Companies are faced with a new set of business variables as 2023 ramps up. Most notably, organizations across industries have undergone major structural changes. Headcounts have fallen and layoffs have unfortunately been in headlines since the end of 2022.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that among those that are currently unemployed, the number of people who have permanently lost their job rose by 127,000, totaling 1.4 million people in the U.S. in November 2022. It’s worth noting, for some, the opposite is also true, and scaling their businesses is the major focus.
In either set of conditions – both positive and negative – enterprise leaders need to be sure they are well attuned to all facets of their organizations, including their teams and those team members’ responsibilities. Leaders can use a well-connected enterprise architecture (EA) enabled by the right tools to better understand weaknesses, strengths and gaps in their teams, and more agilely navigate downsizing or growth.
Actionability Is the Name of the Game
One of the most valuable insights that EA can provide for the C-suite is capacity planning, which allows leadership and management to examine the availability of resources to meet the demands of the enterprise, and in this case processes and responsibilities of team members to ensure that tasks are appropriately performed or administered.
When applied to recent layoff trends, capacity planning can play a large role in keeping the downsizing responsible, respectful and tied to business strategy.
Rather than recklessly letting go entire teams or a certain percentage of headcount, capacity planning offers leadership teams visibility into individuals’ roles and responsibilities, the competencies required to perform those roles, and the capacity of the role to meet demand so they’re able to make better informed decisions. Put differently, if leadership needs to execute a layoff, they should be doing so with the most valuable information on hand so that business is not interrupted and impact is minimized.
Armed with these insights, leaders can back up their choices with vetted, data-based facts that are directly tied to strategy and business continuity or resilience. The value of capacity planning is further underscored by recent news of global companies cutting entire teams, jeopardizing the stability and compliance of the business without considering the consequences.
A well-designed EA enabled by the right tooling will show where business-critical information flows from individual to individual, preventing loss of data or knowledge when downsizing happens.
Well-designed EA also plays an important role in risk management. Risks can be avoided or mitigated by having better visualizations of key personnel and their roles. In essence, risk teams can’t protect their enterprises if they aren’t able to see the architecture of their organization. The immediate benefits of capacity planning are clear, but there are other ways that EA can help enterprises up-level the flow between employees and up to the C-suite, too.
Building Interconnectivity Between Leadership and Their Company
EA breaks down the siloed structures between leadership, employees and departments and makes everyone more operationally aware of the way their individual responsibilities drive business forward.
Capacity planning for the C-suite allows for making better decisions, but it also provides qualitative color to the respective roles that comprise an organization, the competencies needed to perform those roles as well as gap analysis to assist in the resourcing strategy. Leadership can have a “bird’s eye view” of who owns, manages and performs what processes, applications or other assets, an insight that would otherwise be impossible for those seated at the top of the enterprise. This real-time awareness can prevent tone deafness to burnout and other conditions facing staff.
Moreover, it’s critical that in the event of downsizing, the C-level is prioritizing fair workloads for their staff that remain, preventing the likelihood of teammates being overburdened and succumbing to burnout thus resulting in unplanned key personnel exodus.
From the employee perspective, capacity planning allows for better cross-organizational collaboration and employee autonomy. Team members can feel empowered in their responsibilities while having a clear vision on what projects, activities or assets others in the company are owning. EA provides team members with the ability to independently connect with others who manage resources, applications or solutions they need assistance with, improving overall communication across the organization.
Two Feet on the Ground, but Looking Ahead
Capacity planning might seem like it involves leaders poring over their screens, tracking the granular details of their workforce, but in reality, it has larger, future-facing implications for growth, too. Better enterprise responsibility mapping can point out weaknesses and gaps in infrastructure. By making use of effective tooling, leaders will have ultimate visibility into the people and processes that comprise a business, allowing for course corrections if problems arise, in both the short and long terms.
As it relates to the long-term growth of business, capacity planning can also become critical for the ability to forecast.
Leadership, once aware of gaps or weaknesses in their organization, can use that same tool as a reason to expand their bench of abilities. For example, the movement to the cloud has swept up most digital business, but if a company has no employees with cloud competencies, that jump towards progress can be difficult to land. With EA, the C-suite can model their staffing decisions before making changes, allowing for proactive planning and appropriate responses to shrinking teams, or other variables, before they happen. Capacity planning can be the bridge between strategy and execution for leaders.
While capacity planning might seem like an especially critical ability during layoffs, there is also a case to be made for its value in more positive markets. Leaders can ensure that their current teams are set up for the highest chance of success, without being overburdened and disconnected. It gives leaders the power to ask: “What is it that we truly need to achieve on our goals?” and from envisioning those objectives, initiatives are sure to follow.
