How organizations design & structure delivers during adversities- Learnings during Pandemic outbreak?

4 min readApr 5, 2021

Although the world faced its worst adversity in decades by the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, many organizations swiftly bounced back from it by turning their times of adversities into opportunities. It shattered many myths around how an organization works and business processes were re-engineered and revamped to maintain their business continuity. While “survival” was the key objective during the earlier days of the pandemic, the world has come a long way now to “live” through this and make the best out of it. The goal has now become to emerge triumphant in this “New Normal” by leveraging technology and developing an agile mindset to face every unknown in the most uncertain times. Neither has the competition for becoming the most resilient been fiercer nor the phrase “survival of the fittest” been more apt.

During his TED talk in 2015, Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, warned us about an impending pandemic in the near future, and here we are stranded in the middle of a pandemic within 5 years of his foretelling. Current events teach us that adversities and disasters like Covid-19 occur more frequently than anticipated. While many organizations are finding it difficult to continue their operations, and many others like Swiggy and Indigo are laying off their employees, there are few organizations like Amazon which are prospering even during these difficult times. Effective organizational design and structure is one of the reasons which help these organizations to thrive even during difficult times like these.

Effective organizational structure creates a system by which we can delegate decisions and identify roles & responsibilities. We can call organization design and structure, a framework which helps their employees to do their job in the most efficient way.

Agility

During adversities, organizations go through swift and sudden changes in the way they operate thereby making the need for an effective organizational structure even more significant than earlier. It gives them the flexibility to adjust quickly. This can be brought about by achieving proper coordination between the activities by adopting an agile approach which will enable them to be prepared for every uncertainty that comes their way. London-based boutique liquor brand 58 Gin stopped distilling small-batch gin and instead started producing large-batch hand sanitizer which allowed them to maintain revenue.

Efficient use of resources

Moreover, these times are witnessed by a scarcity of resources. In order to maximize productivity even during times of scarcity, organizations should distribute work in an organized manner so that there is no overlapping or duplication of work.

Improve communication strategy

Strong organizational design and structure promote the delivery of effective communication. It has been rightly said by Henry, “If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.” All great achievements in an organization are the product of some great collaborations and some great team efforts. The catalyst behind the success and the unity of a team lies in the effective communication and collaboration between the individuals. It also eliminates any ambiguity of thoughts that might arise due to miscommunication. When everything is at high stake, even a small miscommunication can snowball into substantial losses. Many organizations have suffered from business communication failure. In 2016, Yahoo acknowledged a 2014 data breach that exposed the accounts of 500 million users to hackers. Later in December, the company then announced that one more breach was there from 2013 that affected one billion accounts. Finally, in October 2017, Yahoo announced that the data breach affected all 3 billion of its customers.

Elimination of dysfunctional resources

The process of organization design helps the organization in finding any type of defective and dysfunctional elements related to the organization system, process and structure. Identification of these issues followed by rectification can better fulfil the organization objective. In adversities, when organizations revenues have dry up and they are cutting cost through pay cuts and layoffs, identification of dysfunctional elements becomes more important.

Learnings from the Pandemic outbreak

The key takeaway for organizations during this pandemic has been the development of an agile mindset to turn the tables on the face of adversities and unearth opportunities from the depths of uncertainties. Organizations should become more resilient not just literally but more in their ability to bring up innovative responses to unprecedented events. Moreover, the need for being among the most technologically-evolved has grown more than ever as the sole thread that is holding the world together now is the internet. COVID-19 crisis has also shown the world importance of great leadership and how they delivered at the time of uncertainties. Dan Glaser, CEO of Marsh & McLennan announced that the job of all the employees of his organization is secure and there will be no counting of sick days or vacation days until things return to normal. This is a great example of true leadership.

Organization design and structure plays a crucial role in the overall functioning of the organization and effective organizational design and structure help them to thrive even during adversities.