Imagine you're at the Kentucky
Derby, the Run for the Roses, the
Super Bowl of horse racing. Betting
is brisk. The horses are chomping at the
bit for the electronic gates to fling open.
The jockeys position their steeds. The
flag goes up, the bell sounds, and the
gates ... stay closed. The jockeys curse,
the horses bray, and track officials
scramble. Propriety unravels as minutes
tick by. The crowd's grumble swells
into a roar. It's an unbridled nightmare.
You can be a walking billboard for
your company's mission, vision, and
values. You can have a stable stocked
with talented, motivated thoroughbreds.
You can take pride in your enlightened,
healthy culture. But if you don't have
the right systems in place, nobody's
going to be galloping any time soon.
Quality guru W. Edwards Deming
declared that 80 percent of all errors are
systems errors. While Deming was referring
chiefly to manufacturing processes,
the essence of his statement is applicable
to any system. Even if that percentage
were halved, it's clear that developing
sophisticated, user-friendly processes
— for everything from strategic plans
to meeting management to monitoring
employee goal attainment to phone etiquette
— can help you blow past your
competitors. Structural integrity makes
it easier to: define roles, responsibilities,
and relationships; coordinate,
communicate, and make decisions;
allocate and deploy resources; convert
strategy into reality; respond to change;
develop employees; provide stability.
A structural linchpin of any size business
is the "org chart." Keep it current
and visible so everyone knows who does
what and who reports to whom. Even if
everybody in a small firm wears three
hats, the org chart still lets everyone
know how his or her piece of the puzzle
fits into the big picture. The flatter the
org chart — meaning more people
reporting directly to you — the better.
The more levels between you and
department heads — and between you
and your customers — the more communication
snafus you can expect in both
directions. For instance, CEOs often
have IT (information technology) and
human resources — functions critical to
overall success — report to the CFO.
That lack of direct contact makes it more
difficult to stay dialed in to front-page
issues. Don't worry; having more people
report to you won't be a drain on your
time, if you're doing everything else
right, like hiring the right people,
empowering them, and regularly meeting
one-on-one. (While an org chart is
the official power grid, it's just as important
to know who wields the unofficial
clout. For instance, a CEO's executive
assistant often has more influence than
some high-level execs.)
Without a framework of precise
processes, any organization — corporation,
government, nonprofit — is
doomed to mediocrity and chaos. A
taut system is like a trampoline: It
keeps you bounding forward. Slip up,
it lets you bounce right back. Yet, relying
heavily on processes is a leap of
faith for creative, right-brained leaders
who view well-defined systems as
ingenuity-squelching bureaucracies.
The challenge is to find the sweet
spot between too much and too little
bureaucracy. Large corporations tend
to be top-heavy with regulations, while
small businesses often run by the seat
of their pants. It's easy to see why.
Many entrepreneurs start their own
businesses because they feel suffocated
by bulky bureaucracies. But they tend
to overcompensate by going from too
many rules to too few. That's why inefficiency
and waste are common causes
of death for small businesses.
Just make sure employees focus on
all the options and freedom within
your structural parameters rather than
on what's not allowed. A long list of
don't do's — accompanied by incessant
harping — can stifle creativity. Worse,
fixing attention on what not to do can
bring about the very result you're trying
to avoid. Karl Wallenda, founder of the
Great Wallendas, a daredevil circus
troupe famous for performing deathdefying
feats without a safety net, inadvertently
illustrated this truth on March
22, 1978. At the age of 73, he attempted
to "walk the wire" between two hotels
in San Juan, Puerto Rico. His widow
said afterward that, for the first time in
his life, her husband had "put all his
energies into not falling rather than
walking the tightrope."
TOM GEGAX is the author of the
national bestseller By the Seat of Your Pants: The No
Nonsense Business Management Guide. To read more articles by Tom
Gegax, "Hire Slow, Fire Fast" (May/June 2006) and "7 Steps to Effective Meetings" (Mar/Apr 2006), visit
www.AdvantEdgeMag.com/Gegax today.