Who’s responsible for behaviour?

Despite being 60 years old at this point, the late Jay Galbraith’s Star Model™ is still one of the most popular org design frameworks used today.

The self-proclaimed “father of organisation design” developed his framework for analysing organisations in the 1960s. The star model presents “a foundation on which a company bases its org design choices,” centered on five policies — all of which must be aligned for an organisation to be effective. For Galbraith, “alignment = effectiveness”

Adaptations

Many people have since adapted it, and put their own spin on it.

In 1976 Marvin Weisbord introduced his Six-Box Model in his academic paper Organizational Diagnosis: Six Places to Look for Trouble with or without a Theory. He presented it as a “cognitive map” for analysing organisations, “under which one can sort much of the ‘funny stuff’ that goes on in organizations, both formal and informal”

Or McKinsey’s 7S Model — introduced by Tom Peters and Robert Waterman in their bestselling book In Search of Excellence from 1982 — in which they added “soft” elements such as skills and style.

But the Star Model itself has remained popular. Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur wrote about it in their popular book Business Model Generation (2010). They framed their famous business model canvas in the middle of the star “as a ‘center of gravity’ holding the five areas together.”

Implications

The star model has some insightful implications, like how org design is about more than just structure, and how different strategies lead to different organisations.

It also views org design as a continuous process, believing that “a healthy and effective organization is one that grows and evolves in response to both external and internal pressures and opportunities”.

Design influences behaviour

For me however, the most important part of the model is it’s framing of “how organisation design affects behaviour and culture”.

“The Star Model consists of policies that leaders can control and that can affect employee behaviour. It shows that managers can influence performance and culture, but only by acting through the design policies that affect behaviour.”

Galbraith’s white paper states that the five policies are “the tools with which management must become skilled in order to shape the decisions and behaviours of their organizations effectively.”

Tangible decisions which “are controllable by management and can influence employee behavior”.

Often business owners become frustrated with negative behaviours on their team, the culture that develops, and the performance drops that come as a result. So they focus on trying to swap out people, or encourage behavioural changes. But the star model clearly shows that if you want to change these things, you have to look at all the levers that are in your control that are not only contributing to the problem, but causing it. Structure influences behaviour. How people are incentivised and compensated influences behaviour. The way you work influences behaviour. And all of these are things management can change tomorrow.