I spent 20 years in the ultimate case study of a functional structure organization, the NYPD. Why are they the ultimate? Because they are siloed in their organizational structure and were, prior to 1993, highly dysfunctional. And, you couldn’t dismiss or in some cases even reassign a low performer unless they committed a crime. What could be worse? But, there is hope. When a leadership team decided one central governing individual/body would hold people accountable and bring the leaders of each silo to the table things changed. If you work in a functional structure organization and you want to perform at high levels, make sure, if you are in charge, or if you are a contributor that takes pride in your work, you better hope that leadership brings everyone to the table. The same table. At the same time. Often.
According to Chron.com Article 2019 a functional structure is set up so that each portion of the organization is grouped according to its purpose. In this type of organization, for example, there may be a marketing department, a sales department and a production department. The functional structure works very well for small businesses in which each department can rely on the talent and knowledge of its workers and support itself. However, one of the drawbacks to a functional structure is that the coordination and communication between departments can be restricted by the organizational boundaries of having the various departments working separately. In a functional organizational structure the advantages of speed,clarity and specialization are counterbalanced by segregation, weakening of common bonds, lack of common bonds, and territorial disputes as noted in Chron.com Article Jan 2019
Take this Hypothetical situation: Imagine a small start-up organization with 4 leaders; Sales, Business Development, Marketing and Engineering. They are all Directors. In some cases, Directors to no one, actually. Sales and engineering have direct reports obviously, but BD and Marketing do not and at this early stage don’t need subordinate members. The 4 leaders gathered often and shared a lot of the workload. It was like playing Wack-a-Mole in the early days. Fires would pop up and someone with juice had to extinguish it. It worked. And the company grew.
There is a plan and the plan is working. The start-up is gobbling up land and the organization is growing. More hires! That’s the good news. The bad news is unless the leadership is strong and willing to hold direct reports accountable, the system and ultimately the objectives will falter. Oh sure they are hitting their “number”. But why aren’t they blowing out the number? Sure the products are “improving”. But at what rate? Yes, partnership MEETINGS are taking place. Meetings, not closes. Excuses proliferate. Jack Welch laments in his book “Winning” the meetings where he heard excuses from leadership, “well a 2% increase in THIS economy is great”. If leaders are not finding ways to excel, they are not trying. Remember when those Directors were independent contributors? Now that the Directors have direct reports taking on projects and assignments aligned with the organization’s strategy, assuming there is a strategy, and you find one of those new team members are only interested in their own world and not the customer’s world, guess what? They mail it in.
So now what? Hey Mr. (or Ms.) Director, some of your folks are on vacation, permanently. What can we do about that? “Nothing, you say?” Well what about what you said? What you promised? What about what we all committed to? “I never said that”. Now they are not only not doing their job, but now they are lying. Strong leaders must run the business functional areas. And they must hold their direct reports accountable. If they are underperforming, figure out why. Inspire them, motivate them, reward them. Do they even know what is expected of them to contribute to the overall mission? Maybe it’s the Director’s fault.
Ok, so the Directors have retreated back to their respective holes. Bunker mentality. What do we do from here? Bring in the one boss who will step up, call in the Directors and drill into the business as to what is going on. The frequency of the meetings will be dictated by the depth of the problem. Time spent up front on the strategic will lessen the tactical load. If caught early or before it even festers into a problem this effort will be less of a lift. In the NYPD it’s called Compstat. In business it could be your quarterly executive meetings or QBRs. And when you have those meetings, mistakes or poor plans should be owned, pivoted from and lessons learned; lies should be fatal. And unless you verify with facts and data, you will be lied to. Not because people are inherently bad, but because they know you are not checking.
Now that the sr. executive has the ball, they won’t do anything. Or can’t. What do you do? You either learn to live with mediocrity or you find another place to work. If you care too much you will die a slow professional death. Everyone has to decide the type of environment and culture they want to work in. For some, it’s an early start-up, or a big organization that has a start-up culture, like the NYPD pivoted to in 1993 with Compstat. It needs a sense or urgency. Or you can act like a crusty old protected civil servant, hope your Director has a civil service mentality too and then simply put yourself on cruise control.
