We’re with Steve Jobs when it comes to designing organisational effectiveness solutions.

Steve Jobs said, “Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.” At Kaya, we agree, albeit with a slight twist. For us, designing organisational effectiveness solutions – the Design Phase in our fluid five-stage methodology – is all about enabling and empowering your organisation by changing mental models. However, to do that effectively and efficiently, our designs have to be tailor-made for your people. They have to resonate. They have to feel right.

Great design starts with a great brief
Before you can design an effective solution, you have to understand the problem or challenge. The deeper your understanding, the better the solution is likely to be.

That’s why the Discovery Phase within our methodology is so important. Armed with a thorough understanding of your business and culture, as well as your organisation’s operational issues and strategic objectives, our organisational psychologists are able to draw on their broad knowledge and over 150 years of research to create a highly targeted intervention program – a solution that addresses your specific performance or productivity issues with pinpoint accuracy.

Form and function
What’s the best way to facilitate the change in thinking that will improve effectiveness? What language should we use? What type of intervention will be most effective? A one-off workshop? A program of team training? One-on-one coaching? What materials will be most useful and engaging?

These are just some of the questions our consultants ask themselves during the design process. Custom designing interventions and programs for every unique situation, every unique client, even every unique individual.

By ensuring everything we do is aligned with your business and a natural fit for your organisational culture, we’re able to minimise anxiety and discomfort for participants, thereby maximising the acquisition of new skills and competencies.

The best design evolves
Of course, as situations change and objectives shift, designs evolve. That’s why it’s so important to determine the effectiveness of our solutions and deliberate alternatives, even if that means responding to an evolving situation in real-time by changing a solution as we’re about to deliver it.

And there lies the strength of our five-stage methodology and the experienced team behind it. It’s fluid – an ongoing solution cycle that leverages the knowledge and experience of our psychologists to adapt our solutions and achieve the best results, without jeopardising timelines or budgets.

An example of design ‘on the fly’
One recent project, undertaken by two of our consultants, serves as a good example of our flexible design process in action.

Called in by one of our mining clients, our consultants were asked to deliver a bespoke one-day, team-based workshop for their HSEQ department. The client requested a workshop focused on a number of general areas, like improving communication, defining team roles and building trust. However, there was a problem with the client’s diagnosis and brief.

When our consultants arrived on-site to facilitate the workshop, it quickly became clear that there were a number of issues within the team, but they weren’t general in nature. What’s more, they were more serious than the client thought, with cross-team conflicts and bullying leading to a series of destabilising departures from the team, all under the watch of an ill-equipped team leader.

Our consultants rapidly conducted an impromptu Discovery session in the morning, in the form of one-on-one interviews with the HSEQ team to ascertain the underlying issues.

With a clear picture of the situation, our team then designed a new workshop solution – there and then – refocusing on resolving conflict and developing trust, cohesiveness and collaboration. They then held the new workshop that afternoon, directly addressing the underlying issues impacting on the effectiveness of the team.

The benefits for our client
Beyond the positive impact on pass rates and the lives of the students who took part in our program, our interventions delivered a host of practical and financial benefits for our client too.

Our graduates were better prepared for the world of work and more able to add more value in the workplace once they joined the firm. Moreover, the improvement in exam results helped elevate the firm as an employer of choice, enhancing graduate retention and thereby minimising the costs associated with employee recruitment and development.

Find out more about the flexible five-point methodology we’ve developed to analyse and improve organisational effectiveness. Read the real-world stories that demonstrate the value of organisational psychology, or talk to us about your unique workplace and organisational effectiveness challenges.

Jan Sipsma is an organisational psychologist and founding partner of Kaya. With over 20 years of international experience as an organisational effectiveness consultant, he specialises in strategic planning, organisational architecture and design, change management, capability and performance enhancement and the identification and development of leadership. He has a Masters of Commerce (Industrial Psychology) cum laude and is a registered member of the Australian Psychological Society.