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Requisite Organization

Requisite Organization

Many organizations, not understanding that a scientific standard of effective design exists, leave organization design to default. This leads to serious dysfunction that is easy to spot and completely avoidable. The root causes of most organizational pain can be found in three areas:

  • How organizational levels (strata) and job roles are defined (i.e. role to role mismatch)
  • Person to role mismatch (person under or over qualified for role), and
  • Person to manager mismatch.

Examples of these issues are presented in the table which follows. (Thanks to Michelle Malay Carter at Peoplefit for the use of this table and framework.)

Visible Performance and "Personality" Issues

Type of Mismatch

Natural Law (Detailed in Requisite Organization Model)
  • Micro-management
  • Lack of leadership-too much or too little guidance
  • Poor communication between employee and manager – too much or too little information
  • Defensive manager
  • Arrogant or pushy employee
  • Employee viewing his manager’s manager as the "real" boss

Role to Role Mismatch

Each role should report to a role one complexity level higher than it.

Ways to violate this law:

  • Having more than one role within a layer.
  • Having a complexity layer without a role in it.
  • Missing both layer and role.
  • Inability to do the work assigned
  • Constant approaching of manager for more detailed instruction
  • Manager having to do some of the work himself
  • Manager having to break the work into smaller "chunks"
  • Boredom
  • Six months of excellent performance followed by change in motivation level or attitude

Person to Role Mismatch

A person’s ability to deal with complexity should match the complexity level of his job.

Ways to violate this law:

  • A person has more capacity than the job calls for.
  • A person has less capacity than the job calls for.
  • The employee does not feel his manager adds any value to his work.
  • The employee thinks the manager talks too abstractly without enough details and specifics.
  • Micromanagement
  • Lack of leadership–too much or too little guidance
  • Poor communication between employee and manager – too much or too little information
  • Defensive manager
  • Arrogant or pushy employee
  • Employee viewing his manager’s manager as the "real" boss

Person to Manager Mismatch

Each employee should report to a manager who’s ability to deal with complexity is one level above his or hers.

Ways to violate this law:

  • The manager has the same or less capability than the employee
  • The manager has capability two or more levels above the employee.

When roles are placed requisitely (in an organization structure), the organization stands the greatest chance for functioning effectively. When they are too close or too far, dysfunction is inevitable. Much of this dysfunction masquerades as "personality issues". Fixing the structure can make many of these supposed personality clashes disappear.

When roles are too close, both the manager and direct report are likely operating at the same level of comfort with complexity and both process information the same way. When this is the case, the manager cannot build a context for the subordinate that goes beyond the thinking of the subordinate. Therefore, the manager does not add value to the subordinate’s work, which is frustrating for the subordinate. The subordinate will invariably make inquiries to which the manager cannot satisfactorily respond. In response, the subordinate may look to his manager’s manager for leadership.

This can lead the manager to view the subordinate as a threat. In extreme situations, the manager may seek to remove the threat, resulting in the loss of an effective person to the organization.

When roles are too far and a layer is missing, communication will suffer. The subordinate will experience the situation as insufficient direction or detail in directions given by the manager. The manager, on the other hand, will feel that the subordinate is slow and wanting too much hand-holding. Because the direct report will be incapable of handling the work in the stratum above him, the manager will be forced to cover the work that falls in the layer separating them. This will leave the manager with less time to do the work appropriate to his or her stratum level and some form of coping method will need to be applied by the manager, i.e. not doing the higher level work, ignoring the lower level work, or working 80 hours a week to cover both.

The aims of the requisite organization are simple: develop organization structures and processes that can provide for high levels of performance and business effectiveness. In a requisite organization people trust each other and work together in an honest and straightforward manner. They use their capabilities to the fullest, both to their own satisfaction and to the functioning of the organization.

Redline Advisors can help assess the integrity of your organizational design, independent of the strength or placement of your talent pool, by comparing it to a proven standard model of effectiveness and efficiency for a Requisite Organization. The objective is to design a target organization that best suits the organization’s mission.

Building a requisite organization requires:

  • Understanding the current organization in terms of a “Managerial Accountability Hierarchy (MAH)”[1]
  • Functional alignment with the MAH
  • Proper structuring of tasks and task delegation
  • Engaging requisite managerial leadership practices and inter-role relationships
  • Assessment of role complexity and assignment of appropriate resources who’s ability to make meaning of complexity matches the complexity inherent in the work of the role.
  • Review of compensation practices and levels.

When the above steps are completed, a fully requisite organization emerges. The target organization always reflects 100% “requisiteness.”  Any deviation from 100% will decrease effectiveness, as employees directly affected by the design flaw, divert energy from their work at hand to compensating for the structural default.  Due to a cascading affect, the higher up the organization chart the defect is, the greater the dysfunctional impact.

A Requisite Organization offers a number of benefits. You can:

  • Determine how well the existing or proposed role structure provides for effective managerial leadership
  • Determine whether the existing or proposed role structure is sufficient to carry out your organization’s mission
  • Determine if there are extra layers present
  • Determine if there are layers missing
  • Determine if there are "holes" in the organization where work has the potential to "fall through the cracks," and
  • Determine if you are expecting some roles to "cover" several layers of work.

Redline can help you design an organization that fosters efficiency and effectiveness.

[1] Ibid #2.

Requisite Organization: Questions For Further Discovery
  1. Does your organization structure work the way you want it to?
  2. Where might the “negative” value added be (e.g. work passed vertically in same stratum, too many levels, inadequate subordinates)?
  3. How would you define the level of trust in your organization?
  4. Is accountability clear and in line with authority – or is it a mish mash? How much “micro-management” is going on?
  5. To what extent is there real mentoring, career development and a real awareness of employees’ potential?
 

Redline’s services and deliverables for strengthening a requisite organization

  • Requisite organizational stratification and functional alignment strategies to gain:

    • Role accountability
    • Role definition and alignment of roles to strategy
    • Efficient work flow
    • Effective task delegation
    • Effective Cross-Functional Team structures

    • View a summary of determinants, questions and Redline services (PDF format)


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