Action: "Are you a great actor in a terrible play? What are you going to do about it?" Peter F. Drucker
"It's about the people, stupid" I won't take credit for that...
Maybe you are not as great as you think you are? But for the sake of blogging, let's assume that you are. As a matter of fact, let's assume you have strengths that need to be used more effectively and weaknesses that have to be made irrelevant. That is, after all, a manager's job, isn't it?
One thing the Internet bubble taught me was that the speed with which companies were changing required an organizational model which could react in step. GoreTex had long ago adapted the "amoeba" organizational model.
Example: I was quite close to some of the founders of a cool internet start-up called Ariba. This was during the days when my colleagues and I were participating in business start-ups on a significant scale for the first time. We even started Venture funds, and some of us went on to become entrepreneurs and venture capitalists. I asked one of my friends at Ariba what he would be doing in the next few months. His answer was telling. He told me that he would be doing whatever the team thought he would be good at, and when he was done with that, he would go to the next thing he was good at. He also implied quite strongly that he and his partners knew each others strengths and weaknesses quite well. It was not shameful to have weaknesses, as long as you did not hide them or deny them, so that they could be made irrelevant.
A dynamic organization needs a management model which fosters flexibility and getting the right person into the right job at the right time. Rigid organization structure has no place in organizations which continuously set themselves new challenges for growth. How about it Microsoft? Let some of the strong up-and-comers in Windows and Office take on leading roles in struggling growth businesses.
Have you drawn up your organization chart? Are you letting people see it and internalize it? Why? Maybe it's time to think about organization differently, more flexibly?
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