Within organisational design, efficiency can be boosted by ensuring the right number of roles are created to carry out the tasks that need to be undertaken to enable an organisation to achieve its strategic aims.
Each role in an organisation should be able to have its purpose defined in a couple of short sentences.
The accountabilities of a role relate to the primary expectations of the role holder, irrespective of the current situation or the particular person in role. In other words, the role accountabilities may be ongoing but the role-holder may be asked to do something else. Often this is the situation underlying temporary assignments to projects or, indeed, the absence of the boss. If someone is asked to ‘stand-in’, it must be made clear whether they are being assigned the authority of the role or have to hold things until the boss’ return.
To deliver accountabilities specific tasks have to be undertaken so the role needs to be defined and the role-holder made clear of what these are. Tasks have three specific characteristics in terms of the output that is produced, i.e. quantity, quality and time-span. The third of these, time-span, concerns how long an individual is afforded judgment and discretion by their manager to complete an assigned task. A Chief Marketing Officer held accountable to build brand identity and market penetration in a new geographic region should be given, perhaps, two to three years to achieve this. A well-assembled marketing plan, approved by the CMO’s boss, should show predications of the projected growth in market share, which enables the boss to track performance and progress but not assume ownership of the task. These are not nuances in the practice of designing organisations but are fundamental factors that lay at the heart of GIL’s approach to designing efficient and effective organisations. The manager who appoints someone to their team is accountable for their performance. They need to be assured at the time of making the appointment that they can provide the headroom in which the individual can do their job subject to the normal interaction demanded by an effective performance management system.
In defining a role, it is important to recognise that not only is there an upward relationship to the manager’s role and a downward one to their direct reports but also an array of cross-functional relationships that need to be defined particularly in terms of any authority they may have over that role. It is vital that the boss explains to both role-holders the nature of any relationship otherwise confusion will abound when person A believes they can dictate compliance to a policy or adherence to a process to person B.
Effectively designed structures do not permit such lack of mutual understanding about the nature of role relationships between role-holders.
