all about your organisation
Good Morning
How’s your organisation? And I don’t mean the state of your desk - although maybe that could be a blog for another day – let me know!
Part of your job as a manager is to ensure the successful achievement of your organisation’s objectives – isn’t it? So where do you start? Let me ask again – how’s your organisation? Can you answer that easily, do you need to think about it, do you know where to start?
Management basic – span of control
How do you define your organisation? Is it your team, the people who report to you? Is it the company or organisation that employs you? Is it the team you are a member of (your manager and other people at your level)? How many people and resources do you control? How much freedom do you have to make decisions and implement change?
I’ll let you into a secret – you probably have more influence and more freedom than you realise. Yes really. So, take a look at what your job entails, have a look at your organisation and see whether it best meets the requirements of your job. Does it need to change? In what way?
It may not be possible to change the wider organisation in which you work – but you may be able to change the way you interact with it. Start asking questions – why do people need certain information from you? What do they do with it? Where does it go? What are your organisation’s key objectives and how does your job fit into the bigger picture?
Can you explain this to your team? Why? It adds to motivation (which will be the subject of another blog entry – sign up now for automatic notification when this blog is updated and don’t miss out).
Real World
Clare, a friend of mine who works in an IT department for a large commercial organisation has become frustrated with the constantly changing priorities – people in her team work on a number of projects – most of the team work on more than one project and most projects use more than one person on her team. The constant meetings and calls on her team’s time mean that many of the team objectives aren’t being met and the team is constantly fire-fighting.
Sound familiar? Looking at the organisation’s objectives has helped Clare realise that the team has both operational responsibilities and project responsibilities, that her team are being involved in projects in an ad hoc way and also that performance appraisals are based on the operational work (a smaller part of the job than the projects).
Changing these things is within Clare’s span of control. I’ll let you know what happens.
For You
Is your team being managed in the best way to meet your organisation’s objectives? Do you need to make any changes? If so, plan them and work out how to implement them.
If there’s no need to make any changes – then challenge yourself and your team – how else could you meet objectives more efficiently and/or effectively?
Tags: management, objectives, organisation, span of control