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About the guest
Shannon Horne is the Senior Director of Enterprise and HR Transformation at CHS Inc. with over 20 years of experience in human resources. She specializes in developing people-centric strategies and leading large-scale change initiatives, focusing on aligning enterprise strategy with organizational structure. Shannon is recognized for her authentic leadership style and her commitment to employee well-being through innovative HR practices. Learn more about her on her expert page.
Summary
In this episode of the Org Design Podcast, recorded live at the Org Design Festival, hosts Tim Brewer and Amy Springer sit down with Shannon Horne, HR leader and transformation specialist, to explore the realities of organizational design inside a global company of 11,000 employees.
Shannon shares her journey into org design, the challenges of turning strategy into structure, and why confusion, turnover, and missed ROI often come when org design is treated as an afterthought. She offers practical insights on creating healthier org design cultures—where employees feel secure, leaders are transparent, and talent is repurposed rather than lost.
For leaders wondering if they have an org design problem on their hands, Shannon also gives her “friend-to-friend” advice: start with discovery before restructuring, and ask whether the issue is really structure—or something deeper.
This episode is packed with real-world transformation lessons and practical tips for executives, HR professionals, and organizational designers who want to avoid chaos and build resilient, people-centered organizations.
Show Notes
Organization Design Forum - https://organizationdesignforum.org/
Transcript
[00:00:00] Tim Brewer: Welcome to the Org Design Podcast. Tim Brewer joined by Amy my trustee podcast host and leader of our podcast. And we have Shannon Horne here today with us recording live from the Org Design Festival. Shannon, tell us a little bit about how did you end up being an org designer or doing org design as a part of your role. Did you leave school and think, man, I think I might become an org designer?
[00:00:26] Shannon Horne: Never thought that. Never did I think that. No.
[00:00:29] Tim Brewer: Astronaut, doctor, lawyer.
[00:00:31] Shannon Horne: Lawyer was my first thing I thought I was going to do as I entered college quickly decided that's not what I'm going to do.
So I think your first question was, how did I end up here doing org design or attending this conference? So this would be self admitted my first org design conference. I was invited by one of the board members that I work really closely with so I have the pleasure of being here. So thank you for having me, having me today, but from an org design perspective, I would say I fell into it. I've been an HR professional for quite a bit of time and i've always had this really this interest of people and teams, and how do organizations and culture come together. And somehow, someway, it's fallen into the term org design.
And I most recently now have been one of the transformation leaders at my organization because of just this general interest that I think I've had or demonstrated as an HR leader for some time to say I'm really interested in putting these puzzles together, I really like the systemic thinking about how culture and people come together and just have just had the opportunity now to fall into doing something that I'm really passionate about.
[00:01:43] Tim Brewer: That's really cool. I have not met anyone yet who left school thinking I'm going to be an org designer, but we definitely it's interesting how many people think they're going to be lawyers and become org designers. I know you're working. So internal at a, in an organization, how big is the organization at the moment just to give a kind of understanding of the scope of what you're having to deal with in your work.
[00:02:03] Shannon Horne: Our, the organization I work at today is about, about 11, 000 total employees globally. We are stood up in a holding company type of way, but we're moving through transformation efforts to become a organization that operates more as a one organization. So we can see our supply chain from beginning to end.
So we're almost tipping our organization on to its side and operating in a much more product line type approach. So the role I play today is helping our organization navigate through that change and that includes the people and the teams and how we are going to be organized in the future to be able to really leverage that supply chain, that global supply chain in a way so we can see everything from beginning to end when it touches our customer. And then we start that process again. So I get the pleasure of moving teams and people and resources and understanding how our business connects to our people and then how our people and our resources are really able to deliver in a way that they might not have been able to deliver in the past because they only had one, maybe this much information versus now they can see it from beginning to end. So I get the pleasure of working with many of the senior leaders across the enterprise, as well as many of my HR colleagues and partners to think about how do we shift our resources and how do we put teams and skills and expertise in a place where they can all be successful for our customer?
[00:03:40] Amy Springer: I would love to hear more about how you actually engage with those teams. But first, where do you find your work tends to come from? Is it from the strategic decisions of someone more senior or does some of them come from someone further down the ranks that's screaming out like something's not working here.
[00:03:59] Shannon Horne: So I think it comes from both. When I think you can hear it and see it in pockets, meaning where some of the sort of points of contention or some of the friction points that are resulting in, maybe there's turnover that's happening, or maybe there's trapped resources, or maybe there's highly fractionalized work and people aren't able to do their best work because they're spending their time doing multiple things. So I think it comes from there.
I also think it comes roadmap, where are we headed one, three, five years. And how does that strategy then inform how we get that work done through the teams that we either have today or the teams that we have to build tomorrow. So how I work and engage with my senior leaders or with my HR leaders through those strategy conversations is also how we start to curate that information.
And then lastly, I would say a lot of it comes through our engagement, just general engagement scores. So things like, do we have good scores on cooperation and collaboration? Are we really leveraging the values of the organization that are important to us? And if we're not, why not?
And is that as a result of some of the team or lack of teaming activities that are taking place in pockets. So I would say it comes in a handful of different ways. I would say strategy is probably the first component, but the other components are definitely feeders into how we start to think about making those decisions.
[00:05:27] Tim Brewer: So maybe taking that idea that you'll need to have strategy in place, but looking for hotspots in the organization. In your experience, both where you are now, but over time and talking to other colleagues, what happens when you don't get that transition from structure from strategy into the org structure, into the org design?
Or maybe it's just unintentional or haphazard or not really considered or not resourced within an organization. How bad do things get and what kind of things go wrong when org design is not given the attention and effort that it needs.
[00:05:58] Shannon Horne: One of the things I see quickly is confusion. What am I responsible for? What do I need to be included in? What do I need to know about? Do I care? Should I not care? So you start to see some confusion and lack of productivity or lack of progress. I also think you start to see retention and some turnover because people aren't certain of what exactly they're putting in.
Priority is what should they be focusing on? Am I hearing from multiple leaders in this matrix structure? I'm working in so I'm not as satisfied in my role because I'm not certain what my deliverables are So you start to see it through some of that employee and that employee engagement. I would also say it really limits career progression. You'll see oftentimes when there's confusion in your structure, it starts to limit career progression because leaders aren't able to fully articulate what the development or what the skills of their team needs to look like because they haven't spent enough time being able to take some of that priority and whittle that down into what are the skills I need to be able to deliver against those priorities because there's confusion amongst your team.
So you start to see it show up and I think a handful of different ways and probably one of the most impactful right is the financial components and not being able to deliver against the ROA or the ROI that you're expected to from a senior leader perspective because your teams functioning the way they should be.
[00:07:24] Amy Springer: It sounds like you guys do a lot of wonderful listening to your people, it's through data, it's through the conversations. People often find org design projects scary, because they've had bad experiences. I'd love to hear have you seen that shift and change in your organization with people like yourself, you know really being on the ground to help it happen?
[00:07:46] Shannon Horne: I think we've seen it shift and change but probably a little more slowly than Maybe other organizations, but I think that's in part because some of the org design practices that we've been building or some of the org design capabilities across the enterprise, I would say are still in some cases a little unknown and immature.
I think we've been able to advance it, but I would still say we haven't seen the progress potentially because we're still learning as we go.
[00:08:14] Amy Springer: We love to talk about on the podcast is creating healthy org design cultures.
It sounds like a lot of the practices you're doing are working towards that. Is there anything else you'd like to see more of maybe the way your leaders are responding, is there something you'd love more from them to really fully engage in that process?
[00:08:33] Shannon Horne: What I would say we're starting to see to create some of that healthy org design culture is a few things. We've continued to commit as an organization that when we make changes to an org, we try to repurpose or re-skill talent that may have a job change or a job impact. So we're continuously committed to retaining the employees. We have way more jobs available than we have talent internally.
So how do we create sort of a sense of rest or peace that maybe we're going through an org design, but we're not going to lead with, we're cutting resources or we're shaving out costs by cutting labor. That's not how we lead our guiding principles. So I think that helps create a sense of peace. Yes, you might have a job change and yes, you might experience a leader change or something might change and that's always been helpful. met with anxiety, but as long as you know you have a place, I think that helps.
The other thing is we always try to work really closely with the leaders on being able to really articulate what is changing, what's remaining the same, what are we preserving across the changes we are making. Even if the change is really big and radical, we try to make sure that our leaders are really equipped with being able to do that, stand in the front of the room and socialize why and what and how to create some of that healthy change or that healthy tension that might be showing up.
We also give our employees a lot of access to the leaders and they do a really nice job of ing available and so I think that also helps create some transparency so the employees are able to ask questions in a way that doesn't seem so harsh or in a way that feels more comfortable in a trusted environment. We are not perfect, however, right? We still have a lot of room to grow and a lot of room to make advancements in this space. But definitely if I think about three years ago, I would say where we were then and where we are now is just significantly different.
[00:10:41] Tim Brewer: To everyday leaders sitting out, listening to the podcast now looking at their organization thing. Actually, I'm seeing some of those same thing that can confusion and uncertainty is sitting there, I think I've got an org design challenge on my hands. What is the practical advice you'd give to a friend who calls you up from another organization and says, "Hey, I think I've got some challenges in our structure". What's going to be your kind of friend to friend advice for them to leave something with the listeners with, that they can go in action in their organizations?
[00:11:10] Shannon Horne: I think my first question is, is it structure? Really, is it really about the structure that you have from the top to the bottom and have you really done the right discovery to determine if it is to structure. There's a lot of discovery work that I think often gets missed because we want to go really fast.
And if you're not certain what you're solving for, I think it's really easy to go to structure because it's the most tangible and it's the most visible and you can touch it and feel it. So I think if anyone comes to me, or when leaders come to me and say, I think I got a structure problem. I think the first question is, is it really structure or is it something else that's flawed within the team? Is it lack of clarity? Is it lack of strategy focus? Is it over prioritization? Do you have too many layers? Do you have too many leaders? The series of questions, I think, is what's most important to be able to say, Okay, it is structure.
[00:12:07] Tim Brewer: some of the stories, I've heard people tell where they're like, Oh, we've got a problem and so they go and rip and replace, change things around, shift one org across to another org, and it gets there, and then the next leader's like, And they fix, they realize it's a different problem. We've created all this chaos and distraction and such a long period of time to do that.
Shannon, thank you so much for joining us on the org design podcast. That's all we have time for today . Have an amazing rest of the conference.
Amy, thanks for joining us again as co-host and we're having such a good time here at the conference. Thank you for joining us.
[00:12:41] Shannon Horne: Thank you so much.
[00:12:42] Amy Springer: Thank you.
[00:12:42] Tim Brewer: See you everyone.
Bye bye. Bye.
Functionly empowers organizations to navigate complex transformation efforts by providing a comprehensive platform for org design and management. By facilitating clarity around roles and responsibilities, Functionly helps eliminate confusion and enhances productivity within teams. With its intuitive tools, leaders can visualize their organizational structure, align team capabilities with strategic objectives, and ensure that resources are effectively utilized. This approach fosters a culture of collaboration and engagement, allowing organizations to adapt to changes while simultaneously nurturing talent and promoting career progression. Ultimately, Functionly equips leaders with the insights and resources necessary to create a healthy organizational design that supports both employee satisfaction and business goals.
