Process & Structure

Last Monday I wrote about the first part of the Leadership Framework: Strategy. If you haven’t read that or if you missed the introduction to the Leadership Framework you can find them on my LinkedIn newsletter feed.

Now that you’re very clear about your strategy, we can talk about the second side of the framework: process and structure. These are fancy words, I know. We love to talk about process and structure in organizations, don’t we? 

Fundamentally, what I mean when I say process and structure is: “How are we going to organize ourselves to get this work done?” And this includes “What do we need to achieve our goals? What do we not have that we need? What do we need to acquire or build? What talent do we need? What knowledge do we need? What tools do we need? And how should those talent, knowledge, and tools be deployed? How should they be structured and organized to achieve our goals? Simply, who should do what?

It’s very important that we move through the framework in this direction – starting with strategy and moving toward process and structure – because strategy should always drive process and structure, not the other way around.

Unfortunately, it often happens the other way around. Many organizations love to reorganize. It's our comfort zone. Let’s move the boxes around on the charts, right? We may not be clear on what we’re trying to achieve, but we know we need to move boxes around. We need to move people around and change titles and reporting structures.

I’m asking you to think about organizing not for organizing’s sake – but as an important step in actually achieving the goals you’ve laid out.

And let me be clear – there are many, many goals that don’t need any reorganization at all. They may need better collaboration or more information or better teamwork, but they don’t actually need a restructuring. 

Sometimes you do. I’ll give you an example from my own career. HP wanted to be a systems company. We wanted to sell systems. But when I arrived at HP, we had 87 different business units. We weren’t selling systems. So we established some goals around selling systems and we realized pretty quickly that 87 units wasn’t going to work. We needed to get it down to a smaller, more rational group of businesses that actually represented how customers bought our services.

But we also realized that the most powerful tool we had was not who reported to whom. The most powerful tool we had to deliver for our customers was the process that we used to cut across organizations. For example, a supply chain that cut across 10 organizations was far more impactful for our customers than who reported to whom.

You probably have analogies in your own business – where it’s not who reports to whom that matters. It’s who communicates with whom? Who collaborates with whom? How do you engage your partners? How do you work with other teams in the organization? 

And you can’t forget the “process” part of process and structure. People are our most important asset, but they are not the only tool we have to unlock potential. Processes, systems, technology – these are all tools that people can use to achieve the goals that you’ve set.

So take the strategy that you built and think about the processes and structure that you need to achieve that goal. How will you organize your team and your partners to achieve that goal? What processes need to be established? What tools, talent, or knowledge do you need? How will you go about building or acquiring those things? 

If you have any questions about this section of the Leadership Framework please use the comment section below and I’ll try to answer all of your questions.