When Your Organization Design is Too Fat Expect Impotent Managers
By Michelle Malay Carter on June 3, 2009
In my last post, I?talked about the downside of having too many layers within your organizational structure.? How can you tell if this is the case?
Impotent Managers
When you have a manager and a direct report whose roles fall into the same work level (requisite design calls for one role in each layer), you will find that although the manager is generally willing to help the direct report, s/he is rendered impotent by the organization’s flawed structure.
How Does this Manifest?
When an employee approaches his manager for help with an issue, and the manager’s response is, “We will have to ask my manager”, you have strong indicator that the manager’s role and the employee’s role fall within the same work level.
The Roles are Real, The Reporting Relationship is Flawed
This doesn’t mean that each role in not legitimate in its own right, but it should not be a REPORTING relationship, it should be a peer relationship with perhaps one being considered more senior.
When a manager?is frequently saying?either, I’m not sure how to handle this either OR I can go no further within the scope of my job and authority, an investigation is in order.
According to Ralph Rowbottom and Davis Billis’, Organisational Design, The Work Levels Approach, over time, the employee will not perceive his manager as his real manager but he will look to his manager-once-removed (his manager’s manager) as the authoritative manager.? How will the employee view his present “artificial manager”?? At best, he will see him as a senior colleague, at worst, a real nuisance.
I’m OK.? You’re OK. Let’s fix the system.? In my next post, I will give you the positive test for determining whether a manager role is in the next higher layer than his/her direct report’s role.
Have you ever had an impotent boss?
Filed Under Organization Design, Requisite Organization, Work Levels
Comments
2 Responses to “When Your Organization Design is Too Fat Expect Impotent Managers”
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” it should be a peer relationship with perhaps one being considered more senior.”
This is such an important point – my organisation is now starting to unravel a situation that has evolved over the past 10 years, resulting in two people in each of level 1 and level 2.
Fascinating to see what happens – issues actually gain momentum as they head up the org chart, reaching enough speed that none of the two people in the level 2 layer can decide, they rocket straight past level 3 and have ended up with the level 4 manager.
Level 4 manager therefore has no time to fix long-term, so more issues appear, the only person considered able to make calls is the level 4 person again, and the cycle goes faster and faster.
Hi Adam,
Thanks for stopping by and for the comment. When the level 4 manager is stuck dealing with current operational issues, then the future focused infrastructure work is being sacrificed. We’ve seen this time and time again. Level 4 can’t do level 4 until levels 1 – 3 are operating correctly.
Michelle