Read any good org charts lately?
Regardless of how your company is faring with the new economic landscape, you’ve probably been through a reorganization or two. And for larger companies, I’m guessing you’ve been through a couple just since Thanksgiving. Everything is much better now right?
Need for Organizational Coaching
Somewhere in you career you may have heard the story of the 3 envelopes. If this is new to you, I’ll give you the short version. New manager starts a job and is given 3 envelopes and is told to open them in order as he/she faces a serious challenge. So he puts them in his desk and eventually things aren’t going so well so he opens the first envelope. It reads “Reorganize” . So he creates a new reporting structure, informs everyone and he goes back to work thinking life is good. Time goes by and things aren’t doing so hot. So he decides to open #2. It reads “Reorganize Again”. So he looks at the organization again and realigns some staff and changes the responsibilities between departments and goes back to work thinking life is good. Well, some time goes by and things still aren’t doing so hot and seem to be getting worse. So he decides to open #3. It reads “Prepare 3 Envelopes”.
Been There Done That
I’m sure most of you have seen this scenario play out at some point in your past. If you took a car apart and put the pieces back together in a different way because it wasn’t running right, how do you think it would run? That’s sort of the approach many people take to addressing organizational issues.
There’s a saying that you can’t use the same thinking process to get out of a problem as you used to get into it. This is a trap that many organizations fall into. You can’t do the same things and expect different results. We work with organizations to identify key business functions, core competencies, technology factors, and management support strategies to create intelligent organizational processes. Oh – and no envelopes!
