Overview

Most organisations today are under pressure on multiple fronts: cost, capability, legitimacy, speed, and resilience. In South Africa, these pressures are amplified by economic uncertainty, skills constraints, regulatory complexity, and social expectations. Globally, the same organisations face digitisation, AI, and shifting workforce norms.

Organisation design is often treated as a structural exercise – boxes, reporting lines, spans of control. In practice, it is one of the most powerful levers available to executives, sitting alongside strategy, leadership, change, and team effectiveness.

This session introduces organisation design as a managerial competence, not a once-off restructure. It provides leaders with practical tools and techniques for both transformational design (when the organisation must fundamentally reorient) and transactional design (when the organisation must work better tomorrow than it does today).

The session is deliberately challenging: it argues that while command-led design has a place in emergencies, collaborative, developmental approaches consistently outperform command-only approaches over time. Participants will leave with practical design lenses, contextual decision rules, and a clearer sense of when to involve an OD practitioner as a design partner.

Learning Objectives

By attending this seminar, participants will be able to:

• Understand organisation design as one of five integrated performance levers: strategy, design, change, leadership, and teams.
• Distinguish between transformational design and transactional design, and recognise when each is required.
• Apply prescriptive design assumptions such as: “Under these conditions, try this approach.”
• Evaluate the trade-offs between command-led and collaborative design methods.
• Identify early warning signs that design work requires skilled OD facilitation rather than internal execution alone.
• Select practical tools that can be used immediately while avoiding the false certainty of structural “silver bullets”.

Content Outline

1. Organisation Design: A Brief Orientation for Executives

• Organisation design as a managerial discipline, not an HR or consulting artefact.
• Why design matters when strategy stalls, teams fragment, or change efforts exhaust people.
• A working definition: organisation design as the intentional shaping of culture, climate and structure to enable strategy execution.
• Positioning design as one lever among five: Strategy, Design, Change, Leadership, Teams – none sufficient on its own.
• Context assumption: If your organisation feels “busy but ineffective,” design is already at work – just not intentionally.

Illustrative vignette: A growing services firm that keeps changing strategy while never changing the forums where decisions are made.

2. Two Design Domains: Transformational and Transactional

• Why confusion between these two domains leads to failed redesigns.
• Transformational design: when the organisation’s purpose, identity, or value logic must shift.
• Transactional design: when the organisation’s day-to-day coordination must improve.

3. Transformational Design: Tools and Techniques

When to use this domain:

• Strategy pivot, market collapse, merger, legitimacy crisis, or sustained performance decline.

Key tools and techniques:

• Purpose and value clarification as design anchors.
• Reframing the operating core: what work truly creates value now?
• Structural archetype shifts (e.g., functional → product → platform)
• Organisational form shifts (e.g., entrepreneurial → project → professional → bureaucratic)
• Decision-right redesign at the strategic level.
• Command-led transformation in emergencies vs. collaborative transformation for sustainability.

Prescriptive guidance:

• Under existential threat: command-led clarity first, collaboration later.
• Under strategic ambiguity: collaborative sense-making before structure.

Illustrative vignette: A South African services firm integrating American acquisitions.

4. Transactional Design: Tools and Techniques

When to use this domain:

• Missed handovers, meeting overload, slow decisions, duplicated work, role confusion.

Key tools and techniques:

• Meeting architecture redesign (why most meetings fail).
• Process simplification and decision-path clarity.
• Role and interface clarification between functions.
• Span-of-control and layering adjustments.
• Collaborative process redesign vs. imposed efficiency drives.

Prescriptive guidance:

• Under time pressure: simplify before optimising.
• Under chronic friction: redesign interfaces, not individuals.

Illustrative vignette: A finance-led cost initiative that succeeded only after meeting forums were redesigned.

5. Command or Collaboration? A Design Choice, Not an Ideology

• Why command-led design feels faster – and often costs more later.
• Why collaboration is not consensus, and not indecision.
• The executive’s real choice: speed now vs. capability later.
• Design maturity as the ability to shift modes deliberately.
• Default to collaboration; reserve command for genuine emergencies.

6. The Role of the OD Practitioner

• Why design work fails when treated as a technical exercise.
• The OD practitioner as:
  • System diagnostician
  • Process architect
  • Sense-making facilitator
  • Integrator across strategy, structure, and behaviour
• Clear signal: complex design work should not be done alone, nor delegated entirely to internal politics.

About the Presenter

Craig Yeatman

Craig came to the Organisation Design and Development profession in 2004 as an entrepreneur with a love for organisational theory. He is a founder or co-founder of several organisations.

Craig has advised or supported South African and international clients, having lived and/or worked in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria, Kenya, Cameroon, Mauritius, Zimbabwe, Egypt, Dubai, Australia, England.

He co-designed WorldsView Academy’s Nine Conversations in Leadership™ and Purposeful Teams interventions and was on the Academy for Organisational Change design team for the Higher Certificate in Organisation Development.

Craig has studied or been taught OD processes in South Africa, and in America – learning from Dr. Lisa Kimball, Dr. Naomi Stanford, Dr. Shirley Knobel, Dr. Ngao Motsei, David Snowden, Dr. Louise van Rhyn, the Berlin Open Space Consortium, Chantelle Wyley, Liora Gross, Benjamin Zander, Peter Block, Wits Business School, Insead and other professionals or institutions. He holds an MBA (Cum Laude) from Wits Business School.

Areas of interest include Organisational Strategy; Organisational Design; Organisational Change; Management, Leadership and Team Development.

Who Should Attend?

The following persons will benefit from attending this webinar:

• Candidate attorneys 

• Law students  

• Pupil advocates  

• Paralegals 

• Junior legal practitioners 

Price

• R 450.00 - Online admission - Individual.
  • Group Price 1 - From R337 per person (up to 5 users)
  • Group Price 2 - From R260 per person (up to 10 users)
  • Group Price 3 - From R224 per person (over 11 users)

Steps to Register for the Event:

• If you already have a profile, login and register for the webinar.
• If you don’t have a profile, create a free profile then login and register for the webinar.
• Click here to create a free profile (There is no charge to create a profile and gain access to our free Monthly Practice Management Series).
• Click here to find out about the Technical Resource Centre & CPD Subscription options.

Additional Material

By attending this webinar you will be provided with:

• A summarised slide presentation.
• Reference documents and / or course material where available.
• You can ask questions during the webinar and you will also have access to the presenter after the webinar

Corporate Training Solutions

At SALA, we recognize the evolving needs of businesses in today's dynamic environment. Beyond our standard webinar offerings, we provide tailored corporate training solutions designed to empower your team with the latest in legal and professional skills. Whether you're looking for online sessions or face-to-face training, our programs are crafted to ensure a comprehensive and engaging learning experience. 

Drawing inspiration from modern training methodologies, our corporate solutions are interactive, adaptable, and focused on real-world applications. We prioritize hands-on learning, ensuring your team can immediately apply their newfound knowledge in practical scenarios. 

Interested in a bespoke corporate training experience? Reach out to us at [email protected] or call 012 941 0448. Together, let's design a training program that elevates your team's capabilities and aligns with your organizational goals. 

Contact Us

Have any questions or need any assistance? Contact us today!  

• Online chat through our website.  

• Phone: +27 (0) 12 941 0448  

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