Common Mistakes in Designing Structures

Principle 

A management structure must be designed to ensure there will be coherent responses to unspecified contingencies. This can only be achieved by specifying progressive contexts, with managerial roles providing control and accountability for each.

In an enlightened era, all organizational charts will show boxes within THEE work-levels. The following issues would then become obvious and call out for immediate remedy.

Roles on the Line

A common finding when explaining the levels of work responsibility to a manager is to be told that their job is "on the line" i.e. their role overlaps two adjacent work levels. This occurs because their work has been intuitively specified in terms of «results» or «tasks» or «actions to take», not general responsibilities to be carried and interpreted.

Any task has both a context and a content component which must be handled at different work-levels.
More on Context and Content

• Context includes: the need for the task, relevant priorities and policies, and special parameters like deadlines, resources, methods, liaison and integration.
• Content refers to: the specific performance in specific circumstances using available resources.

It is unsatisfactory and often impossible for you to make the contextual decisions for your work within an organization.
Why?

• Because you will always determine contextual factors to make performance easier or more convenient for yourself, or you will adjust performance to suit the context that you have control over.
• You share your context with other managers at your level. It is not sensible to have multiple decisions about the same context, nor is it feasible to get agreement in the group.
• Your key contextual issues often cannot be discussed. Your so-called boss will operate in a different world of action and be unsympathetic or unavailable—growling "bring me solutions not problems!".

Management of tasks, activities and performance is certainly a relevant concern. It will be examined in the Dyads of the structural hierarchy dealing with the organisation of management-PH'5Q2sH.

Omitting a Level of Work

Every single member of staff should have a line-manager working one level above.

In many situations, this is easy and obvious. In some smaller divisions or departments it is more tricky and people often seem to be floating untethered to the management system.

In some cases, it becomes evident that a level of work-responsibility has been omitted, and line management is being expected to stretch over two work-levels.

The simplest case is where both the subordinate and the distant line-manager are in posts appropriate for their capability. The subordinate does not have a context being properly set, and floats undirected. The distant manager then gets dragged down to do that work, but simply lacks the time, and often the interest, to do it well. Sometimes the manager may also lack the necessary knowledge and expertise.

The impact on the organization depends on which work-level is omitted.
Detail

• Omission of WL2 means insufficient judgement being applied to cases and situations leading to blow-ups and poor use of front-line staff.
• Omission of WL3 means lack of control over quality and efficiency leading to waste and complaints, crises due to missing or poor procedures, system failures and morale problems.
• Omission of WL4 means change does not happen properly or at all, revenue targets are missed, cost-blowouts occur, services deteriorate.
• Omission of WL5 means an absence of necessary strategy, no drive for innovation, financial problems, poor structures and a dysfunctional culture.
• Omission of WL6 means an absence of guidance required to deal with socially-sensitive or commercially-critical choices.

Structuring Extra Levels

Because of confusions between pay-grades and levels of work/management, it is not uncommon for line-management to be set up in a level that does not exist as a proper context for the level below.

This can happen multiple times within the organization's structure e.g. instead of 4 levels of line-management, there may be 6 or 7 levels.

Application of the levels of work framework will then reveal that some managers and subordinates are actually carrying the same level of work-responsibility.

Because this does not provide for the necessary separation of context and content, it will cause many problems, as described earlier.

Creating Incoherent Positions

Roles may be created that combine work at two distinct levels. As lower level work is more urgent (even if often less important), the person is dragged down to get it done. Often, that occurs because the necessary tools and relationships for the higher level are not provided. Many examples of level-specific requirements were provided earlier.

If all relevant features of an assigned level of work are not explicitly provided for, the person in role will be frustrated. It is like working with one hand tied behind your back.

A common reason for not assigning tools (e.g. budgets, right to attend meetings, dedicated support staff &c.) is because the amount of work required in the post is judged to be too small. In such cases, the lower salary may have only attracted a lower level candidate in any case.

The end-result is frustration all around.

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• Return to the list of additional perspectives.

Originally posted: 8-Feb-2014