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In My View: Organizing a More Perfect Union
Norman Rich
"Leadership involves remembering past mistakes, an analysis of today's achievements, and a well-grounded imagination in visualizing the problem of the future." -Stanley C. Allen
Whether your business is a nonprofit association, school, corporation, partnership or sole proprietorship, building an organization based on what you want it to be is always a better path to perfect unity than building it based on what you are today. Unfortunately, when it comes to planning and organization, it's all too easy to overlook the obvious. Here are a few simple tips that might seem obvious at first glance, but take a moment to ask yourself how many of them your company follows. Then use the rest of them to build an organization that's perfect for everyone:
1. Know your audience.
The most successful processes create efficiencies by eliminating or standardizing duplicative efforts. If you build your company around processes that are inconsistent with the average employee's aptitudes, you'd better prepare yourself for a lot of time and money spent on (and, all too often, lost to) re-training and resistance.
Complications often arise after a new process is implemented because the process demands more highly developed organizational skills, competencies, and commitments than the organizational skills, competencies, and commitments exhibited by the people the process is intended for. To avoid complications, consult end users beforehand and observe their work habits and behaviors at the start of the design and planning process, not the end.
2. Organization is a game of averages, not preferences.
Seeing organization as a game of averages means realizing that, as a high-level decision maker, you are probably not the target that your policies and guidelines are designed to support. You may be responsible for setting the objectives that these policies must align with, but, if you want them to succeed, you have to be objective enough to realize when inserting your opinion isn't helping matters.
Delegate day-to-day organizational improvement and management to your subordinates with simple mandates that apply to each recommendation.
3. Align new processes with the organization's business objectives.
Take as much time ensuring that planned processes align with your organization's mission, vision, and values as you spend analyzing how they will increase worker productivity. Require all process designers to correlate recommendations with the specific business objectives they are designed to support.
4. Deliverables must be easy to use and understand.
This is often the hardest guideline for a senior manager to adjust to, because it requires decision makers to get out of the way and empower end-users. Whether the final deliverable is a form or a series of screens on the corporate intranet, make sure that information is presented in an intuitive format that makes it easy for people to use it.
5. The taller the building, the deeper the foundation required for it.
Whether you're creating a new filing system or a new business unit, your development plan has to support implementation on a scale consistent with your business objectives. Implementation of tactics and development of infrastructure (not necessarily in that order) can be more challenging than identification of tactics and communication of responsibilities, so don't allow yourself to think that you job is done if you delegate responsibilities to the underlings in the cubicle around you. Be sure that the plan and the people are able to deliver what's expected.
6. Most people are lazy and will look for the easiest way to get the job done (not the best way or the most profitable way-the easiest way).
In addition to a position's operational and functional requirements, make sure that job descriptions include a statement of the potential penalties for failing to achieve agreed upon objectives. Take a look at the individuals within these positions to see how they measure up to documented requirements. Task descriptions should contain measurable requirements (defined as numbers, percentages or dates) in addition to descriptive information. Descriptions without requirements and penalties (to underscore accountability) are a waste of time no matter how much management believes that people should see the value of a great individual effort on the collective whole without prodding from above.
7. Strictly enforce HR policies and guidelines.
Flexibility is fine, but low standards eventually permeate every aspect of the organization. Employees should be aware of what you view as acceptable behavior and the consequences of failing to meet that standard.
8. Naysayers will eventually wear down even the most enthusiastic person.
A mechanism for limiting criticism and critique has to be included in the process or decision makers will spend more time dealing with opinions than implementing solutions. A structure that defines the limitations on criticism, the process to have one's critiques heard, and the protocol for implementing resulting suggestions must be built into every strategy or recommendation.
9. The executive suite is no place for project managers.
This is not to say that high-level managers should not be aware of problems facing the business day-in and day-out, but if solutions to these problems require constant involvement at the highest levels, something is seriously wrong. Either there are too many problems diverting the attentions of mid-to-senior level staff, or there is a problem with the quality of the mid-to-senior level staff. Either way, tomorrow is still coming. The higher you are on the organization chart, the more important it is for you to maintain a longer-term vision.
Senior-level managers who find that their main focus is on short-term problems have the authority to force everyone else to focus on the same problems, and they often do, even when they don't want to admit it. Your goal should be to see the future clearly so that you can make the types of decisions today that will avoid problems in the future. Eventually, the delta between the forward thinker and the short-term implementer is reached and your organization will be propelled forward.
10. "Rome wasn't burnt in a night".
Inc. magazine contributor, Norm Brodsky, referred to the syndrome as Groundhog Day. He says, "The most valuable business lessons come from facing up to the habits of mind and ways of thinking that repeatedly get us into trouble." Like most business successes, most business failures do not occur overnight. Don't wait until something gets broken to fix it and be sure that the real problem is being worked on. Often, only the symptoms are repaired while the core illness that is poisoning your organization continues to fester unchecked.
11. Many people actually believe that the need to learn new things ended when they graduated from college.
A policy of connecting self-improvement to career advancement and continued employment is the best way to identify people who are committed to improving themselves. While some will take their newly acquired knowledge and skills onto the open market, designing a work environment that provides incentives to keep people around by empowering them to make themselves better people, will work wonders for the morale of those that remain.
1/9/2004
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