Pains and gains are shared closely among alliance stakeholders, putting high demands on their organisational skills. Here are some ideas, suggestions and systemic solutions that would work to their favour.
Why can Organisational Design make or brake a business?
Collaborative work is influenced with multiplicity of interests. Besides stakeholders’ liability for their (or their investors’) cash, the strongest motivator in any business process is self-interest of involved individuals. Self-interest can be a true driving force behind success, assuming it would be given enough space for self-realisation. The problem is that if engaged in business together, all the individuals, whose self-interests naturally differ, could create more conflicts than benefits. Therefore some rights & rules conducting their behaviour need to be in place. Fundamentally, the rights & rules of engagement should be aligned with the representation of required expertise, competencies, capacities, and (sometimes most importantly) with people’s individual characters.
Many would agree that Organisational Design can make or break a business process. Therefore it should be of ultimate desire to process stakeholders to consider certain ways and possibilities of aligning the multiplicity of individuals in order to harness their self-interests on the way of achieving collateral benefits.
Aligning at least the most important rights & rules, traditional business organisations and partnerships use legal agreements with respects to stakeholders’ interests, cultures, systems and, at last but not least, levels of paranoia. Besides being elaborate, lengthy and expensive, legal agreements are also relatively difficult to adjust when circumstances change and require modifications.
Another approach to the issue is to set up specific project alliances where all pains and gains are shared equitably among owner- and non-owner-participants. This type of arrangement is covered by essentially one collective agreement with applicable penalties only in the case of wilful damage. The method highly relies upon honesty, trust and solid genuine relationships within and between collaborating teams. But then, what if we cannot fully trust in business?
Perhaps the solution is not (only) contractual. The rights & rules, which would reflect complicated Organisational Design, could be provided (and reinforced) by a system. Imagine an environment where participation of multiple individuals and entities can be easily structured in a way that reflects rights & rules of their engagements with regards to their self-interests as well as collateral benefits.
To begin with, we need to define at least 3 frames of reference which are essential to any Organisational Design:
1. Me:
It is a representation of an individual as a unit of competency and activity, the most important driving force behind a business process.
2. Project:
It is a scope of activity with a purpose and a predefined goal which is set by one or multiple individuals associated to one or multiple organisations.
3. Organisation:
It is a group of individuals driven by a functional hierarchy with the primary purpose of generating profit by engaging competencies (individuals) within projects.
Me, Organisation and Projects: The most universal frames of reference. They represent the individual, work and organisational aspects in any business.
In the traditional business environment, the frames of reference have been applied in a rigid order: An organisation sets the rules of engagement for individuals who work in projects to achieve the organisation’s goals which are subject to the organisation’s interests.
However, in the more contemporary business environment where large monolithic organisations are no more able to control their products’ life cycles, where work processes are determined by the need to share and cooperate, and success is driven by the customer’s experience rather than shareholder’s interest, Organisational Design is defined by the increasing requests for controllable flexibility.
Let us assume that a flexible but precise proportion between Me, Project and Organisation would be the key to the alignment of individual, work and corporate interests. Then we should set here certain initial organisational parameters and their combinations, applicable to the majority of cases during planning and execution of a business process:
- One organisation can operate in multiple projects at once.
- One project can branch to other projects as a result of phasing and segmenting a work process. Among linked projects can be applied various hierarchies. In that sense, Abillance.com offers multiple systemic tools for accommodating nearly any management practices.
- It is not possible to subordinate Organisation to Project as it would mean that the people engaged in a project could modify procedures and setups in an organisation. Organisation as a corporate structure is logically superior to work structure of a project. Therefore this situation cannot be permitted.
- Two and more Organisations can share and supervise one Project. This is an archetype of project alliancing. Abillance.com provides a variety of tools empowering such arrangements.
Activities of the individuals within an Organisation and the individuals within a Project (even if both groups include the same people) might be driven by different aspects and therefore different rules of engagement.
An Organisation, most of all reflects the relationship between a financial investment behind its core business process and the competencies subsequently engaged to manage and grow their investor’s wealth through making profit. Even though people do this by means of projects, their roles within an Organisation are mostly bound to a traditional corporate chain of command - the higher authority over $ the higher authority over people and processes.
In a Project environment, things can be quite different. Projects by their very nature are structures of work with a purpose and a very specific (often material) outcome, such as a product. The organisational methodology applied in projects is primarily focused on the successful completion of a work process, and does not always have to accommodate the corporate turn-for-cash hierarchy.
The principle of engaging people in an Organisation’s hierarchy is clearly money-for-profit-based. The principle of engaging people in a Project’s hierarchy is work-process-based. (Although each project should serve the purpose of an organisation and that is to generate profit.) When working together, the two types of hierarchy might intertwine. Thus, even someone relatively low in an Organisation, can get quite high in a Project, assuming there is a justifiable temporary requirement for his or her specific skills. It is the conflict of such temporary Project-driven appointments with the more permanent authorities of an Organisation, that can create difficulties and misunderstanding.
An Organisation could implement certain systemic solutions to changing authorities within its business process. First, Organisation leaders should determine who in which stage of which project should be granted what level of authority, even if it would cause a temporary subordination of an Organisation to a Project. The old saying: ‘The boss is always right’ does not always apply here. In some cases of more complex projects the amounts of information required are so vast that it is simply not feasible for the Organisation leaders to take care of the associated work processes without compromising their effectiveness. Authorities clearly must be delegated along with the phasing and segmentation of a business process. The key to a success is to find the fine balance between the functional drivers of an Organisation and those of a Project. One has to accept that people might sometimes go up and down very fast.
Applying differing combinations of people’s engagements, we need to understand further: By what means could Organisational Design be projected into the everyday work practice?
Both frames of reference - Projects as well as Organisations ultimately contain individual frames of reference which belong to the engaged people. People’s corporate roles e.g. Chief Financial Officer, Warehouse Manager or Office Assistant have a purpose mostly to distinguish their specific corporate authorities and of course payrolls. This study puts more emphasis on purely functional hierarchy that is applicable universally, regardless of corporate levels and boundaries. We have hereby identified and categorised only the roles, which are decisive for an Organisation or a Project from a systemic point of view:
1. Organisational Stakeholders (different from corporate stakeholders)
a. Organisation Leader – the one who oversees the run of an Organisation (usually a CEO, Business Manager, Managing Director)
b. Project Leader – the one, who oversees the run of a Project (usually a Project Director)
c. Organisation Participant – the one who anyhow on any level participates in the work process under an Organisation and is not the Organisation leader.
d. Project Participant – the one who anyhow on any level participates in the work process under a project and is not the Project leader.
2. Work Stakeholders
a. Task Assigner – the one who assigns a Task (in this case a unit of any activity or a scope), it is a systemic form of task delegating
b. Task Guarantor – the one who is approving the assignment of a Task and guarantying its successful delivery
c. Task Executor – the one who is assigned and approved to carry out all duties associated with the execution of a Task
A Task is the universally applicable and scalable unit of work. A Task can constitute a run of a whole Project or an Organisation. It can also be a simple operational set of commands. Its common denominator is the fact that a Task needs to be assigned, approved and executed by someone. That is why the roles of Work Stakeholders should more appropriately be called Task Stakeholders.
The key task stakeholders are: Assigner, Guarantor and Executor
The process of delegating roles during planning and execution of large Projects starts typically from an Organisation leader. He assigns a Task of executing a Project upon someone who by accepting the engagement becomes the Task executor and in turn the Project leader. He then assigns further Tasks to other people who might or might not be his subordinates in the Organisation. It is important to recapitulate here that from a system’s point of view, the roles in a Project are by the nature different from the roles in an Organisation. The compromise between both groups can be to a degree achieved by the instatement of the role of a Task Guarantor.
Abillance.com brings the simplest possible systemic solution to assigning people to tasks and vice versa within a work process. Universally applicable roles of Task Stakeholders (Task Assigner, Task Guarantor, and Task Executor) are distributed along as well as across the traditional chains of command.
Each Task can be extended to a Project if the Task’s workload exceeds its original scope and requires creation of a new Team. In that case, the Executor of such a Task becomes the Founder and the Leader of a new Project and its Team. Any of the Tasks, Task Stakeholders, Projects, and Teams can be copied, moved, removed or replaced. Although the changes are usually subject to access and action rights (see Transitive Rights: Link).
This method aims to be a very effective and dynamic way of planning and executing work process.
Task Guarantor can also be an observer for a third party which might have a specific interest in a Task although no expertise for the execution. Any of the roles of Task Stakeholders can represent any of the engaged corporate interests, they can also be representatives of clients or even some public authorities or agents.
Another frame of reference in Organisational Design is a Team. A Team can act as a buffer zone between individuals, Projects, and Organisations (and their differing interests). Often the same people in one Team might be integrated in two different hierarchies: one purely corporate- and the other one project-based. Even other participants (besides Project Stakeholders) can be invited into a Team. They do not need to be active. By being engaged in a Team, they simply become observers or associated supervisors.
Team components
A Team environment in Abillance.com naturally reflects the power balance between corporate and project interests. The aspects of finance, roles, rules, and contracts on one side, together with work process, steps, work areas and stages on the other, impact upon a Task in a Team.
Organisational Design has one simple purpose: aligning individuals. In the end, it is the individual who determines which principles and context in which engagement he or she would chose and follow. The systemic methods and structures introduced here can only support the optimal choice. Companies that wish to drive their project or corporate engagements the right direction should consider the following questions that their employees might be asking:
1. What role do I have in this project?
2. What role do I have in this organisation?
3. What role does my organisation have in this project?
4. What role does this project have for my organisation?
5. What role does my organisation have in my life?
Masslow’s Pyramid of Human Needs
