Structuring Your Story How to Develop an Organizational Plan

Provide a Means to Implement Strategies Organizational structure provides an important service as theimplementation activity of your strategies.. His strategywas to hold in place and sur

Structuring Your Story: How

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3 Match headcount to responsibilities.

Figure 9-1 The organizational plan is the platform from which you ture resources and control work.

struc-4 Create a place for employees to experience belonging.

tem-ed together to fight saber-toothtem-ed tigers, they came to a realizationthat working together has more rewards than independent actions

By coordinating the task at hand, more efficient use is made of themob’s total resources From the concept of division of labor camethe next logical step Those groups of labor must be coordinated insome fashion The hunters must be coordinated with the gathererswho must be coordinated with the camp watchers Thus, the prim-itive functions of organizations began

Alfred Sloan of General Motors is given credit for being the first

to really perfect the concept of the corporation as an organizinginstitution He did for organizing management what Henry Forddid for organizing the production line.1 His idea of decentralizedwork under semiautonomous operating units, but with rigid andformal command and control, became the standard of business.Sloan’s concept of having a group of managers formally directingworkers, while cold and impersonal, was quite sophisticated for itstime

Provide a Means to Implement Strategies

Organizational structure provides an important service as theimplementation activity of your strategies Without a structurethere would be no intelligent assembly of resources to carry onwork Julius Caesar understood the concept of organization andstructure in fighting the Celts in northern Europe He observed thatthe Celtic warriors were fierce individual fighters who could be

overwhelming in the first rush of battle More important, he nized that they were not organized as a cohesive fighting unit andtheir energies dissipated as the engagement continued His strategywas to hold in place and survive the onslaught of the first contact.This was accomplished with tight formations of troops with analmost impenetrable structure called the “box formation.” Thisstructure and strategy combination permitted Caesar to use inferiornumbers to defeat much larger forces.2

recog-Match Headcount to Responsibility

A third function of your structure is to match headcount to sibilities This means you use the talents and efforts of all your peo-ple and resources A properly built structure avoids duplication andfragmentation of essential tasks In fact, an economy of effort isachieved because you have enough people to match the tasks andthe right people with the right skills There should be a form oflinkage between who is assigned and what is required This meansyour plan and your operational behaviors are in step

respon-Create a Place Where Employees Feel They

Belong

The fourth purpose of structure is to provide identification, order,and stability People can identify with your structure That’s whycompanies go to great lengths with logos and symbols for internaland external recognition A few years ago people didn’t displaytheir company symbols on their personal items It was not cool to

be known as a company person In fact, some people were not veryproud of their companies Now it is very popular to carry a briefcasewith your company logo discreetly embossed on the side A goodcompany has no trouble getting its employees to wear articles ofclothing displaying its letters or logo

Structure gives a comfort level of order to what could be fusion People like to know where they stand in relationships,power bases, and the general pecking order Where this got out of

con-hand in the traditional structures was the corporate ladder and theneed to climb to the top My father worked for Gulf Oil for thirtyyears His sage advice to me was, “Son, go to college, get yourdegree, and go to work for a big company They will take care of youfor life.” What he meant was, work hard, climb the corporate lad-der, and retire somewhere near the top with a cup of Kool-Aid, agold watch, and a good retirement package

My father’s intent was for me to play the corporate game forthirty-five to forty years Climbing the corporate ladder was thestandard or accepted practice to get ahead in his time Now my chil-dren have no need to play the corporate ladder game because theladder is rapidly becoming a step stool Organizations are tending

to flatten out with fewer and fewer layers There is no ladder toclimb How, then, does a structure attract and encourage youngsupertalent? We know it is not with promises of rewards based ontenure The attractions must be in the quality of work and thepotential for individual contributions

There will always be a segment of the workforce that has a needfor a structure that is the encompassing place to work—everything

is accounted for and controlled Dad was a product of Texas in theearly 1900s when times were tough He knew what it was like tohave holes in the bottom of his cowboy boots To him, a large com-pany was a refuge where he could work hard and be rewarded Hisfuture was secure as long as he remained loyal to Gulf That was themind-set of his generation and how he saw corporate life

Planning must have been easy in traditional work situations.With workforce stability a manager of yesteryear could plan andproject the company structure to infinity It was a simple formula

of growing and doing more of the same There was no need totamper with the organization’s structure except to make it evenbigger

That norm of endless continuity is dead Today my childrenwould laugh at their grandfather’s advice They see themselvesmoving around in their professions and careers as frequently asnecessary to achieve whatever they wish to achieve One of ourdaughters is a computer engineer When she talks about her career

and her challenges, it doesn’t include tenure with her present pany She freely admits expecting to change companies every two

com-to three years with no qualms about moving Her comments com-to meabout loyalty seem to sum it up: “Dad, these companies have noloyalty to their employees They use us, so why shouldn’t we usethem? I know what I’m worth on the market, so why shouldn’t Imove on to use my talents and enjoy the rewards?”

I don’t know if there is a moral judgment to this conversationwith my daughter I do know that managers who build their busi-ness plans on the assumption of a stable workforce with a fixedstructure are in serious trouble from the beginning No longer canorganizational structure be based on the loyalty factor Once itcould be used as an emotional tie by management to the employ-ees Today, companies are reaping the fruits of decades of employ-

ee abuse, mismanagement, and poor relationships If they want alty from these new whiz kids who know how to make computerstalk, then the loyalty is measured in what rewards, compensation,and pay are offered

loy-Control Costs

Your structure should help you determine financial status Whileorganization cost control takes many forms, the most simple is theemployee/profit ratio By clearly accounting for all employees andmatching headcount to profit, you determine a cost or profit ratio

In simple terms, each employee is worth how many dollars in

prof-it This is one simple method to determine how you are doing at themacro level By changing the number of employees you can raisethe ratio in either direction Add more people to do more work oradd more people who become costly overhead Reduce people andyour profit goes up

Profitable companies are catching on to this trick and cuttingout layers of management and employees in the distasteful processcalled downsizing This practice has sociological implications farbeyond the short-term increase in profitability Downsizing getsgreat responses from Wall Street because it looks at short-term prof-

itability Downsizing, however, has a serious effect on employees’morale.

Many years ago a colleague wrote about the concept of theinformal contract Dr T O Jacobs described a tacit understandingbetween employees and management.3 That understanding wassummed up as follows: There are no layoffs when we are profitable.For decades, management honored the unwritten rule Modernmanagement is ignoring this informal contract and reducing thestructures and headcounts during record profit times A twenty-first-century case in point is Standard Charter PLC, a bank with33,000 employees based in Asia, the Middle East, and Africa InAugust 2000 it announced a cut of 20 percent of the workforce Thiswas in spite of improved first-half economics where revenueincreased by 9 percent, pretax profit doubled, and forecasted GDPgrowth was well over 5 percent

This example of breaking the unwritten rules leaves employees

to question the ulterior motives of management Employees seegreed as the management driver with no loyalty to the people whocreated the success and subsequent wealth It further deepens,widens, and anchors the distrust chasm between management andemployees Employees distrust companies that downsize in goodtimes, quickly projecting what will happen when times turn bad While reducing structures does reduce overall costs, care must

be taken to avoid repercussions in other areas One example of atrade-off in reducing headcount by downsizing is the loss of insti-tutional memory There is no way to calculate the damage done toorganizations by the excessive downsizing and subsequent loss ofintellectual capital Don’t make the same mistakes If you plan torestructure, then do it wisely by carefully thinking through whatyou stand to gain or lose

A C AUTION W HEN D EVELOPING S TRUCTURE

Today it is mostly a shell game of revitalizing organizational tures That’s because during the planning process managers simply

struc-move boxes around on the organizational wiring diagram Thisdoesn’t change the core way they support their businesses If yourstructure is not matching strategy, then the structure is out of align-ment Don’t make the fatal mistake of changing the strategy tomeet the structural requirements That is definitely a tail waggingthe dog approach When you develop your business plan, ask toughquestions, such as:

■ Will this structure accomplish my vision?

■ How much of this structure is applied to goal ment?

accomplish-■ How much of this structure is to maintain overhead?

■ How much of this structure is dedicated to long-termdevelopment?

■ How do I need to modify my structure for the short term?

■ What do I need to do to position my resources for futurestructural requirements?

Another false start at organizational restructuring is thinkingthat improving the processes solves all problems Improvingprocesses may simply mean improving a bad process that actuallyshould be removed Let’s not take our businesses through anothergeneration of reengineering Most astute managers are aware thatreengineering is a dismal failure as a management concept It is syn-onymous with getting rid of people to bring up the stock prices It

is usually done in one functional area at the expense of other tional processes or the total business I doubt if we could find ahandful of companies that looked at reengineering the total organ-ization from top to bottom in one strategic move Instead of reengi-neering your company, scrutinize your structure and look foranswers to these questions:

func-■ Has duplication of effort been eliminated?

■ Is there fragmentation of tasks?

■ Is the right person doing the work?

■ Is all work being done that should be done?

■ Is any unnecessary work being done?

T HE S IX C RITICAL P ARTS OF A S UCCESSFUL

O RGANIZATIONAL S TRUCTURE

We need a template for organizational structure that answers to tain traditional values yet stays modern enough to be viable in thenew millennium The model must answer tough questions andconcerns businesspeople bring up during the transitional period ofbusiness chaos The future structure must accomplish several things

cer-to make it acceptable among businesspeople, especially those line managers who have seen it all over the years

hard-There are at least six dimensions of the template that the ture must support:

struc-1 Control Allow management, who is ultimately

responsi-ble, to have some form of control over the businessprocesses and the expected results

2 Accountability Someone must ultimately be accountable.

Don’t say teams, because that just doesn’t happen.Empowerment can be used for the mass of employees, buteventually a single manager must be held accountable tothe system

3 Rapid Response Long lead times are not acceptable.

Organizations must become accustomed to playing by therule of first on the scene with the most value wins themedal

4 High Performance There will always be low-, medium-, and

high-performing companies That’s the nature of statisticsand the law of averages If you want to be a world-classorganization, your structure must be designed to deliverabove and beyond the norm It must be geared to highperformance

5 Correct Decision Taking A future structure must permit all

levels of people to make decisions at points in time sary for the situations Decentralized decisions become thenorm of the day

neces-6 Accurate Analysis A business case or competitive analysis

that must work its way from the bottom of an tion to the top, survive multiple political edits, and beinfluenced by managers with vested interests in the find-ings is no longer acceptable in real time Managers must

organiza-be able to access information, sort the load, and do cable analysis of their business situations To have lag timebecause of systems or structural reporting causes an organ-ization to be noncompetitive

impec-T HE S IX F ACTORS T HAT S HAPE H OW Y OUR

O RGANIZATIONAL S TRUCTURE O PERATES

Most people don’t know the difference between a fairy tale and awar story The former begins with “Once upon a time .” The lat-ter begins with, “No joke, there I was surrounded by all these badguys.” I’m going to tell you a war story to illustrate the require-ments for any future organizational structure to operate in a fast-breaking manner

During the middle of 1967, my Infantry company was

extract-ed from an ongoing battle on the Saigon River and flown by copter to a free-fire zone in the southern part of Vietnam, far out-side our normal operating zone The local friendly forces were inpursuit of a large unit of enemy bad guys The plan was to use myunit of about 110 soldiers as a blocking force while the enemy reg-iment was being pushed south

heli-We moved into position and coordinated with the

command-er by radio in the middle of the night The next day, as the battlecontinued, the enemy didn’t retreat in a southern direction asexpected but instead repeatedly turned inside the maneuver box

The battle area covered many square miles, so we attempted tochannel the enemy’s movements My company was committed tobeing dropped immediately in front of the enemy forces to keepthem from turning in the wrong direction This is much the same

as cowboys herding cattle, except we were moved around by copter instead of horses and the cattle were shooting back

heli-This movement by helicopter is known in military language as

a combat assault One such assault a day can be physically ing, especially depending on what happens when you jump out ofthe helicopter If it is a cold landing zone (a term for no action onthe ground when you are dropped off), it’s not so bad It becomes adifferent matter when the landing zone is hot We made nine suchcombat assaults in one day Sometimes they were hot and some-times they were not In three days we went from over a hundredsoldiers to fifty-six

demand-During that time we didn’t have the luxury to regroup, rethink,and refit the organization There was no time I briefed my platoonleaders in the air and on the way to the next set of grid coordinates,which was only a spot on a map Often those subordinate leaderswere not the same people who were in the leadership position fromthe last assault They may not be on the radio the next time either,

so continuity of planning and thinking would be lost

What is the organizational structure message learned from thisstory? How can a combat company carry on its mission with asteady attrition of its leaders and its men? At what point does thecommander lose combat effectiveness? How does the commanderrestructure to keep the mission going when dealing with seeming-

ly impossible scenarios?

I never want to do that story again, and I doubt you will ever

be faced with nine business situations of that nature in one day.However, from this compressed example we should be able toextract lessons learned and make observations for business applica-tions I identify a minimum of six key factors that influence andguide a business leader in shaping the structure and carrying themission in this situation:

1 A Common Enemy A well-known leadership technique is

to find a rally point or common enemy for the company

to rally against Steven Jobs knew this when he walked out

on the stage at meetings with a sweatshirt that read, “BeatBig Blue.” A common enemy is what forms the challenge.The enemy doesn’t have to be a person It can be over-whelming conditions, difficult situations, or impossibleodds A common enemy eliminates petty issues betweenand among structural elements and causes them to worktogether

2 A Dangerous Situation Complacency is fatal Lethargy sets

in to create bad management habits Perhaps a little sion is needed to rally the organization In stress manage-ment, we know that some stress is good It is calledeustress as opposed to the bad stresses—hypostress anddistress Perhaps we need a little eustress superimposedover our structure to make it function more cohesively.When a company faces an outside threat that could bedangerous to it as a whole, the tendency is for the struc-ture to become more cohesive Teamwork becomes thenorm as long as there is danger from outside

ten-3 A Trained Workforce A deteriorating structure requires a

group of well-trained people In times of reengineering,downsizing, and cutbacks, intellectual capital is lost This

is not good for the long term because certain institutionalmemories and requisite skill sets are lost to the organiza-tion Time needed to reacquire those basic functions iscostly in terms of immediate expenditures and potentialdollars lost A trained and skilled workforce is necessary tomaintain fiscal health in times of an organization’s struc-tural fluctuation

4 A High Level of Trust Leaders only lead because of a certain

level of trust, which works both ways As a leader, I musttrust you to get the job done if empowerment is in effect

On the other hand, you must trust me as a company