Core values, principles, and better communication
Act One, Scene One: The Org Chart
Fade in: the Chief Boss Executive, Dave, stands in front of a whiteboard in a corporate conference room. The whiteboard is covered with a hand-drawn, elaborate organizational chart full of boxes and lines, names and job titles, and notes about the diagram’s complicated structure.
Pull back to reveal a room full of executives slumped in chairs. Many are staring into the screens of their phones, others are typing vigorously on laptops, and a few are staring off into space.
Cut to a close-up of Dave’s hand drawing dotted lines between several boxes while a voiceover explains, “For the time being, we will have Marty report to Jane but keep a dotted line structure to John.”?
Cut to Jane and John Doe, no relation, exchanging glances.
Cut to a closeup of the exasperated face of an executive who mouths, “A dotted line matrix?!”
Cut to a close-up of Marty slumped in his chair, head in his hands.
Pull back to reveal the whole room, and then slow zoom to the whiteboard, which is now a cluttered mess of solid lines overlapping dotted lines.
Cut to a ground-level view of the whiteboard, looking over the shoulder of a woman sitting in the back of the room. The camera pulls back until we can see the back of the woman’s head as she slowly raises her hand.
Cut to Dave drawing yet more lines between boxes on the whiteboard. The woman clears her voice from the back of the room, “Aherm.”
Pan to the executive’s face. He looks annoyed as he turns his attention to the woman at the back of the room.?
Cut back to the view of Dave from behind the woman, her hand still raised. From a distance, we see him raise a single eyebrow.
The camera pans around the woman, stopping on a tight closeup of Debra’s face.
Cut back to Jane and John Doe, no relation, exchanging another glance.
A dual screen appears: Dave on the left and Debra on the right.
Pull back slowly while a murmur erupts in the room, with various executives chiming in.
Cut back to Dave, the Chief Boss Executive, with a giant smudge of dry-erase marker on his left cheek. He motions with two hands, palms facing down, for everyone to remain calm.
Pull back to see the whole room in chaos. Executives in groups of twos and threes are gesticulating wildly and talking over one another while the Chief Boss Executive vainly tries to restore order.
Cut to Debra’s empty chair, swiveling.
Fade to black.
Organizational woes
Most companies create a reporting structure when they mean to design a communication flow.?
When your team is small, communication is simple. When something needs doing, people talk to one another and get it done. Slowly, team members specialize and delineate their responsibilities. Communication gets a little more complicated, but you’ve hired smart, competent people, and they figure it out.?
Later, reporting structures substitute for communication strategies as new members join and the team grows. The substitution shouldn’t come as a surprise.
We expand our teams to solve problems the existing team lacks the capacity or capabilities to solve. When that expansion reaches a certain pace, companies add a human resources function to supervise the expansion and make sure we follow laws and regulations. The demands of human resources mean appointing hiring managers. The hiring manager writes a job description and posts it. The job description advertises the skills that solve the problem you’ve encountered and adds the missing skills or capacity to your team.
New team members rely on their hiring managers to help them get started, figure out the job, and learn what they need to know to be effective contributors. We call those team members individual contributors. Without specific intent, you’ve established a hierarchy in your org, which is now comprised of managers–who have more responsibilities–and individual contributors–who concentrate on narrower areas of responsibility.
I’ve never purposely designed a communication style based on a hierarchy and told people, “Before you talk to me, make sure to talk to your manager, and have her talk to her manager, and have her manager talk to me.”?
I hold strong core values–openness, honesty, and transparency–contrary to that communication style. These principles are the foundations of the operating model I enact in my teams. I expect people to communicate with clarity, consistency, and transparency. I gather the team to write down core principles to guide our operating model and encourage them to follow those expectations.
Nonetheless, some of my teams still developed communication channels more closely resembling our org chart than my principles-based ideal.?
Consider the figure below. The intent is clear: All team members should be on an equal footing when communicating, sharing information, solving problems, or giving and receiving feedback. The team’s structure evolved slowly into something disconnected from that intent.
Organizations evolve. Some team members talk to one another more than others, perhaps driven by something as simple as the day-to-day demands of their job’s responsibilities. At first, it may appear as though communication is flowing organically and efficiently across the organization. Conversational expedience deepens the grooves, and soon, a telltale symptom emerges: managers spend more time than they’d like repairing miscommunications and adjudicating disputes.?
Here, I assume good intent from all participants, but the reality is sooner or later, you will hire two people who don’t like each other. In the past, I let these mismatches linger within my teams. Now, I recommend making the tough decision to let one of them go, usually the one I have to spend the most time convincing to cooperate with the other.?
Nothing is stronger than a team who genuinely like each other.
Focus on communication, not organizational structure
I’ve succumbed to the temptation to fix my team’s communication issues by making organizational changes and tinkering with roles and responsibilities...