Another concept related to my previous “simplicity” blog that I have always wanted to talk about is the creation of organizations.
The other day I went through my contacts on Linkedin, and I had the impression of being a nobody. Or at least, reading the title (which at times, was hard to finish) I was left wondering how “important” the title really is.
This got me thinking about how organizations start to grow, and come up with different nomenclatures for titles… the first reason that came to mind is that organizations when they start to grow in size are really complex, aren’t they?
During my career, I have seen several companies grow, and worked in both startups and large corporations. In my opinion the two main reasons for complicating organizations (and in this I am saying, I have made my share of mistakes) are:
1.- Lack of knowledge
2.- Lack of daring
3.- Being a big shot
The first, lack of knowledge, is very dangerous and can escalate exponentially. The following is a real case that you may have experienced:
An “incompetent” manager, (meaning s/he does not know how to organize a certain part of his/her job), and believes s/he needs to put a manager under him/her to take charge of that part of the job. If this first manager is incompetent, s/he is very likely to hire the wrong person. Not that s/he does this on purpose, but it is very difficult to find something or someone when you don’t know what you are looking for.
If you don’t know what needs to be done in detail, you can tell the difference between the expert who knows, and the one who can talk the talk and may appear to know the job….
If the organization continues to grow, the new manager may ask to hire more people from the “incompetent” manager. If this new manager was not the right person in the first place, because s/he didn’t know how to do the job well, s/he may hire the wrong people, and the loop repeats and repeats… I think you get my drift.
During my career, I’ve seen this happen on numerous occasions. And when there is a mix of departments that need to work together, new middle positions start to appear and then evolve into new departments that handle the interfaces between the old departments….
At this point, I guess you’ve seen how organizations grow in interfaces…
The second, lack of daring, is also very common. Team members need to see that they are progressing up the social ladder and need a raise (sometimes deserved, sometimes their own belief of how good they are).
Solution, let’s call the traditional “project manager”, “Senior director of special projects” or” Director of blah,blah….” The reality is that you have gone from having an organization with one role (with various levels of expertise) to having a tutti frutti.
Also. Logically there’s our marketing positioning, the social media factor and/or our self-pride. You can not put that you are a “garbage collector”, despite being one of the most dignified and sacrificed jobs that exist, you have to put “expert in waste management with vast experience in anaerobic digestion processes”, or if your field is more in recycling “expert in recyclable waste management, with knowledge of the process of…” and is that in this world where we live is more important to “look” than “be”.
Third, being a big shot, I guess you have seen that in many organizations, the one with the biggest department has the most say in the committees. Then comes the business plan process, where managers need to increase their team to achieve the business plan with exponential growth, or sometimes because it is “super complicated” what they are doing, they need to create new organizations, within their organization….. Sometimes, they even resort to large consulting firms that do the name change in the boxes (change from functional to geographic organization, and vice versa) to justify in detail the growth that is needed …
In certain positions it is very difficult to recognize in time that we do not know what we have to do, and it is even much more difficult to correct what we ourselves have created.
