Both of these concepts are currently very
popular in developing organizations. The distinction between the two is
often not very clear, so some explanation seems useful.
A ‘tilted organization’ is an organization
that is structured according to process. This means that the structure
(the way in which areas of responsibility are defined) runs horizontally
throughout the organization. The structure follows the processes; the
whole of activities that, taken together, produce a certain result. This
is therefore in strong contrast to the functional organization where the structure
is determined on the basis of specialization. People and activities of the
same kind are grouped in the structure. This leads to vertical columns in
which the aspects of the organization are grouped; eg
administration, finance, logistics, sales, care, purchasing, etc. It is the
traditional way of designing organizations, following the insights and concepts
of Taylor, Fayoll and many others. As engineers they have searched for
efficiency-enhancing organizations during the industrial revolution. And
indeed, when it comes to physical activities, with a repetitive character, and
predictable in their methodology and objectives, this functional approach is cost-effective. It
does lead to stomping work, but that was a unimportant issue in the past. The
long-term effects were not taken serious in the competitive drive and in
hierarchical organizations of those days.
As organizations position themselves more into
services and care provision, methodologies become less standard, objectives are
given a flexible interpretation in function of customers or situations, and the
"machine" way of building organizations appears to be no longer
satisfactory. The process is put at the center, so that the necessary
flexibility, quality and customer focus can prevail over fixed
routines. This means that employees who contribute to a certain process
must be brought as close together as possible, and certainly belong to a team
that also functions as such. The work organization then becomes horizontal
instead of vertical. That is a tilt-process.
The consequence of tilting is that teams
get a more diverse composition because all relevant competences must be
present. To achieve good flexible cooperation, teams are therefore
confronted with the multi-disciplinarity that results from this. This
poses an additional difficulty: cooperation is easier if employees have the
same kind of approach, use similar knowledge, and also have to do very similar
things together. A multi-disciplinary team therefore creates a challenge
of working complementary. It is therefore logical that there is a hype in
recognizing differences between personalities by using models such as MBTI,
Insights, and other simple frames to divide people into types according to
their personality, way of thinking, and the different competences that come
with them.
The idea of self-managing
teams (autonomous teams) is different concept. The basic idea is
that the authority to make decisions are situated more in the teams themselves,
and not in management layers. As a result of competence thinking in recent
decades, the management of organizations has also become more aware of the
optimum use of employees' competencies. It is gradually recognized that
employees are not giving the best of themselves by being obedient to management
instructions. They can also think for themselves! Greater autonomy in
the functioning of teams should mean that decisions can be made quicker, that
players are more responsive in dealing with problems and opportunities that are
becoming increasingly unpredictable. That the necessary competencies in
the team must be used for this is clearly a necessity, and also an
advantage. We could call this the 'soft tilt', in contrast to the 'hard
tilt', which introduces more process-oriented focus.
Realizing these two movements
simultaneously in organizational development is quite a challenge. Due to
the ‘hard tilt’ we have established that collaboration is a new challenge due
to the more diverse composition of teams. Increasing autonomy also gives
teams more responsibility to find out for themselves; organize
itself, flexibly adapt the operation to the needs, follow up and
adjust one's own results, manage your own budgets, ... It is clear that
performing these two movements simultaneously is not easy, not for the
management, and not for the teammembers themselves.
In the ambitions of the leadership of an
organization, this dual movement should not only be properly understood,
but should also be judiciously addressed. The sequence seems to be an
important question, given the pressure-increasing effects of the combination of
both movements. Introducing a ‘hard tilt’ without increasing the autonomy
of the work teams seems perfectly possible. The benefits of working in a
process will become visible, even though the traditional management method is
retained. As such a team experiences the better results of their own work,
there will normally also be in demand for more autonomy. Achieving good
results, gaining more control over the process, indeed has a motivating effect
(control capacity). The possibilities are also increasing, because the
powers that improve a smoothly running process, are in the team or close nearby. After
all, less time is lost due to slower (operational) decision-making if it
remains with management. This sequence of working on organizational
development therefore seems the most logical.
The reverse method seems more
problematic. If one were to lay more autonomy in teams, but the functional
structure is still determining the context, frustration will probably be high
in the teams. They may want to
arrange more things themselves, but due to the functional hard structure, too
many things remain outside the competence of the team Authorities lie in
other ‘silos’, and that leads to greater dependence. The process is not in
their hands, so it is mot logic to make them responsible. The conclusion is
that a project that gives more autonomy to teams is doomed to fail if the
organization is insufficiently structured in terms of process. The team
feeling (in the optimistic situation) is one of wanting but not being able /
allowed to take control. There is a good chance that the entire
organization process will be thrown away
because of the negative experience, both for the team members and for their
management.
A third dimension also comes into play:
re-engineering of work processes (1) . Re-engineering means
switching from simple tasks with complex processes to simple processes with
more complex tasks. So it's about how work is distributed within a
team. In order to work smoothly, one should move away from the functional
way of thinking, and not limit the individual contributions of each team member
to their diploma, task profile, unique competencies, etc. Also at this 'micro
level', it would be better to switch to more multi-disciplinary 'individual
tasks. Employees should maximize the part of the process that they take
control on, and give as little as possible to colleagues. Doing it
yourself leads to less loss of time, less communication, fewer errors, and
bigger commitment.
If you first implement the ‘hard tilt’ in
an organization, and then start using the opportunities that are created for
more autonomy in the teams (good agreements), then it is necessary that you
re-engineer the teams at the same time. Otherwise, the problem of
specialization on a micro level is recreated. In this context, one should
certainly reconsider the allocation of "star roles" within a team
that is often used to accompany the creation of self-managing teams. Adding
too much to specialization will sabotage team engagement for the end
result. If a team wants to lead itself, the integration of organization,
relationship and future, the three dimensions of leadership, must be made in
the head of each team member. The assignment of star roles tends to give
other team members the excuse not to have to deal with that aspect. In
that case, the problem of the functional organization has then been moved from
the organization level, to the working teams.
Hugo Der Kinderen
(1) A
highly recommended book to understand the scope of this reorganization is the
well-known book by M. Hammer and J. Champy, Reengineering the corporation, Tony
Saich, 2009. This book proves again that
lots of knowledge is available for a long time, but seems
to find its way to practical application rather difficultly.
No comments:
Post a Comment