changes had an impact on other areas of the business too, even those not being directly consulted with.
“Don’t just fixate on the team who is having the change made,” he advised.
Tiggy stresses that support should be given to those in all levels of the business during a change project too. “One thing that is underestimated is the support your leadership team are going to need because it’s a really emotive journey.” Tiggy commented.
Those working for charities are passionate about delivering something with a purpose, so making these hard decisions is very tricky.
Tiggy and Iain cover all this and more in the Third Sector podcast, available via the link here, or search for ‘Third Sector’ on Apple, Spotify or Acast.
You can download our organisational design guide for free here.
