The Pizza Organization

The traditional organizational chart has its roots in the military and was adopted as a method of organizing companies during the industrial revolution, showing the status and power relationships between people.

Those are the organizing principles: Status and Power. Does this still make sense in the 21st century?

The modern organization is a lot more fluid than the rigid military structures of the past. It is time for modern organizations to re-evaluate the way they look at themselves and represent themselves in the world, especially now during the time of COVID-19 when organizations are grappling with work-from-home and remote work models.

In a hierarchy, there is no space for the customer. 

Companies usually profess that "client focus" is an important part of their being and yet, we don’t “see” this statement anywhere in the organizational structure. The pizza organization takes care of this and puts the strategic intent of the company and the customer at the centre.

This forces people to justify every role in the organization in terms of the value it creates for the customer, not to satisfy some internal requirements.

Leadership is an enablement function and should be depicted as such.

The organizing principle of a pizza organization is the value chain created for customers, instead of the power and status relationships between employees.

The pizza structure enables the following:

• It naturally enables thinking from a customer experience perspective.
• Everyone can see where they fit in to serve the customer and to achieve the strategic intent of the company.
• It shows the business process flow as it relates to serving the customer.
• It ties together departmental strategies and enables cross-departmental placements.
• It aligns KPI’s with customer outcomes.
• It shows how values per department align to the strategic intent.
• It is a useful tool to communicate the mission of the company to different groups.
• Every department or team can have their own pizza, cascading from the company pizza.

When these elements are distilled correctly through the organization, the end product is a set of values that inspire clients to become loyal patrons of the organization. Repeat business then changes to something far more significant; loyalty, despite our imperfections. 

Leadership, HR, and other support and enablement functions are depicted on the outside of the pizza, as an encompassing ring, facilitating work when and where required.

The pizza for a professional services company could look like the one below.

  Conclusion

It is time that we have the conversation and ask ourselves the following questions:

• How is the current structure contributing to serving our customers?
• Are our company values aligned with the client experience?
• Do our customers trust us?
• Is every role in the business optimally aligned to deliver value to the customer?
• Is it time to exponentially redefine the customer experience?

If you would like to have a conversation around any of these questions, please reach out. No obligation, and I am always very curious to learn more about how people do things in their environments.