Friday, April 18, 2008
Leadership Failure #5 - Forgetting Structure
The final Leadership Failure I’ve identified deals with the structure of an organization. What does that mean? Simply, there are organizations who have over-structured (too many procedures and systems), and there are also organizations that have a total lack of structure so there is inconsistency from team members.
Structure - processes, policies, procedures - is important to daily functioning. In an over-structured environment, the need to make people act efficiently causes unnecessary tiers of management. Does your organization have an abundance of ‘Assistant Manager’ or ‘Deputy Manager’ titles? This is an indicator of over-structure.
An under-structured environment, on the other hand, is harmful in a different way. In the under-structured environment you will see over-delegation, vague delegation, or delegation to the wrong people.
Each of these structures do not serve the team members or leader well. Your best approach is to involve the entire team and have them give their suggestions on how much structure is needed within your department. Keep in mind—when defining the structure for your department make sure you integrate it into the whole organization, rather than keeping yourself as a separate entity.
Until next time...live like you mean it!
Marjorie