Org Design in Practice
Bringing Good Design to Social Impact Organizations
Julian Chender – Founder & Principal Consultant, 11A Collaborative
Julian Chender is the Founder and Principal Consultant of 11A Collaborative, where he focuses on creating a healthy society through healthy organizations. Julian’s work focuses on facilitating human connection and shaping behavior at scale. He consults with purpose-driven businesses, nonprofits, foundations, public offices, and government agencies. In his early years at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Julian’s portfolio included leadership and team development and enterprise strategy, all focused on the agency’s response to the global Ebola crisis. From there, he moved to external consulting, eventually joining Accenture’s Operating Model & Organization Design practice shortly after its acquisition of Kates Kesler. Julian is a Certified Organization Design Practitioner and an ICF-Certified Coach who holds a master’s degree in Organization Development from American University. In 2020, he received the Emerging Practitioner Award from the Organization Development Network (ODN). He has served on the Board of Trustees of ODN and currently sits on the Board of Advisors for the Organization Design Forum.
This session seeks to bridge the gap between organization design’s vast experience in the corporate world and the potential for more application to the social impact space. It will introduce adaptation to our familiar corporate models and some new models and methods for consulting in the nonprofit and social impact space.
Organization design is well used in the corporate sector but infrequently undertaken by nonprofit and other social impact organizations. This session seeks to bridge the gap between organization design’s vast experience in the corporate world and the potential for more application to the social impact space. We will examine what is the same and different about working in social impact and how to augment our familiar models and methods for this specific sector. We will also introduce some new approaches, drawing on a live (in process!) case study of a full organization strategy and design project for a small corporate foundation, as well as many other social impact org design initiatives to show how our field can strengthen these organizations. In translating our tools and developing new ones for a new(ish) and underserved sector for organization design, we are working to expand the practice to help those doing good in the world do it better.