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Jenny Bell was our (VERY) long suffering administrative assistant who had to type up the not always clear tapes, verbatim - for which enormous respect and thanks are due!
The views expressed here are the personal views of the participants, and are not necessarily the views of their organisations.
The following people were present at this fe3 mindstretch®:-
To view a slide click on the slide number.
Roger
When we last met for one of these mind stretch sessions, we were looking for ideas about topics for the future and what was right at the forefront of my mind was how organisations and people have to go together, have to be part of the same sort of mindset. Put bad people in an organisation and you can get a bad result, but even in a lousy organisation put the right kind of people in place and it’s a very successful company. So we were trying to find out what is it that makes a good organisation, a winning organisation?
What comes first the people or the organisation? The slides are really to give us a means of sharing things. It’s an attempt to provide some logical headings and to get some discussions going to share experiences.
And two or three questions that came out of this was: “How do organisations help or hinder”? Are there some minimum rules, some things where it doesn’t matter what else you do, you’ve got to do these following three things?
Here are things that occurred to me that matter in organisations. One was, hopefully it should provide clarity, who’s accountable, who’s responsible for what. To make it clear about where the scope is, where’s the boundaries and where’s the interface. It should also enable you to understand what resources are required - have we got the right number of people, have we got the right skills, competencies, experiences etc.
The communication around organisations is interesting, an organisation helps people to understand where they belong. If someone asks me who do I work for, what do I say? It’s relatively easy when you’re outside of the National Grid environment, it’s a large company and “I work for the National Grid” normally satisfies the question. But internally, it’s more difficult. Do I work for National Grid? Do I work for National Grid USA? Do I work for National grid USA in the transmission division? Do I work for Grid America, which is a wholly owned subsidiary? Whatever your answer is helps to define your own identity.
Things that occur to me in terms of organisational types are that organisations are formal and informal. Formal is something that you perhaps see more of in a military type, hierarchical organisation; the utilities have historically been very hierarchical. We even talk about company officers.
I saw two kinds of organising forces other than simply structure. The team or consensus or committee in a project orientated organisation. One example of this was British Standards. Their method for coming up with standards is very much on a consensus basis among the membership. It would tend to be project orientated and the standard would sort of “morph” itself into existence.
And the loosely connected, is where there probably would be an identified team leader but that would be the extent of the structure, and you would never hear things like manager or director or any of those kinds of terms within the language. And where I saw that was in a telecoms related company, I think it was somebody like Nortel. It appeared to be quite loosely connected, although there was a sort of informal hierarchy in there. It wasn’t anything on paper but it was certainly there in the way it worked
Things that matter in people. In the recruiting I’ve done over the years, I will probably spend a third of the time talking about the candidate - have they got the skills sets needed for the job and spend two thirds on their approach to work, what’s their attitude, what are their behavioural characteristics. This is because in the type of company we have been setting up in America we have the proverbial “blank sheet of paper” organisation. To date, all I can tell you is a roughly a rectangular piece of paper that comes after page 2 and before page 4!
So there’s lots of uncertainties as people make it up as they go along. We are breaking new ground in America with what we are doing, changing the whole energy market of the US so it needs people who are comfortable with that degree of uncertainty. They also have to be comfortable to put something forward in front of influential people and say this is way we want to go, this is why. This is not a handle turning job.
We have tried to convey this in the way we put the job advert together, it assumes you have the necessary qualifications and experience and it talks more about the kind of organisation we are, and the profile of the people we’re looking for.
Caroline
There’s a question going through my mind on that. I just wondering how you would think through what you can say about who you are and what you are doing to be different to catch other people’s imagination without taking all the emotional and historical baggage of other groups?
Roger
We’ve got clarity at a strategic level and coming down to what it is we need to develop in terms of accountabilities. The blank sheet of paper I talk about is the level of detail which says how we are going to work with the transmission bodies, how we’re going work with the regulatory bodies. That detail that doesn’t exist.
Gary
So you know what the company is intending to do, what’s market position is, but it’s how you make that happen?
Roger
Yes, its very much about the how.
Mahen
Somewhere in the mid-eighties I set up a research unit. I had a very clear view of what type of organisation I wanted to create and the Personnel Manager and I spent a lot of time talking about it. My view was that we were not responsive enough to the market and therefore other manufacturers were stealing the market. It wasn’t that we didn’t have the expertise it was just that we were unable to respond or even capture the imagination of the people who worked for us. So I had a very clear image of what I wanted to create, which was very different from the old structure. And when we interviewed people we said to them, fit that image.
So when they all came together I had just “created” the culture, the climate in which these people could continue. So it isn’t all that difficult if the person creating knows exactly what the organisation is trying to convey to those who come to it. You obviously have a very clear idea of what the organisation is going to do to the people who become members of it.
If you don’t have a vision of what it is you are trying to create then everything becomes a process and the process might be one that doesn’t actually give you what you want. So when I look at organisations I actually look at what forces there are on the group of people and I choose the form that best fits those forces and I then structure the organisation to support the force and the form.
Caroline
Do you mean that really there isn’t ever a blank sheet of paper as such because you’ve got the things you have to do on one side and the way you want to do them on the other.
Mahen
No there always is a blank sheet of paper. Why you don’t have a blank sheet of paper is because you accept the constraints, and my view is that if you did that then you will always design to the constraints that you inherited. Most of us are reluctant to risk saying I’m going to start with a blank sheet of paper and if the old culture doesn’t suit me then I’m going to dump it or change it. I had enormous trouble with ICL when I was building the research unit, but I said that’s what I want to create and you either allow me to create it or you put in someone else who will conform.
Ann
I also found that to be very successful within IBM, you had to start with that blank sheet of paper. Any large organisation will have all of that constraining baggage and cultural baggage and policy constraints etc and I avoided all of those constraints as much as I possibly could. Now, clearly over time, there were certain things where we had to start feeding back into the existing processes that were essential from an operational point of view. This left me dealing with individuals who tried to pull me back to the old ways, but if you keep the vision and believe in actually what you are trying to do, know the proposition incredibly well, you’ll succeed.
Roger
Our vision is very clear about what we are trying to do in America. This is about setting up a company that’s going to get assets and that is all it is about. How we get there and how we get the transmission companies to give us their assets is the challenge. But our starting point is about setting up a company that in the space of three years is going to get some assets.
Mahen
I have two points: one, I find that with confidence, nobody can stop you doing what you want and if you are politically astute you set hares running and get all the bureaucrats chasing the hares whilst you get on with what you’re doing.
The other point is, there is a distinction between having a vision about the business and having a vision about the personality of the organisation and I have a feeling that you have a vision of business but not so much a vision of the personality of the organisation. So my question to you is - what type of personality will most likely deliver what your business objectives are?
Roger
I can tell you what it’s not
Mahen
That’s not good enough…
Roger
I know! Well, I think what we’ve been looking for have been people who -
Mahen
No, not people because at the end of the day the organisation is all of it, the processes, its interactions, its relationships and the people who work in it and their mind set. So I’m saying what is the personality of this organisation you’re creating? If you met it on the road, would you say “It’s a weirdo” … what is it, because without that it’s very unclear. Is it a creative personality, is it an enterprising personality, is it entrepreneurial?
Karen
But do you see that as part of the context, Mahen? Are you saying if the environment for the business is actually extremely straight laced, security conscious, safety conscious, requiring, for example, technical expertise, are you therefore saying that the kind of personality that is adopted by the organisation should in some way reflect the environment in which the organisation operates?
Roger
You’re saying identify what the organisation characteristics are – is it outgoing, is it flexible, is it creative?
Mahen
Absolutely
Roger
Well I interpret that in the way the people operate.
Mahen
Okay. But the problem with that is that when people interact, the collective personality is different to the individual personalities. Therefore when you choose the people you have to choose them so that when they come together and interact you get the personality of the organisation.
Ann
I understand where you are coming from. Everybody brings with them their own history, their own experiences into a work environment which then has a significant impact on how they work within that environment and with each other. I think experience plays a big part in how people interact, how they will be creative - or not - and whether or not they are a good individual to fulfil the overall vision of the company, but I think the individual experiences have a big impact when they do come together.
Karen
To look at getting the “right” personalities to try and ensure people work well together, you might want to think about a recruitment process which is a bit like that of Pret a Manger where the initial interview is done by head office where I think they check whether or not they are roughly in line with the kind of attributes, the kind of personality, the kind of value set that Pret a Manger has as well as the skills. But then the second part of the interview is to come and spend a day in the shop where they are going to be employed and basically if the crew that’s already there don’t like them then they don’t get the job.
Gary
I couldn’t agree more with what you both said about different examples and your personal example with Pret a Manger and it struck me that there is an enormous difference with the way we answer some of these questions depending on the characteristics of the business we’re talking about.
Clearly if it’s a service business the actual personality of the person is critical, if it’s a process management business I’m not sure it is. So I was thinking when we were talking about constraints, we might look at what are those constraints or variables that we should take into account.
Also, I would like the discussion to focus on not just setting up a new organisation but also transitioning an organisation from one state to another because I think they are slightly different as well and theoretically at least there are less constraints if you start with a blank piece of paper. So that the sort of things that might be constraints or variable to consider. I start with constraints… As you were talking the first one is blindingly obvious, is size. The rest of this list might be:
Ann
I think technology has got an important part to play because of its sheer development of over the last 20/30 years. How it has become more ingrained in products - not just in the products themselves but also in the production process of various products - means that it’s to some degree also setting expectations in the market place and I think changing the customers and the markets behaviour. Customers are saying “well yes I do want something to respond in so many seconds rather than so many minutes”, and therefore organisations are adapting themselves to encompass those kinds of expectations when they do their research.
The car industry is a prime example of how things have become far more automated and precise not just in the manufacture but even the design process, so many cars look alike, because they are all using the same design software and working to the same design guidelines. We are all looking more and more for the same features and I think technology is certainly quite a critical component in any kind of product - both in terms of how much there is in the product to tweak but also in terms of the process and how companies are using technology more in the manufacturing process of the product. And that to some degree goes back to attitude and personality to some degree, to changing that balance of personality within that organisation, as you’re not so much relying on necessarily the people and their contribution.
Karen
So are you saying, therefore, that you can define the personality. Say you’ve got a green-field site, can you define the personality you want but in reality to some extent it’s a waste of time because the external environment will put pressure on the organisation to adapt over the time to market forces.
Roger
Certainly in my experiences there are expectations from the way that America operates - by the market participants, by the transmission only companies, and we are not in a large customer- base activity.…and they’ve set certain expectations, yes you are right of course
Karen
So I suppose then the idea about setting up our personality of the company is to actually define the personality first and then find a structure, which will enable that personality to flourish. However, you have to bear in mind that should every thing outside change then the chances are you will be stuck with not only a personality that might be defunct but a structure that’s also defunct.
Roger
And people that fit one personality but may not fit another or may be unable to change to another.
Gary
Ok, so if we go back to some of the basic questions that you were proposing it seems to me one of the basic issues of the 80s mainly and possibly the 90s as well, was that people thought you could change organisational personality by changing its structure; that if I moved the boxes around then the people would move too.
Karen
I’ve got a definition of structure, which might be helpful to ensure we’re all talking about the same thing. The definition I have is that structure is something that specifies Roles, Relationships and Rules.
Roles is about the tasks, Relationships is about the reporting structures and how teams are put together and why teams are put together and then the Rules are about the control systems and the communications. So if you have used structure in that way I think it becomes a lot more encompassing and starts to define the culture of the organisation.
Because I’m a bit concerned about the fact that there do not seem to be any views about structure and culture, as being two halves of the same thing. We were talking earlier about the personality of the organisation, and if you actually use structure as roles, relationships and rules, the personality of the organisation is actually within that. This way, structure is a facilitator of the culture that you are trying to develop.
Mahen
So the structure is kind of important.
Karen
Yes, I agree because I think a structure is a facilitator of the kind of things you want to achieve and if you haven’t got it right then it completely screws things up. It doesn’t matter what type of personality you have, what the skills set is, what the customers want, if the structure is not right, it acts as barrier.
Gary
Yes it acts as a barrier depending on whether the forces in the organisation that will result in either ignoring it or doing things differently, informally.
Caroline
Now are we having these bridging people or roles that try and fit these things together.
Gary
People who do the jobs that don’t appear to exist, yes
Caroline
When we looked at the four different types of management structure I thought before you started talking you would say the formal ones are in place but the other structures are also happening in all organisations. That’s how I think that things work quite often, not that they are either/or.
Gary
Yes, there was a bit of software that came out in the late 80s with a data collection process that went with it and it produced a diagram of the informal organisation …..
Caroline
Is that the one where there is a trust network ?….
Gary
That’s right.
Caroline
..as well as a hierarchical one.
Gary
Yes and it looks like spirograph, if every one is old enough to remember spirograph: all inter-locking circles, sharing how the organisation actually works. Sometimes it looks like a formal structure and at others it looks nothing like a formal structure, and the people who marketed it suggested you could use this as a diagnostic. For example, if you find that the formal and informal structures are not at all in common, then there is something wrong somewhere.
Mahen
We had a team looking at the organisational structure in ICL. We had a research lab of around 700 guys and nobody was talking to anyone and they had a job trying to get them to work with each other. When we studied it, among the conclusions they came to was it was influenced by the way the building was structured.
In order to move from one floor to the next with a coffee cup in one hand and papers in another you had to open four fire doors and that was too much work for anybody because they were pretty solid fire doors. You had to push one open, you had to pull the other one towards you, you had to go down the stairs and do the same again and a lot of people just gave up. So all this complicated analysis we did came to the very simple fact that the bloody stupid fire doors were actually preventing people from moving around and talking to their colleagues. Because when you want to do that, it is an informal conversation…. So when I designed the place in Dublin I made sure there were no doors and I also got rid of almost all partitions - including partitions to my office. And what we created was an environment that people wanted to get together and talk about something, all they literally had to was turn their chairs around and talk! Then they could turn round and go back to work again.
Roger
It’s a topic I keep coming across, office or no office, open or not. How much of that is because of actual physical space? And how much is about people doing the right thing at the right time?
Mahen
The physical space is linked to this personality thing. Because if you are a legal business, you may need quiet to concentrate on complicated documents, doors to signal to clients that their affairs are confidential, etc. But a creative transaction cannot take place unless you jabber. It is the principal layout that matters in this exercise.
I know you said, Gary that some organisations change the structure and some will change the culture. Now I know organisations that do that but they also change senior managers. When that happens, often, the people - all these staid, old boring people who you couldn’t get to do anything - suddenly blossom into dynamic human beings. And I have seen that happen quite often, you just change the boss and all the people are suddenly revitalised.
Karen
Yes, there has also been research on the impact on leadership on structure, because in fact if structures are about relationships between people rather than anything else, if they are about what people do rather than what the lines are, then how a leader expects people to do the work starts to have a major impact on what the structure is almost regardless of how it is written down.
Roger
I am not as convinced that the office environment is as important as people’s behaviour. I come across office paranoia in America, corner office, size of an office, and while I understand your point Mahen, to me it depends how the manager uses that office to me would be more important than the fact that that person’s got an office.
Caroline
I think it send out hugely strong signals. We moved from a building where everyone had an office, to a building where it was half and half which I think is just the worst. So if you were a certain level or above you had an office, if you weren’t, you were in the middle of the floor. So there is a whole of tier of people who originally had offices, who go into what’s supposed to be a wonderful new building, with people at the senior end of the people sitting in the middle of the floor who are now sitting next to the junior secretary. Would you not feel that your status in the organisation had been absolutely stripped from you? People don’t like it at all. I am a big fan of open plan, but it has to be everyone.
Gary
I think the other thing on the question of office or no office space is to ask if people even make that decision consciously. I wonder if GSK did - because I suspect that the reason you took half the people out of an office was the cost reason.
Caroline
It might be. But I think that the space, with the thing you were saying earlier about doors, I think the working space is hugely important and I am constantly amazed that architects don’t have any real understanding of what the impact is of what they are doing when they design work places. Given their profession I would have thought that understanding of some of the social outcomes would be absolutely part of that but no, more often decisions are based on what it looks like - very unscientific for something so critical.
Gary
And they are usually working so that the offices are around the outside of the windows so that all the people who are sharing space also do not have any natural light.
Roger
I picked up an anecdote from people who say “We don’t like you living in the same office with us we can’t talk about what we really want to talk about”. My concern is wondering what they don’t feel they can talk about in front of me, and I think that attitude is because of where they have come from in different organisations, and by implication, the structure. The hierarchy can be a significant barrier to communication.
Karen
But I’d like to say something for the hierarchical organisation because there are lots of people out there working who are happy with limited responsibility, they don’t feel that they are paid to make any decisions. Therefore to have a hierarchical organisation is exactly right for them.
Mahen
Knowing your place frees you to be yourself
Karen
Exactly, and I think that it is really important to remember that flat organisations can leave people thinking “I haven’t got a clue what to do”…..
Roger
Yes, or “I’m uncomfortable because this is not what I signed up for ...”
Ann
I certainly believe through my experiences working with clients in change programmes, is that the structural change cannot be effective just on its own, because what’s on paper is a simplified representation which is often not very real. It’s the people, how they interact.
Karen
I’ve got something that I’d quite like to write down for us. I was wondering if a reasonable analysis or a reasonable way to analyse the position of a structural or what impacts upon the structure might be this …
And I think what will happen is that the business environment will impact on the structure to a greater or lesser extent. So I think that the right circle, or environment, might move to cover more of the left circle, or structure. How hierarchical an organisation needs to be may be dependent on the industry. But then I think the personality will also impact on this central segment, which I see as the culture.
So what you have is these three things interlocking possibly to a greater or lesser extent to define the culture in the middle. So for example, if you’ve got a highly regulated industry which is relatively stable and doesn’t allow for a lot of change, the circle for the environment will be greatly overlapping the circle for the structure.
In this instance, because environment and structure are quite closely aligned, the personality of the organisation will also be dictated to a greater extent than might otherwise be, by the structure of the organisation and the environment. So the chances are that the personality of this type of organisation will be that of the kind of organisation that you will expect to find, with the type of people you will expect to find in that particular industry.
I think where you are starting something new, you have to consider the environment together with a view on how it is that you want to do business. So for example, you might want to do something based on a bunch of “loose connections” - to use your phrase, Roger – but if the environment is based on quite formal relationships, that’s not the way to be able to do business. This then starts to impact on the personality you need to adopt to maintain that kind of structure.
So if we view the structure as Roles, Relationships and Rules, all of these will be dictated to a greater or lesser extent by the environment and the kind of personality that is going to support it. This is not to say you couldn’t do things differently but only as long as the environment lets you.
Mahen
That’s a good model, because it sort of ties things together. If you know it’s a legal entity, and that its fundamental purpose is to supervise contracts between different companies, then the type of people you’d employ would be either commercial types or legal types who would interpret and manage those things, right? The operating process underneath it would facilitate a relatively structured environment, where the discretion is in the legal documents that exist between the organisations. And so the kind of personality you want is “legal” ………….
Ann
Could you just make it clear exactly what you saw in environment - because that would dictate what I think from here.
Karen
How I saw the environment is, for example, the industry as bounded by all the rest of the constraints that you find in Porter’s model - the legal constraints, legislative changes etc. So if it’s a completely new thing which nobody’s done before then the environment may have little impact, in which case the personality might lead the structure.
Ann
Well I was wondering whether or not environment also included not just other operators in that industry but actual buyers in the industry, the consumer or whoever the customer is at the end of the day.
I was just wondering well, surely, if that was the case, whether it’s an existing business or a new business the business, the vision in the business plan to some degree will have already analysed the environment that you are working in. It will have covered the reasons why you are doing this in the first instance, so therefore, it negates why you have environment in that particular model in my view. I think personality is the element that has a bigger impact on the structure rather than the environment, because if you have got your business plan, you know why you are in the market, you know who your customers are, you know what you are going to produce, you know what the costs roughly are going to be. In my view, the key to making it happen is actually determining the personality of the people and the organisation you are creating to make that business plan work.
Caroline
I think that Virgin is a good example here. Even if it operates in some highly regulated industries, personality and structure are the dominant things, they don’t let the relationship with the regulatory part of it drive how they do things.
Ann
Yes if you are looking at a regulated environment - and clearly that’s different from commercial businesses - obviously you do have to take it into account, but you shouldn’t let it drive the business.
Mahen
My own interpretation of Karen’s word environment is slightly looser than that. In your business that you have just created, I suppose an environmental factor would be the aspiration and nature of your customers. Lets say that the type of person you want to attract, or who would be attracted by the service you are offering would have a particular profile. That particular profile would expect a certain quality of service, and therefore I would consider that profile as the environmental driver. Therefore the structure and personality you put in place would be there to service that particular profile.
Ann
But I see that as being part of the business plan, I also see that having been done up-front.
Mahen
So if you have the business plan that defines this profile, then that’s what in a sense fits that particular model, it enters the model and influences the structure and the personality and also the structure, how your organisation interacts with the outside world or the customer that is dealing with you…
Ann
I take your point on the influence - I just didn’t see it as being as big an influence within the model.
Karen
Well I think it depends on the type of environment it is, because if no-one has done what you are doing before, the legal requirements that you have to fulfil would probably only have a small influence on it. If the environment was more highly regulated, or you have more competitors in it then the more the circles overlap and the less freedom of movement you’ve got in the personality.
Gary
But I think what you are saying, Ann, if I understand your point correctly, is that you would see the environment analysis as being a given before you start thinking about a structure.
Ann
To some degree, yes absolutely, because the business plan, be it an existing business or a mature business, still needs to define the intent of where you are going to go with it, and you will have done some analysis on what that intent is going to look like.
Gary
So going right back to where Roger started, this is the bit at the top that he’s already done. So we started with a blank piece of paper and have got this far.
Roger
This organisation that we are putting together - its role today is a mean of demonstrating National Grid as a credible organisation and what’s coming on is where we want this as a business development activity, to get them to acquire assets…
Mahen
Ok, so it’s the soft bit in the middle of the sandwich. Say that the business plan is the top layer of the sandwich, the personality of the organisation is the only bit that is able to flex, because the structure once it’s in place will be relatively rigid.
Roger
But while it is firm today, I expect it to be a very different organisation in two years time…
Mahen
But it will still have the same structure, that’s what I am saying? Because the personality can change but the structure doesn’t have to, and if you are in a volatile business and you are constantly changing structure and personality and culture you just don’t stand any chance of succeeding.
Roger
Well certainly in my business model, the roles will change and the relationships will change.
Gary
The rules won’t…. Unless you change them
Mahen
In that case, your structure has to reflect the rules - the roles and relationships will reflect the personality.
Ann
The question on my mind is where does process, what we would traditionally call process, fit into that?
Mahen
Well they would be embodied in the rules because you actually create the process to support the rules. So in your business I would move the roles and relationships into the personality bit.
Karen
The definition that I have was that, relationships are things like reporting relationships, so reporting structure and the way teams are pulled together. The roles are the tasks and rules are things like control rules, safety rules, financial controls. The only point I would make is that if you are going to be pulling together an organisation that is based on two years’ stability and then transition, the people that you employ either need to be aware and comfortable with that possibility, or on a short-term contract.
Roger
One thing that we’ve stressed is that if in three years we have not upped the assets of the business we are out of here. We have structured our agreements in a way that reflects this.
We are open minded to the idea that we are going to lose people on the way, because people who joined us in the beginning because they were attracted to us may not be so attracted by the way the organisation is in 18 months’ time. That’s going to be part of its personality you might say.
Gary
So the people who really enjoy the 15 million dollar turnover company, may not enjoy the bigger one but if it works as a business model you might be doing this somewhere else.
Karen
But again the type of person that you employ actually needs to understand that, and maybe the employment contract needs to be geared to that sort of change.
Roger
Private contracts for employment, fire at will, two weeks notice. It’s dreadful, the employment rights in the US are dreadful compared to the UK.
Karen
Well that’s part of your personality, you know - employment rights in the US might be pretty diabolical, but don’t have to be in your company.
Roger
Oh indeed, and we’re showing something about the kind of company we are based on the kind of package we offer.
Karen
Roger, you were looking for three “fixed rules” or things which have to be done. I’m not sure there are, but somebody disagree with me by all means. From my perspective, I don’t think structure is something that you can take out and look at separately or alone. I see it a facilitator rather than anything else.
Roger
My approach is that structure is an enabler, it gives us some reference points but it shouldn’t be there to stop you doing what you want to do.
Karen
Going back to what Caroline was saying, if people don’t like the way the rules are set up, they’ll find ingenious ways of getting round them. Structure facilitates control or resistance, co-ordination or fragmentation. Fragmentation is about doing things in silos and co-ordination is about the way you pull together teams, so structure is important when thinking about what it is you actually need to accomplish.
Whether you are going to need to be co-ordinated or whether there are individual sections of your organisation that work without the need for cross departmental or discussion, will have an impact on the final structure.
Roger
Throughout the organisation there has got to be that kind of gold thread that fits everybody’s actions to where the company wants to go.
Karen
Well that might be co-ordination, in which case the structure needs to facilitate that cross over rather then enable – or even force - people to be departmentalised.
Roger
Does that suggest that people’s jobs should be reasonably vague rather than greatly detailed and defined?
Ann
Personally I think it depends on the business you are in. In a regulated business then it will need to be incredibly highly defined, in a more of a service based industry, and again depending on what kind of organisation you are trying to create and what you are giving to the market, it will probably need be more loosely defined. This is for the simple reason that what ever kind of picture you draw of your organisation - I am deliberately avoiding the ‘structure’ word! - but what ever picture you draw to represent the company you have, people will inevitably form their own little organisations and sub-cultures.
Karen
With your industry you can not have green field people - you have a green field organisation, but you can’t have green field people, because you need people who have done it before, probably in other organisations to help you succeed. You’re not starting with a blank page as far as the individuals are concerned, so I think what somebody said earlier about needing to choose the people you think will form a kind corporate personality is important.
Caroline
The other thing which would make that more difficult in some ways, is that listening to you talking, it isn’t clear what you’re going to say the vision of the organisation is, because there is a sense of “we’ll do this today and we’ll grow and we might be a hundred times the size we are in 3 years’ time”. It’s hard if you’ve got this uncertainty about the future to put down a vision, unless it is one which says “its going to be change and growth but we can’t say what it is”. It is difficult to give people something they conceive to “boldly go where no man’s gone before”.
Gary
I think it is slightly easier than maybe you are imagining..
Roger
Because we know how to get the business and we know where it’s going to come from and we know the people we are going to target
Caroline
So is it then an aggressive vision, that we will triple our customer base in x years’ time? Because that in itself will send out messages to people about the organisation.
Mahen
And don’t forget your point about what about doing the job? Culture is important but as the boss your job is to get the job done.
Karen
And that is a mixture of setting expectations right at the start and your vision partly does that and the culture that supports people along the way.
Gary
Regarding recruiting the right people, I think one of your advantages is that you come from an industry that has been privatised for quite a long time in several parts of the world. So I would be looking for people who had gone from the old regulated bits, from the old utility bits to the organisations that have been more successful.
Karen
Thank you all very much for your contribution. We’re going to be sending you a bill Roger don’t you worry!
I do hope that you have enjoyed it and found it stimulating, and that if we do further events, or if you’ve got ideas that you yourselves want to tackle within your organisations, please bring them back and we’ll pull together people that we think might be able to make reasonable comment on it.