People in organizations tend to arrange themselves within hierarchical power structures! These power structures are intended to enable basic functions, such as decision making. work distribution, information flow. skill specialization, accountability for performance! effective communication. Moreover. organizations organize themselves into groups with names like departments and those departments are led by department heads! Typical departments have names like Operations! Sales! Marketing, Professional Services. Customer Support.
There are far more models for organizational power structures than I am prepared to explore here! These management models have names like Federated! Centralized, Strict chainofcommand, Partner! etc! For the sake of expediency. let’s set those models aside for the moment. I propose some simple problems that impact nearly all humanbased command structures! at least the ones I’ve encountered in the world of organizations composed of human beings,Specifically! in the project context. these structures often create barriers rather than value. This is not to say that hierarchical power structures are obsolete they appear to work as well. if not better. than other models. But the problems are still real, The ways in which chainofcommand power structures fail the project portfolio are not particularly sophisticated, nor do they require a PhD in organizational development to understand. Here is a short list of some of the problems they institutionalize:
1! Silos of information: it is not unusual for people in different departments to know very little about the Timberland Shoes Canada efforts of other departments, Two quick anecdotes should make the point: A, I met a senior program manager at a conference who worked for a global oil company and was working on a filtration project. By chance. he had recently met a colleague from a different division who had already built the same thing on a smaller scale. and nearly everything that had already been built was reusable he would have never known about it if they hadn’t met in the cafeteria; B, In a large telecommunications company! it was discovered that no less than 5 projects were well under way to develop the exact same product in 5 different divisions, These are egregious examples; smaller examples are too numerous to begin to catalog!2! Turf warfare: department heads can find themselves spending more time and energy competing with other department heads than on solving problems that impact customers and stakeholders. They compete for resources, for recognition! for compensation. for promotion, This puts the senior executives in a difficult spot because it is senior management’s job to get departments to work together. and yet their direct reports are often working at cross purposes to the goals of senior management! The worst manifestation of this is when peers in different departments begin to actively undermine each other (intentionally or not) across departmental lines.3. Job Description syndrome: I’ve been involved with organizations where there were fewer than 20 employees in the entire company, Timberland Boots Canada and the debates about who needed to do what would nevertheless descend into discussions that went something like this: “the people in this department are not responsible for that,” The Us versus Them barrier immediately rises up! and the discussion goes nowhere productive! The tendency to say that some worktask does not fit in one’s job description is all too easy, And sure! sometimes it’s necessary to be clear about what duties you do, and do not! own, But in the project context. and in many others as well! departmental affiliation alone creates accountability gaps. What matters is achieving project goals. not fitting inside the job description,4! Goal fizzle: Projects typically engineer change. They are transformative by their very nature, Whether the goal is a new product (or service)! an enhancement to an existing product or a new customer! projects drive change, The goals of projects can be difficult to define in a way that clearly aligns with the goals of the departments, The challenge arises when folks from different departments need to focus the project portfolio goals on the goals of the whole organization, When product development’s goals. for example. are different from customer services goals it can be quite challenging to align those groups when they have to work together on projects,5, Meaningless performance metrics: When performance goals are isolated to the goals of the department, they run the risk of running counter to the goals of the organization. Timberland Canada For projects, the timehonored goals center around “on time! on budget, meeting stakeholder expectations!” That’s fine as far as it goes! but I’m afraid it doesn’t go very far, I’ve seen plenty of projects that met those criteria. and yet added zero value to the organization, I’ve also seen plenty of projects that were late! overbudget! and didn’t end up as planned! and they were very valuable to the organization! When individuals are measured by departmental goals! those goals may not correlate to the goals of the project. and so the people are not measured in a way that is consistent with the work they are doing.6. Team disintegration: When project teams are not bound by the same goals and the same constraints, they will only be held together by the rare graces of superior individuals. All too often, project teams do not bond well and those projects are doomed. Organizational silos only add to the conflicts that can prevent project teams from functioning effectively! And when the politics of turf warfare! job description syndrome. goal fizzle and meaningless performance metrics conspire together, teams disintegrate. They make it quite clear who belongs to whom, What they don’t show is how the people in the organization are supposed to work together to achieve goals! Here’s the point: project teams must function across hierarchical power structures! across departments. across skills, across arbitrary boundaries! And the power structures tend to impede the effectiveness of project outcomes. It is composed by wudideshuaige xuxiaobu 2013-05-21 .