The tricky part is paying people different rates when they are at the same level of authority, all because they have different skills.
“You might have to be courageous in the way you do the remuneration but you can have, for example, three levels and you might have a range of salaries in those levels,’’ Dwyer says.
“I might be a technical expert only at one level but I am paid more than someone in sales and marketing because I have a high level of skills, I just don’t have the high level of authority.”
“What you are doing is mapping the skills rather than the authority. You are paying for the skills as much as you are paying for the authority.”
Dow says the flatness of the structure depends completely on the complexity of the job.
“I can manage 1,000 people if there is a very simple task but with highly complex tasks I can only manage 10,’’ he says.
“If you have simple tasks you can have a broad span of control and not many layers but if it’s fairly complex and diverse you need more layers.”
Specialists say there is no structural solution here, it’s all about people. Turf wars are all about grand ambition and envy, very human traits.
“I’m not sure structure can deal with it,’’ says Dow. “It depends on the nature of the people you have to head the units.”
“If you have a person who heads the units who is focused on building his empire as big as he can and being a yes man upwards, no matter what’s going on, he will subvert the organisation no matter what structure you have in place.”
“You have to put more emphasis on the hiring and recruitment process than the structure.”
Barolsky says internal frictions are more about the organisation’s culture. The problem, he says, is that many managers get culture and structure mixed up.
“Some organisations try to fix a cultural problem with a structural solution. They change their structure and they still have a cultural problem.’’ he says.
“Don’t expect that changing structure will fix your culture. They are ignoring the underlying values and behaviour that are driving the politics.”
“Structural change can help disrupt things and bring in a new era. It can affect disruption and change which can lead to cultural improvement.”
“But I often fear that people use it as an excuse not to face the truth and deal with some of the deeper behavioural issues of the leaders and managers.”
That does not necessarily mean ignoring the structure and focusing on the culture. You need to tackle both simultaneously.
Dwyer says he sees many organisations which have structured their approval processes in a way that ensures it takes forever to get anything done.
“They are usually built from top down. Quite often you end up with signature-collecting processes,” he says.
“So you have someone at supervisor level who wants to do something and they send it up to their manager, who sends it up to another manager.”
“But when you tell them you had three people below you reading this document, what are you adding to it and why does your signature have to be there, they will say because it needs my authority.?
“They usually can’t tell.”
He says a better way to do it is to devolve the decision as low down the food chain as possible. Giving subordinates at the coal face and close to the customer more decision-making power speeds things up and helps implement the strategy.”
“Usually in most organisations I come across it’s shoved up too high and you end up with processes where it took weeks to get the signatures.”
Devolution, with appropriate checks and balances for risk, is the way to go.
The fundamental starting points are the visions and strategy. The structure comes after that, it is simply the tool to implement it.
But without the structure there can be no strategy. Similarly, a poor structure will result in bad implementation of strategy.
Barolsky sums it up neatly: “The structure should follow strategy, it should be an enabler which helps you achieve your vision.”
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