Earlier we discussed the importance of including staff when developing your strategy for your organization. It is just as important to include your staff when deciding how best to organize your program, assign tasks, and delegate decisions. They are the “world’s greatest experts” when it comes to their own work and will have invaluable information to share regarding planning and organizational decisions. Planning involves annual updates of strategy, and organizing is the process of aligning your talent with the goals of the strategy for best results.
There are two options for organizing staff to accomplish program goals. The more traditional way identifies which individuals can best perform given tasks. For example, the leader assigns a mechanical engineer for robotic design, an industrial engineer to determine best production process, and an electrical engineer to design the digital requirements of the product. Production personnel are later assigned to produce robots.
Typically, each person will be given a list of tasks with a goal for task completion. Such an organization of individual task assignment and accountability was how I was managed for much of my career. I know other professionals who work in virtual isolation and are unaware of other personnel and tasks being completed.
As a leader I found a different design worked much better for my department and as a consultant working to redesign operations have found higher levels of production with an alternative design.
The second option is for the leader to recruit a project manager. The project manager recruits team members, and as they come on board, they participate in interviewing and hiring.
Rather than assigning tasks individually, the teams review tasks together and assign those tasks based on individual skills and interests. The team meets weekly and reviews the work performed together and problem solves design and production issues together.
This organizational design is referred to as a cross-functional work group. The group has individual and team goals aligned with the organizational goals and is recognized and rewarded for improvements as a group. This design facilitates the cross-training of team members and stimulates the creativity and innovation required when leading multi-cultural and generational personnel for new product design and production.
An organization I recently served interviewed their clients, developed a new vision, mission, and strategy and identified performance measures for the organization.
They then reorganized around those strategic goals and measures so that each week they could measure their performance, problem solve, and get work done. The result was an organization that changed from producing 5–6 units per year to 12–14 units per year with higher levels of quality and customer satisfaction. The organization created new ideas faster, designed new services faster, and implemented those services in record time.
For this new organization to work effectively, the leader had to change. This leader had learned to tell his personnel what to do, how to do it, and when to do it. After coaching, he stopped offering solutions to problems completely, began asking staff for their ideas and when asked for a solution began asking staff how they would solve it.
He stopped managing individuals and managed the leaders of the work groups instead. He had been meeting monthly with staff members having key responsibilities and changed to meeting with his group leaders instead. Each week, this leadership team evaluated their performance measures and how they were working together. These changes in leadership behavior along with the new organizational structure led to growing levels of creative and innovative behavior throughout the organization.
Another client organized around their strategy and scorecard. The Financial Management group consisted of operations personnel along with human resources and accounting personnel. The Operations Performance group consisted of operations, engineering, real estate, accounting, and human resource personnel. Customer Satisfaction group consisted of operations, marketing, sales, real estate, and accounting personnel. Employee Satisfaction group had personnel from operations, human resources, and accounting. These groups met monthly to review goals and develop action plans for the coming month.
The benefit to engaging every part of the organization, involving them in information sharing, collaboration, and decision making generated better and more creative decisions for the organization. Efficiency and performance were significantly enhanced. This region improved from being last of all U.S. regions in Customer Satisfaction and Employee Satisfaction to first in both categories. Market share for the region soared.
Research from this client’s corporate office revealed that it was not possible to increase customer satisfaction scores without simultaneously increasing employee satisfaction. Similar research was cited in the Harvard Business Review.
To increase employee satisfaction, each leader in the organization had to change from being a cop who told employees what to do, when to do it, and how to do it to being a coach who developed goals with staff, listened to them, and asked for ideas when problem solving and innovating. As these managers’ behaviors changed, the organization became highly creative, innovative, and competitive in its market.
Linking Strategy, Staff, and Customers
I was asked to help a client set up high-performing work groups in her operation. She was aware that having her organization working in teams, knowing customer requirements and empowered to make work decisions was the basis of creativity and innovation throughout her operation. When touring her facility, I talked with several employees. Each one could tell me the client company they were producing for, who the contact people were in those companies and what and when they needed those products. This leader had been highly successful in linking her employees with the company’s client base and building the business. She realized innovation occurs when your staff understands what exceeds customer expectations and continually works to do better.
Another client was a Quick Service Restaurant (QSR) corporation. They were committed to improving operational performance and customer satisfaction. In the process of designing collaborative work groups in each unit, the corporate offices implemented balanced scorecards in each of its restaurants. Additionally, each shift in each restaurant had a balanced scorecard. Each restaurant developed a customer survey tool for daily use. The data were accumulated and plotted weekly on each shift’s scorecard. This process linked staff with both customers and the corporate strategy creating clear focus and alignment (Figure 3.1).
Figure 3.1 Daily/weekly survey
The key to making the process work involved restaurant management. They reviewed scorecards with each shift team each week and changed their leadership behavior from controlling outcomes to collaborating with their employees on creative solutions for increasing customer satisfaction scores, improving operational performance, reducing food and labor costs, and increasing employee satisfaction. The operation reduced employee turnover by 60 percent while reducing labor costs and improving production accuracy.
During my work with this organization, a profit center leader was asked by a restaurant manager to visit her restaurant. As his coach, I was asked to come with him. When he entered the restaurant, things seemed different. The employees had talked with their customers and based on customer feedback had taken it upon themselves to redecorate the restaurant with flower baskets and a new coat of paint. They and the manager were smiling with pride when he entered. My client could not believe they would make such changes without talking with him first. In the past, he would have scowled and taken the manager to her office for a good talking to. However, this time he did not scowl, and instead smiled and congratulated them on their initiative. When he asked about restaurant performance, managers and crew were excited to report sales and customer satisfaction scores had increased since the changes. This restaurant manager had successfully linked her staff with their strategy and customers resulting in greater innovation within the restaurant and greater sales and market share for the company.
Alignment Survey
This survey is designed to help you and your staff discuss how well they are aligned with your organization’s strategy and agree on what might be done to become better informed and aligned.
Rate the items mentioned in Figure 3.2 based on how you think your staff would rate them, then, ask your staff to complete the survey and compare results.
Figure 3.2 Alignment survey
Plan of Action
Use Figure 3.3 to identify what to change to align your workforce with strategy and clients. First list behaviors your leader and workgroup identify as getting in the way of full alignment under STOP. Then list behaviors and actions leader and group members should begin under START. Finally, identify actions helping you and your staff and list those under CONTINUE.
Figure 3.3 Action plan