Organisational structures - a revolution?
I had a very interesting conversation with Kevin Watson yesterday.
You see, I'm not convinced that coaching isn't a fad. Certainly in the way it is being packaged and sold by people like ICF, CA etc. Coaches who are selling coaching programs into companies are no further forward than selling training programs, as if one off learning is all the company needs.
We thought that constant, iterative learning is the future, not artificial, isolated programs delivered by external experts. And then this morning I was reading Change Magic, thinking about updating it, and I realised something whilst looking at the chapter on organisational structures.
Why are teams organised by function? I keep seeing companies paying to train their line managers as coaches, to try and move their managers away from a task focus and towards a people focus. And yet the organisational structure is still based around work flow - if you won't do your job properly I can escalate it to your boss, and your boss's boss, and so on.
So what we have is an organisational hierarchy based on task management, yet we're telling managers to be people managers not task managers. Does that make any sense?
So here's the revolutionary idea.
Organise teams and organisations in some other way. Favourite colour. Like mindedness. Favourite football team. Anything other than work. Otherwise, what happens? You have a 'team meeting' and spend the whole time talking about tasks, who is doing what, where you are on targets. Anything but people stuff.
What would it be like if you had a team meeting revolving around support, development, that kind of thing?
Scary.
You see, I'm not convinced that coaching isn't a fad. Certainly in the way it is being packaged and sold by people like ICF, CA etc. Coaches who are selling coaching programs into companies are no further forward than selling training programs, as if one off learning is all the company needs.
We thought that constant, iterative learning is the future, not artificial, isolated programs delivered by external experts. And then this morning I was reading Change Magic, thinking about updating it, and I realised something whilst looking at the chapter on organisational structures.
Why are teams organised by function? I keep seeing companies paying to train their line managers as coaches, to try and move their managers away from a task focus and towards a people focus. And yet the organisational structure is still based around work flow - if you won't do your job properly I can escalate it to your boss, and your boss's boss, and so on.
So what we have is an organisational hierarchy based on task management, yet we're telling managers to be people managers not task managers. Does that make any sense?
So here's the revolutionary idea.
Organise teams and organisations in some other way. Favourite colour. Like mindedness. Favourite football team. Anything other than work. Otherwise, what happens? You have a 'team meeting' and spend the whole time talking about tasks, who is doing what, where you are on targets. Anything but people stuff.
What would it be like if you had a team meeting revolving around support, development, that kind of thing?
Scary.
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