Organisational structure – Discovering what works best

Different structures work for different organisations.

This sounds like a truism, but it’s important to remember that there isn’t a prescribed formula for an efficient organisational structure. Company size, industry and maturity will each affect the method of internal collaboration between employees and departments.

As businesses grow, it is most often the case that the ‘chain-of-command’ becomes more complex. Particular issues with this can be that there are an excessive amount of middle management layers that slow productivity, or communication between different departments is insufficient.

With each organisation working to the beat of its own drum, it’s difficult to suggest what will work best for your business. Therefore, what follows are some suggestions of good practices, which I’ve found are beneficial to developing companies…

A limiting mindset – ‘You’re out of touch’

Growing businesses naturally tend to restrict the availability of their senior leadership team. As they assume more strategic roles, their involvement with the nitty-gritty everyday activities reduces. For employees who have worked in these organisations through this evolution, this can often be frustrating.

Whilst I generally advocate leaders taking an overseer approach, it’s vital they do not lose sight of the ‘organisational truth.’ By this I mean, their opinion on company performance should not be solely based on the others’ observations, e.g. reports, conversations with management. Assessing current situations first-hand is essential for a full understanding.

A missing element – Fostering leadership

Overloads can occur in a business that has an insufficient number of leaders. More than the title of a job role, leadership is a state of mind that can be developed with encouragement. Having people across your organisation who are well equipped to deal with a variety of challenges, as well as possessing the skillset to guide others, is attainable if you nurture the following attributes:

1.  Engagement – People know when they’re not trusted to perform a specific job. Empowering them will increase their engagement and consequently, they are more likely to deliver a successful outcome.

2.  Confidence – Don’t let people become followers. It’s easy to sit back and let others be accountable, but the best employees are those that are willing to ‘stick their neck out.’ By delegating tasks and conducting proper training, you will create a more confident workforce.

3.  Competence – Companies with more leaders have greater agility. Simple as. If you have a group of people, each willing to share their skills, activities will not only be done much quicker, but also to a far higher standard.

Ensuring your employees possess these three attributes may require an investment in time, money and effort, but this is an investment that will certainly pay-off longer term.

A different perspective – Project mentality

In my experience as a coach, I have found that an effective way to get the best from people is to create a project mentality.

Making an activity seem like a project means setting short-term goals and assigning specific tasks to specific people. Short-term targets will make sure the initiative is being assessed regularly, as well as providing regular, gratifying pay-offs for the participant. Tailoring each task to the correct employees will make them exclusively accountable and see that their unique skillset is utilised. If the activity in question is complex, I would advocate spreading the workload over your departments, to further open communication and cooperation between them.

One of the key benefits of setting projects is a leader can oversee a number of different projects at a time, thus increasing efficiency.

Don’t feel pressured to structure your business in a traditional way. What’s important is you extract the optimal results from those around you and how best to do this will likely take some time to discover. However, once you’ve found your magic formula, this will shape every process, task and success your company experiences form there on out.

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