Level 1
Work Design
Roles, workflows, decision rights, how workload is spread, and how information moves. This is where everything starts.
A framework by Lindsay Mastrogiovanni
How Work Works™
Every workplace has an energy. Every organization has a hum.
Workplaces are designed, on purpose or by accident, and the energy that comes from within them is amplified. What a leader chooses to amplify has everything to do with how structure is established, how people experience it, how the organization performs, and the ultimate impact it has on the community. Set up on purpose, it builds better people, business, and communities. Left to chance, it builds pressure.
The idea
Structure determines what gets amplified.
Most leaders see the symptoms first. Those symptoms start somewhere specific. How Work Works™ traces them back to where they began and redesigns from there.
- Decisions that all run through one person
- Good people leaving
- The same question landing on three desks
Structure determines what's possible. Culture determines whether it happens.
The framework
The four levels
Each level takes what the level before it hands over and makes it bigger. Narrow at the source, wider at every step.
Level 2
Workplace Dynamics
How people experience the structure: leadership signals, communication, trust, and collaboration. It's the hum of an organization.
Level 3
Organizational Performance
What the organization produces: retention, capacity, consistency, and readiness to grow.
Level 4
Community Impact
How clients, candidates, and the community experience the organization. The ultimate measure.
Impact moves outward. Nothing amplified stays small.
Pressure
Give pressure a path early, or it finds its own way out.
Pressure is what people feel before a risk is exposed. It runs through every level of the organization, from structure through community. Reading it early, at its source, mitigates compliance risk and keeps small strains from becoming complaints, resignations, or headlines.
How it works in practice
Every organization runs on this cycle, whether it's designed or not.
How Work Works™ gives leaders a way to see where the cycle is breaking down and what to change first.
- Analysis
- Infrastructure
- Structure
- Activation
- Outcomes
Who it's for
Built for the people who shape how work gets done.
Executives, HR leaders, and practitioners in mission-driven, community-minded organizations who want a structure that supports their people, protects the business, and builds prosperity, whatever the organization's size, industry, or location.
Work with it
Put it to work in your organization
How Work Works™ is licensed to ConsciousHR, an organizational strategy and HR advisory firm. Start with The Pulse, a 7-minute self-assessment, or book a conversation with the team.
A How Work Works™ curriculum for leaders and practitioners is in development.
About the author
Lindsay Mastro
Lindsay Mastrogiovanni developed How Work Works™ over 20 years: as an in-house HR leader, a consultant to hundreds of organizations, a nationwide trainer and strategist for over 1,000 HR professionals working alongside employment attorneys, and as a founder herself.
Her background, training, and experience in energy work shape the framework's understanding of how energy radiates from people and practice within organizations.
She is the author of Becoming Conscious in a Corporate World.
Better people.
Better business.
Better communities.
The outcomes every level of How Work Works™ is built to serve.