Like the cables on a suspension bridge, processes and organizational structure hold your team or program together. They keep things up and going after the initial flush of excitement has faded. Clear structure and processes prevent the development of isolated political fiefdoms. If they aren't clear then energy is diverted into endlessly getting organized and fighting for turf. This happens in both large and small teams. Results inevitably suffer.
Too much structure can be just as bad. Defining too many processes, or ones that are excessively detailed is the same as having none. Many well-managed teams have rows of dusty binders filled with pages of re-invented processes. Unfortunately they are never used. All that documentation might bring joy to the quality manager's heart. But the point is to use a process not to just document them.
To be useful, a process has to be understood by all the participants. It must carry clear rewards for correct usage. The management team must monitor and measure its use. If you're not going to monitor and measure usage, then save your money. Don't spend the time to re-engineer and document. The results you'll get are not worth the investment.
Despite some trendy consultants' insistence on open organizations and "organic" workflow you need structure to succeed. This true whatever the size of your team. The level of structure appropriate to the size of your organization may surprise you. Often small teams need as much structure as large ones. Where staff is limited you need high levels of role clarity or work falls between the cracks. In the absence of structure the workload in a small team quickly becomes unbalanced. Your self-starters and stars will take on too much of the load. This can lead to the loss of your best people. Every team needs clear declared organization. Too often we avoid fixing a performance problem by obscuring roles or expected deliverables. Similarly, office politicians often work to obscure lines of responsibility to achieve some personal benefit or avoid responsibility. Allowing this through neglect or lack of priority is a mistake.
Much has been said about having a flexible organization structure and encouraging employees to go beyond their defined responsibility. This works when it is a response to a rigid, overly defined job specification. Far too often organizations do not provide a well enough defined organizational structure for this to be meaningful. Today we have so much "white space" and so many "gray areas" that important work is left undone. Loose job definitions tend to discourage ownership and staff empowerment. By providing a structure which eliminates "white space" your team works together with less friction. By clarifying "gray areas" you encourage employees to own their work and results.
How do you so this?
First, own your area of responsibility. If you are going to be a highly successful CIO you need to own all of IT within your company. This is based on the example of CIO's who are able to make dramatic contributions to the mission of their organizations. While there are many great CIO's who do not own all of IT, they do not achieve as much as those who do. Large portions of their time and resources are devoted to the continual management of relationships with the various independent IT teams within the firm. This leaves less for forging better service to the business or for supporting the mission of the whole organization.
This fundamental structural choice is one of the clearest dividing line between successful IT teams and the rest. It also has a clear correlation to the cost efficiency of IT. The most successful CIO's have direct control of all IT operational and development budgets. In interviews with America's top CIOs, over 95% had direct control of all IT.
More than a few of the leaders interviewed made it clear that they would not take a position at a firm where they would not have clear centralized functional authority. "Why take a job where you can't be successful" commented one. They advised that ensuring direct CIO control of all IT resources was an important prerequisite to demand prior to accepting the position. "It is a clear indicator of the support you will receive from the CEO and rest of the functional staff."
Once in place, direct control is a tremendous responsibility. You have to demonstrate that you can manage it successfully. It is clear that divisionalized IT control ensures lack of standards, redundancy in systems and ultimately slows the whole organization. On the other hand, centralized but unclear leadership or too rigid a centralized structure is equally ineffective.
Clarity, simplicity and attention to implementation were key to each success we studied. Achieving this is a particular challenge for large companies with multiple business models, firms that grow by acquisition and rapidly growing organizations. But neglecting structure can doom any enterprise.
Where to start? First you need a definition of your team's goal. For IT this should be the goal or goals of your business partners. Improving system uptime is not a business goal; it is a means. Providing service to external customers 24x7 is a goal. These business goals can then be translated into tactics and processes. The Japanese 'hoshin' process is an excellent simple structure for this.
With strategies and tactics in place, you apply your available resources. No fear, they will never, never be enough. But using your experience and the knowledge of your team you then make clear unequivocal assignments of resources. Bear in mind that 80% of progress will come from 20% of your resources. Most resources are consumed just to keep the doors open and the lights on.
Define roles and processes in each area no matter how new or experimental. If it isn't clear how a thing should be done, define the process in terms of results and responsibilities: the who and the what. You can come back and document the how later if needed.
No initial assignment of resources is perfect. Monitor and adjust resource frequently. This has the added benefit of relieving your subordinates of the idea that they are 'entitled' to a level of resources. Link the resources to the job at hand. Measure your managers on results not on level of resources they control.
The most successful firms are the ones where the roles and contributions of each of the executive team and their departments are very clearly defined. Established ownership and clarity of measures is the starting place for good teamwork. Results are enabled when every one on the team understands each other's specific role and responsibilities. Poorly performing teams can be greatly improved by investing in establishing and communicating roles. Good teams can become great when resources and responsibilities are aligned properly. Superlative teams go a step further and have clear back up and assist roles mastered. Like a Pennant winning baseball team each player knows, owns and has mastered their position. They also swiftly and easily back-up each other in pre-defined ways.
Sports analogies are often overused but they are perfectly valid in this situation. Imagine a football team that fielded the appropriate number of players but failed to assign clear roles. Who would call the play? How long would they be in possession of the ball if there were no defensive front line? A team without structure will not make it to the Super Bowl.
Role clarity creates an environment where each person will expect their teammates to excel at their given position. The peer group enforces higher standards. Areas of process failure or individual weakness become apparent quickly and can be addressed. So, as you shift resources and job assignments make sure your defined structure is adapted real time and communicated.
If you believe you do have role clarity and clear responsibilities then test your assumptions by getting out on the work floor and asking how a specific piece of work gets done. Unfortunately the answer you receive often bears no resemblance to the carefully worked out processes you had in place. This is an opportunity to get the process back on track or to recognize and document the improvements the team has already made without your help.
Sensible processes are a key part of organizational success. Once you have them, measure for them. If you measure for performance within roles, and for the quality of interfaces between the roles then you will get improved performance.
Check on those back up processes too; before your need them. Well-structured teams know how to provide backup when their colleague is pulled out of position. They watch out for each other knowing they cannot win alone
Nothing makes this point clearer than a merger or acquisition. Melding teams and systems is both a tremendous challenge and a great opportunity. As the CIO you will be in the critical position of educating your peers on the need for consistent systems and processes. Unfortunately mergers are not based on the assumption that pre-merger budgets will be added together to produce the merged one. Transition costs are often under estimated. With tension and politics at their highest how do you keep the systems up and the team moving forward? Again it is clarity, simplicity and attention to execution that will see you through.
Michael "Gordy" Gordon CIO of Symmetricom Inc. is good example of this. Mike pushed his peers on the executive team to cleanly define the products, process and teams that were to be combined or continued. With this in hand he worked to establish a balance between defined processes and open empowerment. Step one was cutting through the politics to achieve a new structure for his team quickly. Nothing focuses people like knowing what their job is or is not going to be. Few things are more disruptive than leaving people in uncertainty. Mike's job was complicated by the need to go from a consolidated single division structure to one that accommodated multiple divisions and locations. He used business process documentation and mapping tools to help guide this decision process. This also had the advantage of assisting in the adoption and socialization of the new structure. It didn't happen overnight. There was a lot of negotiation but the agreement with his business partners has helped them accept some of the difficult decisions that had to be made. As Gordy says "A $200 million dollar firm always has to look to reduce costs through consolidation and improved productivity."
Great CEO's understand this and have organizations that are transparent. They set the example with very clear roles for their direct staff. Ineffective organizations allow history, personalities or politics to cloud roles and structures. In consequence, results suffer. This error is especially common among firms that have grown significantly and believe they must add layers and a more "sophisticated" structure. Leading indicators of this are organizations where you need a glossary to understand the names of the various business units or management titles. If anything on an org chart has to be explained then it probably needs to be eliminated.
Successful teams understand that the structure of the organization should follow a consistent model and that executives need to fit into the model. The model should not be driven by the desires of an individual no matter how strong their personal influence.
Example: Apples and Oranges; in one firm the business units were structured around both different product types and various customer segments. There was a business unit for selling Widgets and one for selling to Small and Medium Businesses. Soon instead of sharing products, production and infrastructure they were replicating them. The IT team was always square in the middle of arguments over how information should be delivered and processed. Ultimately they insisted on separate IT as they thought the other team was always getting better service. The only resolution was to provide one common data set and processing environment with clear executive sponsorship. Neither side is content with the decision but shareholders and customers do not have to bear the cost of redundancy and lack of consolidation.
This is a review of successful leaders so we won't talk about the firms and individuals who failed to make the cut. But commonly unclear and overlapping charters, layers of redundant decision-making and organizational acceptance of unclear responsibilities hampered them.
The evidence is clear. The central
IT function led by the CIO should own all the 'IT 'like resources. There should
be no shadow IT. If it looks like a programmer and walks like a programmer then
it is a programmer and should be in IT. How many of you know organizations where
the business just had to go out and get a consultant to install a system because
they couldn't wait for IT to catch up? That is the beginning of the problem.
Don't go down that path. If you are in IT accept the responsibility for the
success or failure of all information systems. Don't diminish yourself or your
organization by accepting less. In a following article we will discuss techniques
to use to create ownership where you are not provided it directly.
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copyright © Russ McBrien 2003