Keith:
At 13:02 17/05/1996 EDT, you wrote:
>I have a strong bias against organization charts because they seldom
>reflect what is really going on. Many organizations function effectively
>in spite of their organization charts.
Certainly, org charts are wistful, even fanciful, abstracts of how an
organization works, but I'd like to offer a tidbit that I adopted from a
client years ago: This client had only one direct report on his org
chart, yet he ran a substantive manufacturing operation -- the single
report was the "Strategic Plan" and it had an interesting effect on his
group. Anything that any of the "nominal reports" did or changed had to
put through the plan, and that triggered a strategic thinking mentality
where it was the thinking process and not the plan that was critical,
consistent evaluation/approaches, and timely notice/communication to peers
and others. Certainly this approach could be subverted, but in good hands,
it served this client well.
Best regards, Gordon Housworth
Intellectual Capital Group
ghidra@mail.msen.com
Tel: 810-626-1310
--Gordon Housworth <ghidra@mail.msen.com>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>