One of the root causes of our accountability mess is looking for who, not what went wrong. This leads to a search for the guilty as the cause of breakdowns in customer service, quality, communication, teamwork, and the like. It becomes a hunt to fix the blame more than fixing the problem. But those […]
Read post »As I wrote about the accountability mess, a good person in a bad system or process sets that them up for failure — and blame. “The 85/15 Rule” emerged from decades of root cause analysis of service/quality breakdowns. About 85% of the time the fault is caused by the system, processes, structure, or practices of […]
Read post »Accountability is highly subjective. Its meaning depends on whether we’re at the giving or receiving end. Many of us have been lashed with the accountability whip wielded by a blundering manager playing “gotcha games.” Often, accountability is a search for who to punish. The Blame Game and finger-pointing turns problem-solving and performance issues into […]
Read post »Operating inside the centralized versus decentralized paradox and finding the right balance has been a perpetual conundrum for many organizations. Deciding which model to use is often a values issue centered on issues of control, trust, and autonomy. We’re working with a high growth international resources company acquiring and adding new sites and divisions across […]
Read post »Recently I was talking with two executives about our approach for an upcoming leadership team retreat. We discussed their retreat objectives, possible agenda items, pre-assessment options, and who would participate. They’d recently brought together four departments into one service organization. They talked about rebuilding their organization structure and how to “fit the puzzle pieces together.” […]
Read post »Discover the Systems and Structure approaches that can help you to avoid the pitfalls and pave your organization’s pathway to success.
Read article »Process management is an invaluable part of disciplined management systems. Discover the Process Management approaches that can help you to avoid the pitfalls and pave your organization's pathway to success.
Read article »Process management is an invaluable part of disciplined management systems. Discover the Process Management approaches that can help you to avoid the pitfalls and pave your organization's pathway to success.
Read article »While our organizations have been organized vertically (with individual, isolated functions), their operations depend on processes that flow horizontally (across the organization).
Read article »Improvement planning, process management, teams, skill development, and the like are either constrained or boosted by our organization's structure and support systems. If we are unhappy with the behavior of people on our team or in our organization, we need to take a closer look at the system and structure they're working in.
Read article »Research and experience shows that the shape and characteristics of high performing organization structures have a number of common features.
Read article »High performing organizations that are thriving in today's chaotic world, are adapting and pioneering a wide variety of highly decentralized structures. They are giving up control of people so that people can control their own and the organization's destiny.
Read article »
Managers keep searching for the sure-fire change and improvement path. But following the trendy and popular routes often lead them over a cliff or into dead-end canyons. Cutting through the buzzwords and theories, comes Pathways to Performance — a guide to help you, your team, and your organization blaze your own successful way to high performance.
View book/ebook/CD »To deal with all the tumultuous change swirling around us today many executives rearrange their organizational structure. This seems to be an especially favorite approach of a new executive taking over a division, department, or organization. It’s almost routine when there’s been a major organization financial failure or big public blunder. But as with all […]
Read post »The June issue of my monthly e-newsletter, The Leader Letter, went out last week. In it I included an item from my April 30 blog posting responding to a workshop attendee who read one of my articles with a chart on moving from casual or moderate to intense levels of customer service. She also asked […]
Read post »Here’s a note I recently received from the president of a company we’ve been working with: “I am looking for a book/information on organizational structures. However, there’s a twist. We are currently set up as most companies are, with a vertical (silo) model. I want to change this. Part of our vision is to be […]
Read post »