THE PROBLEM IS RARELY THE PERSON. IT’S USUALLY THE SYSTEM.
People Shaped Work is an organisational design and transformation consultancy for organisations facing complex problems. We diagnose how the system actually works, redesign what is getting in the way, and help make the change stick.
YOUR ORGANISATION IS A SYSTEM
When performance stalls, a transformation gets stuck, or growth becomes harder than it should be, organisations tend to look for the problem in their people. We look elsewhere.
Purpose. Work. People. Power. Information. Technology. Learning.
Every part of an organisation shapes the others, so we look at the whole picture rather than one piece at a time. We work out what is really driving a problem before anyone commits to a solution.
Complex problems need more than another intervention
We diagnose the system before we recommend the intervention, then work alongside the people responsible for making the change happen.
Our work typically moves through four stages:
DISCOVER
Find the problem underneath the problem.
REDESIGN
Redesign the system, with the people who work inside it
CHANGE
Turn the design into reality.
EMBED
Make the new system sustainable.
BUILT BY SOMEONE WHO HAS HAD TO MAKE CHANGE WORK
People Shaped Work was founded by Michelle Corrigan, an executive leader and governance specialist who builds and rescues organisations rather than only advising on them. She is a doctoral researcher at UCL studying trust in complex systems, and her governance record runs from founding Chair to board-level chief executive.
She has also led a national transformation that took cyber security adoption across a workforce of 1.5 million people from around 15 per cent to more than 75 per cent.
“I get people with different interests, expertise and power around a problem and create enough common ground for them to do something. Put everyone on the right bus and make sure they’re all facing the right direction.”
MICHELLE CORRIGAN
IDEAS FOR ORGANISATIONS BEING ASKED TO CHANGE
The future of work gets talked about as a question of where people work. The harder question is how organisations are designed. Michelle writes and speaks about the ideas underneath today’s biggest organisational questions: the ideal worker myth, trust, AI, leadership, burnout, and the relationship between people and the systems they work in.
People-Shaped Jobs, Not Job-Shaped People
Recruiting in the New Days of AI
SPEAKING
Better design · Better work · Better lives
Michelle brings the thinking behind People Shaped Work to boards, leadership teams and conferences. From the ideal worker myth to AI, trust and the future of work, she challenges familiar assumptions and gives leaders something practical to take back to work.
WHAT NEEDS TO CHANGE?
You may already know the problem. You may only know that something important is not working and cannot quite see why. Start there. Tell us what is happening, what you have already tried, and what is at stake, and we will help you work out what needs examining, what kind of intervention it warrants, and whether People Shaped Work is the right partner.
Book a 30 minute conversation