When presented with a problem a common response is to rush to action. Drill right in to a solution and then move on. But that is often the wrong thing to do. It certainly is when considering something as vital as organizational design.
Peter Drucker understood this: “We have learned that the first step is not designing an organization structure, that is the last step.” His concern was that managers first carefully consider what he called the “’structural load’ of the final edifice.”
But what are structural loads? What is it that we want the organizational design to help carry for us, to facilitate and promote the advancement of? Drucker speaks of previous efforts to define these as activities, traditionally differentiated according to the sort of work they did within the organization.
A better way, he argued, is to look at them according to the sort of contribution they make. This casts them in a wholly new light, so that we are able to understand both them – and the organizational design they suggest – more effectively.
But it does something else. It forces on us a new delay, another step to accomplish before we can go in to action in solving our organizational design problem: that is, in order to understand the contribution of the various actions we engage in, we need to affirm the strategy to which they presumably make those contributions.
And that is the key, so infrequently crafted but so indispensable, to effective organizational design. “Structure,” Drucker insisted, simply, “follows strategy.” After all, structure is, itself, merely another contributor to organizational purpose, and thus must accord with the strategy developed for achieving it.
Any assumption about the single best organizational design, or even the best general approach to the topic, is essentially mechanistic – whether it is about regimented hierarchies or free-form structures – if it doesn’t arise from recourse to strategy and the facilitation and integration of its members’ activities and contributions.
Drucker argued that an organization is a social structure intended to accomplish a strategic aim. As for the design determined upon to facilitate that, “Human performance,” he stressed, “is its goal and its test.”
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Today’s tip: Please stop over to Wally Bock‘s Three Star Leadership to see what he identifies as the “money quote” from a recent Carol Hymowitz column in the WSJ.
Please also see these contrasting reports on the progress women are making in the workplace – Management-Issues finds reason for concern in recent research, while John Agno discovers more positive news from the ranks of government.
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Technorati Tags: organizational design, organization, manager, strategy, Wally Bock, Three Star Leadership, Carol Hymowitz, WSJ, women, workplace, Management-Issues, John Agno, government, Peter Drucker
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4 Comments
Jim,
As you point out, Drucker focused much attention on structure, on which parts of the organization had power over the others. Drucker considered this was the key to business success.
Unfortunately for Drucker, the key to success in any company is its people and if they have the power, not certain elements of the structure, they will make the structure support the work. Drucker always had the cart before the horse by making the people support the structure. Huge mistake.
Best regards, Ben
Author “Leading People to be Highly Motivated and Committed”
Drucker’s genius was in his ability to find patterns among seemingly unconnected disciplines and to focus on opportunities rather than problems. Asked how he came up with so many original insights, Drucker said, “I learn only through listening,” pausing, “to myself.”
It was never Drucker’s style to bring people clear, concise answers to their problems but rather to frame questions that could uncover the larger issues standing in the way of performance. “My job,” he once lectured a client, “is to ask questions. It’s your job to provide answers.”
The “organization follows function” discussion here should make sense to those engaged in corporate leadership.
A leader’s job is to rally people toward a better future. Leaders can’t help but change the present, because the present isn’t good enough. They succeed only when they find a way to make people excited by and confident in what comes next.
Hello Ben,
It is true that Drucker had a tendency to approach the great problems faced by the relatively new and revolutionary profession of management from an abstract perspective – distinctly different from that held by many managers who work shoulder to shoulder with their staff and who perhaps came up from the ranks, themselves.
While he worked with executives of all types and organizations of all sizes, much of his conceptual thinking was on a scale that made it seem practical to find ways to lessen the load on managers by developing systems that help them and their staffs advance the corporate mission without impeding it.
Approaching the issue from that direction may seem to lend an indifferent attitude toward people that I doubt Drucker actually felt. Further, such systemic thinking lends itself to both cynical rhetorical exploitation and misapplication by practicing management teams.
But one great example of how the two (systems and the powerful expression of individual talent) is in Drucker’s celebration of how hospitals automatically organize multi-disciplinary teams around the “customer” – teams which form, dissolve, and reshape themselves according to the unfolding nature of the relationship.
Your perspective on this forces good thinking and reexamination of personal experience and received wisdom – thanks!
Hi John,
I absolutely agree that Drucker’s great talent was in generating penetrating questions. He used these to drive past irrelevant distractions and to drill down to the core issues. As a result, the questions he asked executives tended to provide the clarity they so desperately (but futilely) sought in ready-made answers.
The bit about him listening to himself may refer to his contemplation of the answers he received to his questions, his search in those answers for patterns and connections that could help him frame his next question.
Your elaboration of the constant drive for change being due to the fact that “the present isn’t good enough” points to a constructive corporate paranoia that helps to dispel complacency and maintain the struggle for both increased opportunities and efficiencies.
Thanks so much for stopping by with this!
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