Structure

Structure

Structure Exists to Achieve a Transformation

Although an overall business objective or purpose is to 'Make Money', there is usually a distinct transformation from which the profit is derived. Profit is thus an outcome from the success of the transformation in which the business and its people are engaged.

The Transformation concept involves two things.

An object (eg raw material in a production process, or attitude/experience in a training process), and
A change in the state or attributes of that object.

For example, iron is transformed into steel, or dough to bread. A person is transformed from unemployed to employed when he or she goes through a recruitment process. A police force transforms the public from being unprotected to protected (or from non conforming to law to being conforming to law depending on how you look at it!). A hospital facilitates the transformation of people from sick to well.

The purpose of the business or work is to achieve the transformation. For the hospital, it might be Facilitate Healing. For the police, the purpose could be to Protect People (verb & noun). An office employee's purpose might be to Organise (or Disseminate) Information. Corporate purpose is often referred to as the 'mission'.

Roles, Functions and Relationships

Each element within a structure or system ought to be designed to contribute to the overall purpose. Teeth are designed to aid swallowing and digestion. A different way of ingesting food would render teeth obsolete.

Each element, and each person in a transformation has a different role or set of functions. But the roles (capabilities) can only be exercised and strengthened (maturity) when they relate or correspond with the other roles. In these days of increasing specialisation, there is an increase in interdependence between roles and functions performed both at the micro and macro levels in organisations and societies. An elemental failure, change in performance, or violation of relationship has the potential to ripple through the whole system. If it goes on long enough, the whole system will suffer.

Meaningful (Creative) Work

Roles and functions collectively form a system - a structured set of processes and technology (assets/elements) that people use to plan, execute, monitor and control the transformations in which they are engaged.

Complex purposes are achieved through systems - sets of enabling functions, through which individual jobs are linked to the company's results. Not understanding how these structures interact with each other over time, or how their relationship (influence) with other structures and elements, including the organisation's culture, can induce huge invisible losses by building in performance damping (reduced job satisfaction, frustration, de-motivation, poor productivity and quality).

The key to job satisfaction and personal performance is meaningful work. Each of us needs the autonomy to plan, execute, monitor and control our contribution to the overall purpose. When we have this, it leads personal enrichment.

Diagnosis First

Planning for continuous, sustainable improvement must begin with diagnosis.

What do we do and why?
How well are we doing it?
How well should we be doing it?
How does it relate to other functions & roles?
What share of the resources does it consume?
What is its priority (rate of return) for improvement?

The first step in the Diagnosis is to establish the links between FUNCTIONS (both necessary and sufficient) that enable the primary purpose and underlying transformation to occur. This foundation for performance improvement contains the means to redress deficiencies. Imported solutions and models cannot do this holistically.