Prescriptions for Achieving Outstanding and Sustainable Results

By understanding a simple model of  three stages of organizational growth, organizations can design themselves to move beyond chaos to high performance.

The Transformation Model reduces the vast complexity of an organization to seven key variables that must be understood and aligned for a business to be successful.  Alignment implies a holistic or systems point of view that finds the best "fit" between all organizational elements.

Whatever happened to the matrix organization? About thirty years ago, this form of management became very popular, with companies such as Citibank, Dow-Corning, Nestle, Xerox, IBM, HP and ABB in the forefront of its implementation. The two-boss structure that was the essence of the matrix organization was seen as addressing the challenge of balancing functional units and other organizational groupings (e.g., geography, customer groups, product groups, technology, etc.). Thus, for example, the head of Marketing for a country organization would report both to the country general manager as well as to a regional or global Marketing leader.

We’ve all heard that there are only two things we can count on for certain: death and taxes. But anyone who has ever lost a job, suffered from a personal challenge, or kept an eye on the stock market of late can tell you, there’s a third certainty that can be added to that list: setbacks.

Setbacks, quite frankly, happen - and they happen to everyone.

A great deal of writing on leadership today focuses on the capabilities and behaviors formal leaders of large divisions or enterprises need to be effective.  We read about such important characteristics as transparency, vision, authenticity, and optimism, and behaviors such as setting big, hairy, audacious goals (BHAGs).  These are no doubt critical, but many firms have been increasingly relying on teams to help solve business problems and drive results, and leaders of these teams need other things.  Teams are not a new trend.  However, based on my experience working for several different Fortune 500 companies, what’s different about many teams today are the following:

Organizational design is a step-by-step methodology which identifies dysfunctional aspects of work flow, procedures, structures and systems, realigns them to fit current business realities/goals and then develops plans to implement the new changes. The process focuses on improving both the technical and people side of the business.

Leadership requires articulating and promoting a sense of shared vision within an organization. Chief executives develop a successful image of their companies and then rally efforts to realize that expectation. They see their own company at the top of a list of ranked competitors or they envision rising stock value that reflects their hard-earned triumph. Yet, a shared vision is most effective at inspiring motivation and commitment when it chases an attainment bigger than the institution itself. If an organization seeks to grow and improve, it must do so by fixing its sight beyond the novelty of its own existence.

Do people resist change, and if so, why?  There are those (e.g., Tom Peters, “Liberation Management”) who argue that change is actually easy and that people do it all the time.  There are many others (e.g., Alan Deutschman, “Change or Die”), who argue that change is difficult and that even when faced with the prospect of death, many people will not give up their unhealthy habits.  And in organizations, many of us have experienced the difficulties that organizational leaders have in dealing with resistance.

Stephen Wozniak and Steve Jobs started Apple Computer Corp. in the latter’s garage, of all places, hocking personal items to capitalize their budding company. Now, the iconic organization employs over 35,000 people worldwide. Pierre Omidyar hired his first employee for what would become eBay in 1996. The company not only weathered the dot-com bust, it enjoyed remarkable profitability under Meg Whitman’s leadership. Yet, explosive growth is often messy.

As companies mature – especially those that mature quickly – unnecessary bloat often masks as necessary expansion. Some divisions metastasize. Executive titles proliferate and generate a top-heavy (often heavy-handed) corporate culture. The structure becomes unsustainable, illogical, and inefficient. Objective intervention must reverse the existential threat to your organization.

A Leadership Paradigm

There are probably hundreds of definitions of leadership. However, at its essence, leadership is influencing others to accomplish results. Leadership is not so much about what you do and accomplish on your own. It is about what you are able to help others accomplish. It is about how you are able to influence other people to raise their level of performance to new and better heights and contribute more than they previously thought possible.

I learned about the importance of involving people in making decisions (as well as teamwork) many years ago when managing a group of 13 HR specialists in a 2000 person electronics company. The welcome I received after being hired as HR director was not exactly warm. The staff was upset their previous boss was gone and that a new, young manager was brought in to replace him. One who didn’t have HR experience to boot.

Helping Businesses Reach Their Full Potential: A White Paper from The Center for Organizational Design

Infusions of cash and capital will come as consumer/investor confidence recovers, but what measures will you take to revitalize morale and an environment of trust within your company? The economy’s damage to your bottom line seems obvious enough. What about the damage to employees’ relationships with their leaders and coworkers?

Some business owners, leaders and managers have denigrated the value of people by referring to them as expendable assets instead of contributing individuals. While the denotation of “human capital” remains innocent enough, the term’s connotation echoes master-servant ideology.

Consider how terminology referring to people in the workplace fluctuates between various levels of respect:

Companies that learn from economic crises will emerge stronger and better-positioned as industry leaders.

Carlos has recently been appointed as a new supervisor of production. His feelings about his new job are mixed. He loved working on the floor and had a good relationship with his co-workers. He wasn’t sure he wanted all the responsibility and hassles of being a supervisor and how it might change his relationship with his former peers.

When world economies rebound from this recessionary beating, will your company be positioned to set full-sail into the upturn’s prosperous winds? On world, national, and enterprise levels, financial medics have repeatedly defibrillated the sources of lifeblood for economic health. As consumers and investors express progressive confidence in these measures and contraction turns to expansion, we’ll all take stock to see which companies made the cut.

One of my happiest memories from my childhood was climbing up onto the lap of a parent or grandparent and reading a story. Reading childhood stories was a way I bonded with my loved ones. It was entertaining. And it was a way I learned valuable lessons of life.

Commitment can be thought of as my intention to produce a result. The result could be something as simple as showing up for a meeting on time or as complex as starting a new business. Commitment is the bridge between my vision (what I want) and reality (what is). It is how I translate my vision into reality.

A client recently shared a story with me that represents an important lesson in understanding technological change.

In spite of our amazing technological advances, the work of an organization is accomplished by people. People interface with the customer, make the product, deliver the service, plan and coordinate how work gets done, improve processes and systems, ensure quality standards, and return a profit. Technology has provided us with better tools and made us far more efficient and productive. But it is still people who do the work of an organization and are ultimately responsible for its success.

A number of years ago I was a member of a senior executive team that failed to come to consensus on the strategy of the business. This experience was a powerful example of how important it is for people to learn to talk openly and the severe consequences when we don’t.