Organizational Structure and Alignment

Clients frequently ask me about the hot issues other clients are facing, and this week was no different. There are usually common themes, like the return to the office (which I will come back to in subsequent weeks), but this week I wanted to share with you what Forrest & Company recently keeps getting brought into – organizational structure.

Organizational structure challenges take many forms. They range from questions about how the organizational chart should be structured, all the way down to how to get the best work and flow from our teams. The common denominator in all of these, though, is about structuring work.

I believe the reason it is hot right now is some of the following:

• We need to improve our effectiveness – we are not hitting our targets
• We need to get better efficiency from the resources we have
• We are unclear because our teams are working hybrid, and we have not clarified the work well enough
• We aren’t sure we have the right talent to hit our goals
• Are our teams just forming together and learning how to work with each other?
• We need to align ourselves with a new Strategy or Operational Plans?
• We realise the employee body didn’t understand the Strategy before, or even their role in it

All of these are about how we align people to work. Clients come to us because they often don’t have a framework for how they structure the work. We have seen, in many cases, that the decisions on structure often happen gradually over time without any real conscious thought, or have been rooted in intuitive cases overlaid with title and compensation frameworks. In other words, they have assumed that titles mean something and that compensation frameworks are the foundation of good structure.

People also come to us, however, because we use the science of Human Capability as the foundation and the need to align structure to Strategy, not Strategy to the Structure. The principles we use are sound, and they form the criteria for making decisions on how to align people to the Strategy.

As I outline in my book, the premise is that the structure defines what roles are accountable for (the work) and they are derived from the Strategy. In turn, once defined, it is a matter of matching the right person for the role as best as possible based on their capability. Accountability is the key – whose role is to make decisions and use their skills, judgement, and discretion to figure out how to complete the role.?

Equally important is to define what authority that role has over others. Accountability without authority is unfair and, conversely, authority without accountability is dangerous.?

We use accountability to identify what sort of authority is required. This is key work and, while many clients often use the Project Management tool of RACI (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed), its role is to curtail open responsibility. Instead, we go much deeper to explore and, most importantly, clarify what authority people have over others and what support they can get in doing their work. By doing this, we can unleash the innate capability of those who work for us all in the effort to deliver the Strategy. After all, authority represents to all of us the legitimated power to control our world.

The aim of all of this is to help others create great places to work that deliver the Strategy, but that needs to be done through the power of structured work.?

So, take a moment and ask yourself these questions:

• How clear are my people on what is expected of them?
• Do they know who to go to in order to get support?
• Do they know their ability to confront mixed work priorities amongst peers?
• Do they know whose decision it really is in their work?
• Do they know who can call them to a meeting?

These are all the hallmarks of authority, and form the foundation of real Role Clarity which, while always being critical, is doubly important in these more chaotic days to helping organizations achieve their Strategy.