Requisite Organization Structure

What Have You Done for Me Lately?
In the blog world, recency is everything!  I’ve been going where the energy is lately and that hasn’t been Mission Minded Management.

Truth is Timeless – Requisite Organization
My blog is rooted in the meta-model, Requisite Organization, which focuses upon structuring your organization to take advantage of natural laws.  It’s the science behind effective organizations.  It informs and enables you to structure your organization, assess and lead your talent with integrity — as an engineer would with a systems, science-based approach.  Yes, I’m a management consultant, but I’m really an organizational engineer.

Executive Leadership – Ensuring Strategy Execution, Accountability Systems Design
Lack of a clear framework, which Requisite Organization provides, leads many an executive puzzled by why s/he can’t get her strategy executed.  When you design your leadership systems without the common inherent conflicts of interest that exist in most leadership systems, buy-in happens naturally.  People want to contribute at work.  Requisite Organization’s Accountability and Authority framework integrates these two ideas into a leadership system of integrity.

Major Short Article Repository – Requisite Organization, Organizational Structure, Managerial Leadership, Talent Assessment
I encourage you to use the search function on my blog to take advantage of the 300 posts in this time before they become a book.

If you have questions or make comments, I’ll still respond.  I just won’t be posting with any regularity.  Thank you for your support over the years.  And, as always…

I’m OK.  You’re OK.  Let’s fix the system.

But how often are issues at work really caused by someone’s lack of knowledge or skill?

What does training NOT address?

• What the accountabilties of my role are, AND what the accountabilities of others’ roles are.
• Whether I have the explicit requisite authority to carry out those accountabilties.
• Whether my authorities that I have in relation to others who do not work for me have been shared with those over whom I have authority.
• When others to whom I do not report have authority over me.
• A clear, integrated context set for me by my manager within which my peers and I can make clear trade off and priority decisions.
• Whether I have the resources necessary to do my job.
• Whether I have the raw cognitive capacity to do my job (regardless of training or desire)
• Whether I value the work of my role and are willing to commit my energy to it.
• Whether my manager has the raw cognitive capacity to set context for me and add value to my thinking.
• Whether my manager values managerial leadership behaviors rather than just the “technical” side of his role.
• Whether the vertical structure of my organization is requisitely designed to cover all the levels of work with exactly one role within a reporting chain.
• Whether there are systems in place to support the proper exercising of accountability and authority.
• Whether the system rewards only output or both output?and effectiveness.

Have you been sent to training that was a clear waste of your time?? When you returned, did you say, I’m OK.? You’re OK.? Let’s fix the system?

]]> http://www.missionmindedmanagement.com/why-training-rarely-solves-the-problem-im-ok-youre-ok-lets-fix-the-system/feed 7 http://www.missionmindedmanagement.com/undercover-boss-well-meaning-window-dressing http://www.missionmindedmanagement.com/undercover-boss-well-meaning-window-dressing#comments Mon, 01 Mar 2010 14:34:46 +0000 Michelle Malay Carter http://www.missionmindedmanagement.com/?p=687 I must admit I’m touched by the hearts of the CEOs who agree to go undercover to experience their organization on the ground floor.? They seem to geniunely care about the people, not just the publicity afforded to their organization by the show.

Systems Drive Behavior
However, in the end, their righting single incidents or donating toward a personal financial burden of an employee simply perpetuates the idea that good intentions with a handful of feel-good outcomes makes everything right.? Systems drive behavior!? If you don’t tend to the dysfunctional systems, the dysfunctional behaviors will continue.

Managers Are Accountable for the Output of Their Employees
In the show, when these CEOs come upon a manager who is failing in his/her managerial leadership duties, the CEO usurps the authority of their accountable manager by taking action directly with the manager.? To add to that, the action takes the form of “be nice now”, and as the camera fades over grateful smiles and joyful tears, everyone appears to live happily ever after.??

Creating an Accountability Leadership Culture
A clear, requisite framework of accountabilities and authorities would do more for these workplaces than all the good intentions and fatherly advice we see.

Managers-Once-Removed Should Be Accountable to Identify Talent
The CEOs often identify promising young talent, and at least once, a Training Future Leaders program is set up, but it begs the question, who is accountable for identifying talent and what is it that we are looking for?? And is it all about training?

A System for Talent Assessment and Management
An understanding of work levels could create a science-based foundation for fair and consistent talent assessment and management system.

Call Me!
So I’m sending a shout out to Larry O’Donnell of Waste Management, Coby Brooks of Hooters, Joe DePinto of 7-Eleven, and Dave Rife of White Castle:?? You’re OK.? Your employees are OK.? Let’s fix the system!? It’s clear you have both a head and a heart.? Let’s put them to use toward designing systems!

Executive Leadership Defined
Creating and tending to the system is executive level work.? Through this, you ensure your operational organization is designed correctly and a leadership system is in place to ensure employees have what they need.? PeopleFit can provide you a framework from which you can make informed and intentional decisions in the areas of organizational structure, talent management and managerial leadership systems.

Three Areas of Influence over Employee Performance

1. The first is the person’s capability profile which is composed of
a) knowledge, skills and experience,
b) values, temperament and inhibitors, as well as
c) current cognitive capacity.

2. The second is the employee’s manager’s capability profile, composed of the aforementioned items.

3. The third is the system!? i.e. Organizational processes, policies, structure or lack thereof.

Measuring Performance Only Tells a Piece of the Story
This is why we must judge employee effectiveness in light of circumstances.? Measuring performance only is patently unfair, as it never tells the whole story.? When you measure performance, you are also measuring the system within which the employee is working.? Designing the system is executive level work.?

Engage the System to Engage the Employees
Don’t forget.? Without fairness, you will not have engagement.? If you want engagement, stop trying fix your employees and take a look at your system.

I’m OK.? You’re OK.? Let’s fix the system.

Throwing The Baby Out with the Bathwater – Egalitarianism
We are kidding ourselves to believe?managerial hierarchies can be?egalitarian.? Power must be exercised.? We can “nice up” the word power by calling?it leadership or authority, but?it is power just the same.

So then the question becomes,?if power must be?excised, how can we set up a managerial leadership system to channel power to every one’s advantage??

Designing for Good Power
Elliott Jaques’ Requisite Organization Model outlines just a system.? Here is how it addresses power to create an environment of trust and fairness.? Without trust and fairness, employees disengage.

Operationalizing Good Power

• Granting managers the authority they need to hire their people, refuse unacceptable candidates and remove non-performing employees.
• Pairing the aforementioned authority with managerial accountability for the output of their employees.? No more scapegoating.? Employees are accountable to do their best.??
• Employees are?judged by their EFFECTIVENESS, not solely their output so no employee has to resort to cheating or short sightedness to “make their goals”.
• Offering a science-based means to ensure that employees have managers who are cognitively more capable than themselves.
• Offering a science-based means to ensure that employees are hired and/or promoted into roles that suit their capability.

Starving Bad Power

• Clearly defining accountabilities, authorities and escalations procedures so no employee has to resort to manipulation to get his work done.
• Making sure there are not redundant layers in the organization that bog down work or leadership vacuums (too few layers.)

Making sure that at least two sets of eyes are on each employee by:

• Making managers-once-removed accountable for the fair treatment of their subordinates-once-removed.
• Making managers-once-removed accountable for the career development of subordinate-once-removed.

Disallowing No Power

• Making all managers accountable to exercise managerial leadership, not just to contribute on the technical part of their role.
• Making all employees accountable to give their best advice and speak their minds.??When managers are accountable for the output of their employees,?managers actually want to hear the truth?so they can make changes.? Scapegoating is no longer an option.
• Making all managers accountable to listen to the advice of employees, but pairing this with the ultimate authority to decide.

What kind of power do you experience in your organization?

I’m OK.? You’re OK.? Let’s fix the system.

Mismatch to Role

What to Do?
We all mature in cognitive, problem solving capability over our lifetimes. Eventually this employee might mature into being capable of a higher level role, but it will not be training that gets him there.? In the meantime, when this situation is encountered, it is in every one’s best interest to reassign the person to a role that matches their current capability.

This post is number three in a series of four. The series titles and links are listed below.

1. Possible Negative Manifest Behaviors of an Underutilized Employee
2. Possible Positive Manifest Behaviors of an Underutilized Employee
3. Today’s Post – Possible Negative Manifest Behaviors of an Over committed Employee (not yet cognitively capable of the work level required of the role)
4. Possible Positive Manifest Behaviors of an Over committed Employee

No Need to Fire, No Need to Label
When a employee is over committed, it does not mean they cannot contribute.? It means they cannot contribute as needed in their current role.? When managers see this type of behavior, it’s time to consider redeploying the employee into a position where they can shine.

• Doesn?t get started on assignments in due time
• Needs excessive hand holding or detailed assignments
• Doesn?t connect the dots like peers
• Relies on peers to get work done
• Doesn?t take into consideration everything you would like him to
• Doesn?t understand what you want from him
• Spends time on less important tasks; ignores or procrastinates on more complex tasks
• Focuses too closely upon detail
• Turns in sub-standard work believing it to be acceptable
• Gets less work done than peers (despite long hours and commitment)
• Takes more time than peers
• Is in a different class than peers?(they ridicule/reject or pity and protect him)
• Doesn?t respond to training

I’m OK.? You’re OK.? Let’s fix the system.

Parole Agent Work is Level Two Work
If you follow my blog, you know that work exists in levels, and we can classify roles by work level.? If a parole agent’s job involves sorting information to identify relevant clues and then adding clues together to draw conclusions, then it is level two work.

Level Two Work Calls for Level Two Capability
If we add to that the fact that people’s problem solving capability occurs in increasingly complex levels, we know that in order to be competent in a parole officer role, one would need at least level two capability.

Why Would Someone Ignore Clues that Could Save a Life?
Finally, because I believe people are wired to work and want to contribute at work, I have to ask myself, why would a parole officer IGNORE clues?? I daresay that?maybe they weren’t?ignored, but rather they were not RECOGNIZED as clues in the first place.? This phenomenon would occur if the state of California had level-one capable officers employed in level two roles.

Where is the System Broken?
So is the recruiting system designed to screen specifically for level-two capability?? If not, you might expect something like this tragedy to?occur.? Additionally, we have to ask is the system set up to provide level-two felt-fair compensation for this role?? You really do get what you pay for, and level-one pay will draw level-one capable people, who will not be competent in a parole officer role.? Again, knowing this, we could predict this type of tragedy.

Just another example of how understanding work levels could change the world and save lives.? I’m OK.? You’re OK. Let’s fix the system.

Organizational engineering, talent assessment,?and designing managerial leadership systems rooted in Elliott Jaques’ meta-model, Requisite Organization.

What a marketing nightmare – creating demand for services that most executives have never conceived of!

Let’s Learn from Other Professions!
While most professions and industries have standards of practice which weave a common thread throughout the work done, managerial leadership is lacking the adoption of universal rules of engagement.

• Can you imagine the chaos if your bookkeeper decided to “shake it up” and put debits on the right and credits on the left? Bounce
• Have you ever visited a house where the plumber put hot on the right and cold on the left?? Ouch!

The Plumbers Figured It Out
Here’s what Wikipedia has to say about what the plumbers were facing in 1926 (Does it sound like the state of management today?)

In 1926, a group of Los Angeles plumbing inspectors recognized that there were no uniform requirements for the installation and maintenance of plumbing systems, and at that point in time disease was rampant, a lot of it spread through improper sanitation. Disorder in the industry was the result of widely divergent plumbing practices and the use of many different, often conflicting, plumbing codes by local jurisdictions. It was these plumbing inspectors that understood the necessity of developing a model code that could be uniformly applied across jurisdictions.

So what is Requisite Organization??
Requisite is a meta-model that combines science-based theory regarding levels of work and human capability and the two universal values of trust and fairness and endeavors to:

• Create organizational conditions within which most people can be successful.
• Enable productive work.
• Eliminate the wasted energy used to compensate for three structural flaws – 1. Organizational layering errors 2. Mismatching people to roles ?3. Mismatching people to managers.
• Design explicit “rules of engagement” across functions.
• Create explicit, uniform, and universal minimum accountabilities and authorities for three sets of organizational players – 1. Employees 2. Managers 3. Managers-once-removed.
• Create a science-based methodology for matching people to roles.

Trust and Fairness – Core Values
I believe in Requisite Organization because you can always trace the principles and policies within it back to a desire for trust and fairness – two precursors to employee engagement.?

Human Dignity
The other thing that stands out is respect for human dignity.? Requisite organization purports that nearly all organizational dysfunction can be traced to poor structure and systems, not deficient employees.?? (BTW – I pasted that last sentence from Wikipedia.? A fun fact for you to know is that?I was the one who wrote most of Wikipedia post regarding Requisite Organization.)

Results
Finally, it works!? After over 10 years of working with the model, I am convinced it is valid and reliable, and managers appreciate it.? Sure, it takes courage, discipline and practice to convert an organization to a fully requisite organization, but managers ultimately see that it is worth the effort.

I’m OK.? You’re OK.? Let’s fix the system.

What has your experience been?

Thank you for your continued?support and readership.? Please send a link to a friend!

Here were the most-read posts published this year:

• Managerial Accountability is not MISSING it’s just MISPLACED
• If You Want Accountability, You Must Grant Authority
• Job Analysis Via Time Span of Discretion – A Universal Level of Work Measure
• Employee Engagement Kiss of Death – Ignoring Performance Issues
• Young High Potential Leaders -?Use Wait Time to Build Character

And our all time most-read posts:

• I Didn’t Say You Stole My Money – Why You Should Deliver Sensitive Messages in Person
• Exceptional Customer Service Flows from Sound Organizational Design
• Innovation Snobbery is Not Serving Organizations
• Where Jack Welch Got It Wrong – The Mandatory Annual Low-Performer Cut
• Not All Work is Equal – Exploring Work Levels 1 – 4

I’m OK.? You’re OK.? Let’s keep contending for fixing the system!

Customer Experience Surveys

As Much about Systems as Customer Service
When you ask a customer how their experience with your organization was, you are measuring the quality of your systems as much as you are measuring your front line employees’ effectiveness.?

Measure, Measure, Measure
Measures are great, but they do not tell the whole story.? In our rush to quantify everything, some organizations are putting monkeys on the backs of the front employees that aren’t theirs to carry.

For What is the Front Line Employee Accountable?
Generally the front line employee is to deliver a service as trained within the policies set up by management.? They are to balance their pace and quality while maintaining a positive demeanor.

For What is the Front Line Employees NOT Accountable? (Note the Longer List)

• The quality and comprehensiveness of the training they receive
• Their level of empowerment to take care of customer needs
• Company policies and procedures
• Adequate staffing levels to ensure prompt service for customers
• Adequate inventory levels and the systems to allow for this
• Accurate sales and marketing messages that influence customer expectations
• The accuracy of the prices being advertised versus charged
• The tools, technology, and resources they are provided to do their job
• The product and service offerings of the organization
• The volume of demand for products and services
• Ensuring feedback loops within the system to identify and correct poor systems and policies

How Do We Get Accountability and Engagement?
We will get accountability when learn how to pin appropriate accountability to the appropriate level.? To do this, we will need to understand work levels.?

Accountability Must Equal Authority
We will get engagement when employees view their workplace as trust-inducing and fair.? Much of that is related to systems design.? Holding me accountable for things over which I have no authority or influence is an employee engagement killer.? We?do this with our front line staff every day, and then we give them a pep talk and tell them to put on a happy face for our customers.

I’m OK. You’re OK.? Let’s fix the system.

Have you ever been held accountable for something over which you had no authority or influence?