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.

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.

Executives Should Take a Page from Farmers
Executive leadership?should be concerned about creating the conditions necessary for employees to flourish.? People are wired to work.? They want to produce and produce bountifully.

Farmers don’t spend their days tending to individual plants.? They prepare the soil, monitor water levels, and keep the pests away.? When they do this, the plants do the “work”.

What Causes Poor Engagement? Not Poor Employees
I daresay that lack of engagement stems from lack of collective understanding of executive level work – designing and tending to the system, the environment, within which their employees work.

Looking for?a Leadership Design Blueprint?
Elliott Jaques’ Requisite Organization is a managerial leadership system that creates conditions under which all but the most disturbed employees can be successful.? Employees and managers don’t have to spend their days compensating for poor system design, instead,?they can do what they were naturally designed to do – to work and use their gifts for both the good of the organization and for a personal sense of satisfaction.

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

What will you spend your days this year doing – creating or coping?

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.

Employees Crave True Leadership

Management Myth Busted
Simply having?more experience does not automatically qualify someone to be a thought leader for anyone with less experience.

Danger, Danger – Promotions by Tenure
Many a mistake has been made promoting by tenure (aka experience) when the decision should be based first upon the promotion candidate’s cognitive capability for higher level work.? Knowledge, skills and experience play a part, but they mean nothing if the?candidate cannot handle the complexity associated with the higher level work.

Even leaders have leaders so how do we sort out who leads whom?
Fortunately, outside of organizations, no forced sorting is needed.? People naturally find and align themselves with those who can offer them leadership.? Within organizations, if we subordinate employees to a manager who is not more cognitively capable, the employees will suffer.?

Let the Disengagement Begin
When their manager “feels” like a peer, they will feel the inherent unfairness of the situation.? The may feel micromanaged.? They will ask for the big picture view and not receive it.? They will resent that their manager has the right to assess their performance, and they will be incredulous that their manager is paid more than they.??Their whole work?experience lacks integrity for them.

It’s Time to Create a Collective Understanding – Work Levels
Understanding requisite work levels has a partner reality – understanding the requisite cognitive level necessary to be successful in a given role.? When someone is not yet?cognitively capable of the work in a role, no amount of experience can fill the gap.

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

Have you experienced being asked to submit to the leadership of someone who could not be your thought leader?? How did it go?

What Drucker was drawing a line between was the operational work levels in an organization and the strategic work levels in an organization.

Doing Things Right aka Current Operations
The work of requisite work levels 1 through 3 is to make the best use of current resources to most effectively deliver today’s products and services to today’s customers.? Theirs is to decide how to make the best of what has been allocated by the executive levels.? This is where the money is made within organizations.

Doing the Right Things aka Strategic Intent
The work of requisite work levels 4+ is decide how current operations needs to change in order to deliver goals that fall out more than two years.? Theirs is to decide whether the organization is doing the right things to be viable in the future.

No Need for Leadership Snobbery
I’ve said before in one of my most visited posts, that innovation must occur at all levels, although it will look different by level.? Leadership is the same way.? If we use Elliott Jaques’ requisite organization definition of leadership:?The ability to set purpose or direction for others and then get them to move in that direction with competence and full commitment; then all managers must be exercise leadership, for that is their role.?

It’s not just executives who are leaders.? I daresay that?minute-for-minute, first line managers spend more time exercising leadership than executives do.

What do you think?

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

Photo credit: gmeaders_ch

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May God bless those who have been put on this earth to teach and to those who generously impart their gifts without concern toward personal gain or status. I live in the prosperous shadow of such people and am honored to be counted among their students. Thank you.

Now, on to my Thanksgiving Post…

What Are Your Employees Thankful For?? Keeping Employees Engaged is Simple
Organizations diligently work to keep their employees engaged and productive.? Gifts and perks are great, but my list of the minimum criteria for engagement is short and clear.? If your employees cannot be thankful for the following items, skip the fruit basket this year and get to work on your making managerial leadership system requisite.

-A clear picture of their role, and clear assignments.

-A role matched to their current cognitive capability level.

-Accountability matched with requisite authority.

-A manager who adds value to their thinking. (aka has cognitive capacity one level higher than the employee)

-Explicitly defined role relationships with others as arranged by their manager. Employees shouldn’t be left to beg or manipulate others to get their work done. (For example, if A and B disagree, who decides? If A needs services from B, what is B’s obligation to A? If A recommends something to B, must B do it or can B choose to decline idea?)

-Felt fair pay.

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

I doubt that I will be able to keep the blog fires?burning during that time, because I don’t want to miss a minute of the dialogue.? So, for now, you will have to talk amongst yourselves.?

Discussion Topic:??

Why does Management Science have yet to adopt a universal set of definitions, practices, accountabilities, authorities, standards, and rules of engagement?? The plumbing industry managed to do it nearly a century ago.

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

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!