“The name of the rose” by Umberto Eco is one of the best-selling books ever published (50 million copies sold!).

During a break between Zoom meetings recently, I came across it (on my own bookshelf…).

I bought it many years ago, but must admit that I never got around to reading it (it happens…).

Until now, that is.

It did look interesting, so I started reading it.

I don’t regret it: It’s a complex but fascinating book.

To my surprise, there’s even a story in it that illustrates a couple of organization design principles.

In the book, we follow William of Baskerville, a friar who is called to help investigate a series of murders at an abbey in Northern Italy in 1327.

The voice in the book is that of Adso, his young assistant.

The abbey is well known for its extensive library. Scholars, illustrators and munks from near and far come to visit to read the many rare books that it has in its collection.

On the first day, William and Adso visit the library and talk to librarian, named Malachi.

Here’s an excerpt:

(…) we found titles of books we had never heard of, and others most famous, that the library possessed (…) “De pentagono Salominis, Ars loquendi et intelligendi in lingua hebraica, De rebus metallicis (…), Algebra by Al-Kuwarizmi, translated into Latin by Robertus Anglicus, the Punica by Silius Italicus…

But then Wiliams becomes curious about the cataloging system. He says:

Splendid works. But in what order are they listed? He quoted from a text I did not know but which was certainly familiar to Malachi: “The librarian must have a list of all books, carefully ordered by subjects and authors, and they must be classified on the shelves with numerical indications”. How do you know the collocation of each book?

Malachi, the librarian, then shows him some annotations beside each title, such as “iii; IV gradus, V in proma graecorum”. This number indicated the position of the book on the shelf and in which room it was.

William then asks in which order the books are recorded in this list, as it does not seem to be by subject. The narrator, Adso, remarks:

He did not suggest an order by author (…) for this is a system I have seen adopted only in recent years, and at that time it was rarely used.

The librarian explains that the books are registered in order of their “aquisition, donation or entrance into our walks.”

William then remaks:

They are difficult to find, then (…)

And here we arrive at two key organization design principles.

The first is that we, as Peter Senge once remarked, forget about the designer of the ship. Or, in this case, the designer of the cataloging system.

We take it for granted that books are ordered by author or subject (or both). But somebody designed this system, and before 1327, it was not a common way to do it.

Same with organizational designs. Our organization may be organized by function, geography, market segment, or product, or some combination of these criteria.

If the structure has been in place for some years, we take it for granted. But somebody made a decision at some point in the past to introduce this structure (and it can be re-designed if we decide to do so.)

The second insight is that such choices have consequences. Depending on how we sort books and how we place them on the shelves, it will be easier or more difficult to find a given book afterwards, depending, for example, on whether we search for a specific author or a subject.

This is essentially a rudimentary version of the concept of coordination costs. There are different ways of “sorting” the roles and units in an organization.

They are not equally effective: Depending on which criterion we use for the sorting, it will be more or less costly to coordinate to perform the work processes in the organization.

This is illustrated in the challenge that we posted on the Reconfig web site. Have you tried it out yet?

P.S. The image above shows the abbey of San Michele, which was the abbey that inspired Umberto Eco to write the book!

If you are a manager, you might be asked to organize 1,200 people – or 12,000.

But to illustrate a key principle: Let’s start with just 12 people.

Are you able to organize them?

We have created a challenge with 12 roles in a Research & Development unit in a pharmaceutical firm. The current organization is not ideal –so the task is to allocate the roles to teams in a better way.

In the document posted below, you will see descriptions of the roles and their interdependencies. The document gives you a bit of context (but you can complete the challenge without it):

• …organization design is fundamentally about “clustering” – finding the best possible grouping of roles – or, at higher levels of the organization: Units, such as departments or business units.
• …optimal clustering can only be done by taking into consideration interdependencies between roles…
• …which means that it becomes a difficult task: Most people will need to think hard to produce a good solution, even with just 12 elements (so imagine doing this manually with 120, 1,200, or 12,000 roles). It requires focused attention, even when the tool (like here) hightlights for you what the interdependencies are…
• …but it is now possible to map these problems using a Design Structure Matrix (DSM), use The Reconfig algorithm to automate the clustering, and also express the quality of the solution using a quantitative indicator (the “speedometer” in the Figure above).

If you have followed this blog for a while, you are probably familiar with these principles already. But with the example with 12 roles, you’ll see how it works in practice.

To give it a try, go to:

https://www.reconfig.no/challenge (Select “Start tutorial” first; if you directly to “Start challenge”, you get a more complex challenge with 42 roles!)

By the way, we will likely post new challenges in the future, so stay tuned.

Let me know what you think by adding a comment below!

If you want more information about Reconfig, you can download a white paper from the web site or get in touch with us by sending a message.