The HR Impact Show

The episode contains solid practitioner insights on org design methodology - particularly the emphasis on studying current-state problems before designing, iterative rollout vs. big-bang, and habit-to-culture progression. However, roughly 40% of runtime is biographical career narrative that, while relatable, adds little substantive value for B2B operators. The core org design framework is sound but not particularly novel or densely packed with non-obvious claims.

“Org design is people think it's structure. So you create a new org chart. Org design done. That's not it. You need to look at all the angles.”

“Organization design, it's continuous. Again, it's an iterative process. With the knowledge you have now where you want to be, this is the design you think that will help.”

The framing of org design as ecosystem (structure, people, process, technology, culture) is standard consulting language. The emphasis on listening to ground-level stakeholders and testing before full rollout reflects best practices but not contrarian thinking. The 'go slow to go fast' and 'under-promise, over-deliver' philosophies are well-established. Limited genuinely counterintuitive arguments.

“org design is not just about structure. It's structure, people, process, technology, culture, it's everything.”

“Go slow to go fast. This is something somebody told me about 10 years ago... there is a lot of truth in this”

Iwan is a legitimate practitioner with multi-decade experience at GE, Toll Group, and currently ABB (100K+ employees, 87 countries). He has hands-on responsibility for org design at scale and has led actual Workday implementations and HR transformations. Not a pure thought-leader or consultant - he owns outcomes. However, he is not a C-suite operator building companies; he works within established organizational structures.

“I'm currently looking at the organizational design for the HR function at ABB... that has a huge impact of what's going to happen next”

“I left GE at the end of 2017 restructuring. So I can speak from experience what that is like being restructured.”

While Iwan cites ABB (100K+ employees, 87 countries) and mentions Workday implementations, the discussion largely avoids concrete metrics, timelines, or numerical outcomes. He admits struggling to define success metrics for org design. References to GE, Toll, and a Vietnam banking role lack specifics (names, results, financials). The example about setting targets at 50-75% is concrete but limited in scope.

“ABB is gigantic, right? It is really big. We have more than a hundred thousand people, 87 countries.”

“there are actually not that many good metrics... To be honest, we struggled. There's some generic ones, but they felt like, are they really adequate?”

Dorothy asks solid follow-up questions (e.g., 'should org design be a standalone role?', 'how do you measure success?', 'how do you sustain change?') that draw out methodology. However, the host rarely pushes back or challenges claims. When Iwan admits uncertainty on metrics or shares soft advice (e.g., 'sleep on it'), Dorothy validates rather than probes deeper. The conversation is warm and exploratory but lacks the friction that would test ideas rigorously.

“So tactically speaking, we just spoke about organizational design being a iterative process, continuous process. How does it translate to your daily work at ABB?”

“You know what you've just described with this technology implementation sounds massive... what are some key consideration that, HR leaders or maybe just leaders of organizations should really take note of?”