Chapter 2: What Should a Re/Org Achieve When Done the Right Way?
Re/organization has often been limited to changes in the organization chart, making improvements or implementing solutions to problems. This chapter will emphasize the added value of achieving transparency and assuring continuous improvement as part of any re/org.
The Paramount Goals of a Re/Org Should Be Work Alignment, Transparency, and Continuous Improvement
The paramount reason to re/organize is to assure that everything in the enterprise works together—is in alignment. You want the new structure to achieve business goals using defined strategies, by people who explicitly know their responsibilities and are well-managed or self-driven. Anything less will be a waste of time and resources and is unlikely to maximize efficiency or effectiveness, let alone both.
You might wonder why we regularly use both "re/organize" and "organize" at the same time in the form of "re/organize." It is our contention that if the enterprise were organized correctly in the first place, re/organizing would not be needed except for an occasional tweaking.
Organizing the right way from the start, especially in the case of a new enterprise, is rare. Instead, businesses tend to start and grow spontaneously and in a highly reactive mode.
Once established, the enterprise finds that new technology or other business needs emerge, demanding that processes and organization change. More production is needed, so additional resources are added; nobody seems to be managing this or that function, so someone is put in charge. A new product line or support task is added—not necessarily planned in relation to already existing functions. The number of employees expands, and everyone's feeling of knowing what's going on or being valued diminishes. Perks, processes or people are eliminated without regard to their impact on those left in place. Expectations grow, and tensions mount. Skilled, highly experienced people leave; they are replaced with new, perhaps less experienced ones, accustomed to different, possibly ill-fitting procedures, costing productivity and client satisfaction. The worker pool ages, and their experience and knowledge are not captured to assure ongoing success. Management gets distant. The culture begins to "smell." If the business had been well-organized from the beginning, it would have had the resilience to accommodate major and minor changes. That's the "org" part. Re/org tries to solve the problems created after an organization has moved from start-up, or has been in existence for a long period of time, experiencing problems similar to those mentioned above. Or a merger, acquisition or other major change occurs. Next thing you know, it's time to re/organize; tweaks will not work, because there are simply too many problems to solve.
Being organized the right way meets three needs:
Alignment
Transparency
Continuous Improvement
These three needs can be achieved using a single, repeatable, systematic process in which the goals are considered equal and consistent with one another. Otherwise, they cause separately programmed approaches and are weakened because the organization is approached in piecemeal fashion.
This chapter is a succinct introduction to alignment, transparency, and continuous improvement as they relate to any enterprise. The remaining chapters will describe how these paramount re/organization needs can be achieved together.
Alignment
Traditionally, alignment has referred to making sure that goals, strategies and tactics build on one another. This is obviously necessary to overall enterprise success. But an additional kind of alignment is needed as well. Alignment, as used here, relates much more to work execution within the organization. At its very core, it is the alignment of everything that can be described as the work. The alignment includes coordinating:
WHAT the business is/wants to be as an enterprise; with
HOW the work is or will be done; with
WHO is performing or will perform the work; in a matrix of how the workers are or will be ORGANIZED to work together and be managed/ facilitated, and
SUPPORTED by a "healthy culture" in which the work can be optimized.
The first four (WHAT, HOW, WHO, ORGANIZATION) will be known as the "levels" of work (according to the Language of Work ModelTM); the fifth (ORGANIZATIONAL SUPPORT) is a critical "layer" of work as it relates to re/organization. All levels and the layer must be aligned with one another. The only way to achieve this is with a model of work that defines work in a similar way and makes that work understandable to everyone in the enterprise. Additionally, with the same model of work being used, transparency will naturally exist, and change and continuous improvement will regularly, systematically and systemically occur.
Transparency
The second reason to get organized the right way is the need for transparency. Transparency is a relatively new concept for business, because business has traditionally been viewed as a hierarchical structure in which the executives supposedly know everything and the workers just do as they're told! Such a view still persists in some measure, but it is gradually changing, through the introduction of such concepts as teamwork, Six Sigma, participative management, certain innovations in computer "dashboard software" to plan and track work, and the like.
Transparency refers to the extent that everyone unambiguously understands what is going on in the business operationally relative to business intent. At the lowest rank, transparency tells you how well your department is doing and what your specific contribution is. Transparency tells the various work groups their exact relationship and how their work output is another's work input. Transparency expands to your knowing how well everything in the business is being done, and how you can contribute to making anything else in the company work better. Sometimes not even the smallest of businesses today can boast such transparency. Instead, the important stuff is known only by those who are in power positions, such as executives, managers, specialists and team leaders. And even when those in the work force in general know their own arena fairly well, they usually don't know what others know. In the truly transparent business, everyone knows what everyone else knows, and anyone can help to make the business better.
It is not just protection of power bases that causes the lack of true transparency. There is often also a lack of transparency because, to date, there hasn't been a structured way for everyone to look at work communally, a common model of work that defines the business operationally (at every level and layer), allowing everyone to understand what is going on and identify problems and solutions together.
Continuous Improvement
Finally, in achieving the ultimately well-organized enterprise, continuous improvement has recently been recognized as a necessity. How to achieve that continuous improvement has mostly taken the form of add-on institutionalized programs (e.g., Total Quality Program Initiatives, Six Sigma) or programs such as process reengineering and Lean Manufacturing. As useful as these have proven themselves, they are not integrated with alignment and transparency as a permanent part of the ongoing work system.
The three principles just described for righting the enterprise are not separate functions in a well-run enterprise. Rather, the three should be integrated and ongoing. To do so will require a method that is an integrated extension of alignment and transparency.
The question to ask about getting organized (or re/organized) is simple:
"What can be done to attain alignment, transparency and continuous improvement so that the means for getting organized and doing work encompasses all three?"
Successfully answering this question will mean that numerous full-blown, disruptive re/organizations are rarely needed again. The enterprise will be continuously organized for maximum effectiveness and efficiency.