1857
n
Making far-reaching decisions
and not have much understanding or appreciation of people in
other functions and departments, even if they are working on the
same product or serve the same geographical market.
The trick to resolve this – or even avoid it, if you manage to do
it proactively – is to simply swap them around. Break up the old
functional departments and put them all together in departments
dened by product (or whatever). The employees won’t like it,
because they think these other folks are a bit weird (if not dumb
and whining) and they will tell you they felt quite comfortable in
their old functional departments – which is precisely the reason
you should change them!
Once people become comfortable in their groups, stop commu-
nicating and co-ordinating with others outside their department,
and fail to see others’ perspectives, it is time to turn them around.
And the good thing is, for the rst few years after the reorgani-
zation, they will still have their old social networks, perspectives,
and knowledge of their previous, functional departments, while
working with the new product structure. As a result, you can
actually get the best of both worlds. And once they start to lose
that, just change them again.
Now change it again!
Most rms change only in response to altering external condi-
tions. Hence, they change because their old structure does
not work anymore. I am suggesting that there is another
reason for change: the creation of informal networks and a
general awareness of what lies beyond a person’s own depart-
mental boundaries. The complementarities between the rm’s
informal social networks and its formal structure enable it to
solve a co-ordination problem that most rms experience:
namely that you have to also communicate with people
outside your own department, and it is often difcult to get
people to do that.
Actually, over time, while studying more rms and their reorgan-
izations, I began to realize that there are two more reasons for
..................Content has been hidden....................
You can't read the all page of ebook, please click here login for view all page.