Welcome to week 7 of the MetroSculpters Consulting Actionable Business Advice Series.
This week, we bring you the second part of organizing structure, the elements of.
Elements of an organizing structure
Below are the elements of the 7-Division (and 21-Department) Organizing Board or Structure suitable for an organization of any size or complexity, industry, or vision.
1. The Goal Finder, Vision Maker, or Founder
2. The Board of Directors
3. The Management Committee
4. The Chief Executive Officer
5. The Two (2) Sectoral Senior Executives
6. The Seven (7) Divisional Executives
7. The Twenty-one (21) Departmental Executives
1. The Goal Finder, Vision Maker, or Founder
Without the Goal Finder, Vision Maker, or Founder, who is the spirit, you might say, of the organization, a company will sooner whiter and die. Why?
The functions of vision monitoring, technology (the knowhow for producing the product or service), vision-end policy-making, and sanctions are so vital to the life of any organization that 1) not having them or 2) having someone’s else other than the dreamer of the enterprise will sooner or later spell doom for the business, as it has and it still is globally.
2. The Board of Directors
A Board of Directors, some entrepreneurs imagine, is only for large a business and not for them because “they are small”. Well, how do you remain small? One remains small by doing small things and not doing things that “big” businesses do.
A Board of Directors is so vital to the existence and continuing survival of a business that is lacking it, a business is all but a one-man business; lacking in the vitality, diversity, and responsibility that a Board of Directors brings.
Some entrepreneurs think that a board of directors must be subordinated to the whims and caprices of the Founder as the Managing Director/CEO; that the members of the board should become appendages or extensional employees of the company; that their valuable contribution must be measured in monetary terms. Well, those are reasons and ways of remaining a small business.
3. The Management Committee
The Management Committee comprised the senior-most executives, including the Sectors and Divisional Executives, led by the CEO; 10 persons in all in a fully manned structure. The roles of the management committee are to assist the CEO in decision-making that cut across sectors and divisions; providing specialist knowledge, data, and viewpoint to assist the CEO to become aware of scenarios they could not otherwise know.
3. The CEO or Managing Director
The CEO or Managing Director is the hand that hammers, executes, and brings about the concrete realization of the vision, policies, strategic plans, production, etc. as envisioned by the Founder and governed by the Board of Directors.
The moment a CEO loses sight of these, and focuses on Marketing, Production, Organization, or Finance alone in ignorance of or inattention to the “hammers, executes, and brings about the concrete realization of the vision, policies, strategic plans, production, etc. of the business” functions, that business will remain a Marketing, or Production, or Organization, or Finance alone, and never attains its goals.
4. The Two (2) Sectoral Senior Executives
Every function under the CEO is a division of the key function of the CEO. In a proper organizing or corporate structure, the two (2) senior-most executives below the CEO oversee the two (2) Sectors (first division) of the company.
In other words, you split the organization into two (2) sectors or parts. While one sector deals with Corporate matters, including Executive, Administration, and Marketing, the second deals with Finance, Production, Quality Management, and Delivery.
5. The Seven (7) Divisional Executives
The seven (7) Divisions, including 1) Executive, 2) Administration, 3) Marketing, 4) Finance, 5) Production, 6) Quality Management, and 7) Delivery or Distribution are headed, each by a senior executive who is responsive and responsible to the Senior Management Officer in charge of the Sector they belong. The divisions are functional and structural divisions of the sector, giving a more hands-on management of the functions.
Organizational Lifecycle
If we review the divisional functions, we would see the flow of the lifecycle of the management of the business. The steps one has to do to get a business to deliver a service or product to a client or customer (the last function or Division – Delivery) are:
1) envision a valuable product or service to a large number of prospective paying markets, and set up the company;
2) obtain and establish staff, premises, processes, and administer the staff and processes;
3) promote the ideas of the service or product to identified markets or publics;
4) obtain finance with which to produce the product or service demanded by the market;
5) produce the product or service to envisioned standard;
6) ensure the product or service meets quality standards; and
7) deliver the service or product to the customers or clients.
If one does these steps out of sequence or misses one step or another, the organization will remain a small, unproductive, worrying; an unsatisfying terror that one spends valuable time and days slaving at cross-purposes on.
In conclusion, it will profit us in the long-term to do the hard work of putting a proper corporate or organizing structure in place. This structure can hold as many as hundreds of thousands of employees.
It is also capable of being operated by a single owner at the onset of the business, or as soon as one becomes aware of the value of having it, and the dangers of not having it.
If a single owner-operator, one will keep and maintain separate files for each of the divisional functions, such that upon the hiring of an employee one simply hand over the respective file of the corresponding divisional function to the new employee to perform – simple!
This way, one can easily track performance and effectiveness, and train, and manage one’s employees. Why? Because you know what they are doing!
Let us organize and grow our business or organization to a world-class standard and size.
This is the basic tool – organizing or corporate structure – with which to do that.
Continue to strive to thrive!
Babatunde Odutola
MetroSculpters Consulting
(Pre-legal Documentation | Business Documentation | Joint Venture Advisory | PPP Advisory | Project Consulting | Corporate Structure Design & Implementation| Human Capital Enhancement Services | Revenue-Generation/Enhancement Services)