Over the last two months, I’ve had conversations with clients and prospective clients that have shared some variation of the same statement.
“I want structure, but I don’t want to get so corporate that we lose our drive.”
Often business leaders begin to see and understand that some structure could be helpful (While some might need an organization chart with outlined decision-making capabilities, others might need to write job descriptions for the first time). They begin to find that the old days of “we all do a little bit of everything” doesn’t seem to work as well as they used to. Leaders get frustrated that they are still handling employee issues because the managers they’ve hired defer concerns to them.
Something’s got to give.
I see leaders hold off on creating structure far longer than necessary because they don’t want to lose something. They don’t want to define a role so much that they start to hear “that’s not my job” when someone's needed to pitch in during spring fertilizer season or during grain season. They don’t want to feel so corporate that they lose the connectedness that their teams have today.
Will structure create change for your business? Possibly. Can the benefits outweigh the risks? Yes. Remember, any structure you put into place should enable your business to perform better — more efficiently with less drama — and to, ultimately, make it easier for customers to do business with you.
What’s interesting, too, is that employees want this kind of clarity.
Whether your business has been operational for the last year or the last 30, there are three main areas we recommend leaders to start when creating more structure for the business:
- Reflecting on what the business needs.
- Defining roles so team members know what success looks like.
- Clarifying expectations for managers and decision-making boundaries.
In this and the next two blog posts, we’ll dive into each area in detail with the intent to provide enough information to help you take that first step before moving onto the next.
Structure Point #1: Your structure must reflect what the business needs
The first rule for developing business structure is to take names and faces out of your organization chart. I’m not saying it isn’t important to know your people and to play to their strengths, but I am saying that right now, the focus is on looking at the business’s needs as objectively as possible.
Nail down the goals and strategy.
Start by looking at your business’s goals, your mix, and your business strategy. Are you trying to significantly grow the overall business in the next two to three years? For example, if you’re in feed, what’s your mix between livestock and lifestyle? Is it 70/30 today, but you think it could move closer to 60/40 over the next few years? These all factor in as you begin to compare what your structure looks like today versus what it might need to look like at a 60/40 mix.
Take out the pencils and start drawing boxes. There’s no right or wrong here. Get out a piece of paper and start drawing the boxes of the roles you have (again, not the names!). How clear are reporting relationships? Carefully consider whether all employees report directly to you today, or if they report to managers on your team. Once it’s all down on paper, reflect to make sure you’ve accounted for all the roles on your team.
Word of caution: make sure each box has ONE ROLE they report into. Having more than one leader adds complexity, and rarely works well. As the adage goes, “one chair, one butt.”
From here, look at the goals and strategy you considered earlier. If some of these priorities are changing (for instance, pursuing a new market, expanding a territory, or looking at acquisitions), now is the time to evaluate what skills and roles you may need in the future. Would these new roles report to an existing manager, or will this become a new business unit? Map out these roles on your organization chart (Use different colors here to see what it’s growing into).
Then, step back and simmer.
If you’re like most of our clients, it isn’t often that you get a chance to really work on the business because you’re working in it. That’s okay! Once you’ve taken this first step in working on structure, step back and set it aside for a day or two to let it ruminate.
Set aside time now so it doesn’t get lost. You may come back to these organization charts in a couple days and want to rework a few roles and reporting relationships — that's exactly what this exercise is intended to do.
As we move into the next two blogs, we’ll step into the other two areas of structure. Have a question in the meantime, or want to talk about your organization’s needs? Send a note directly to [email protected].
