Over time, a structure-centric approach provides benefits a person-centric approach cannot match.
Broadly speaking, I have found two viewpoints on how best to approach a team’s work. One begins with individuals’ talents while the other begins with the work and the structure required to perform the work. The viewpoint beginning with individuals emphasizes putting the best person in place for the work, believing good things will happen from there. In other words, it is person centric. The viewpoint beginning with the work emphasizes putting the right structure in place, believing good things will then happen. This view is structure centric. Structure includes organization structure, processes, and tooling. Of course, the best model includes both – highly qualified people working within a well-defined structure in a harmonized way.
From every experience I’ve had over the years, organizations designed based on the work and that put the right structure in place around that work sustainably outperform those designed with an emphasis on placing smart individuals in key positions. Why?
First, people are transient, they come and go. They move on to take new positions or leave the company. But structure is enduring if the leader consistently emphasizes its importance. If you are betting your delivery on your star team member, Mary, and Mary decides to take a new position elsewhere, you are now trying to find a clone of Mary, which is difficult to do. On the other hand, with the right organization and team structure in place including well-defined roles and responsibilities, processes and practices, and standard tooling, you are most often looking for qualified people rather than stars to do the work. Consistently delivering with excellence requires good infrastructure.
Second, structure is scalable, individuals are not. The right level of structure (not overbearing, but not nonexistent) surrounding qualified individuals is sustainable over many years and provides more consistent performance than a small team of stars can over the long-term. Stars may provide a short-term boost to the team, but they, too, become tired and only have so much capacity. Leaders who place appropriate structure around the work have a far greater likelihood of achieving their vision relative to those who do not.
As an example, the structure required in a technology organization includes:
- Common terminology / language
- The organization structure – hard line and dotted line reporting
- The team structure within the organization
- Clearly defined roles & responsibilities
- Definitions of how teams interface to deliver work
- Clear decision authority – who makes the final call?
- Communication and escalation standards
- Planning & delivery methodologies
- Planning & delivery tools
- Application and infrastructure reference architectures
- Automation standards
- etc.
For each of the items above, if there are clearly defined, documented standards in place team members can act in unison. If individual managers or leaders on the team create their own standards, it becomes difficult for the team to interface appropriately with others and work slows. This is not to say everything needs to be highly prescriptive. On the contrary, you want flexibility in the system. But you want people to stay within clear guardrails you set. It is a balancing act as depicted below.
In the image on the left, the leader’s guardrails are too prescriptive. There is little room for creativity; the leader is basically saying, “do it this way and this way only.” On the right, the leader’s direction is too broad, effectively stating, “do it however you want to, just get the work done.” While this may generate creativity, it also generates chaos and higher cost as there is no repeatability, and the pace of work slows as everyone reinvents the approach each time they perform the work. The team ricochets around the work, slowly pushing it ahead. In the middle, the leader’s direction provides meaningful boundaries for the team which creates a level of standardization and repeatability, but not to the point of smothering creativity required to drive continuous improvement at a minimum and innovation, ultimately.
Leaders who focus on establishing the right level of structure articulated through clear guardrails achieve greater outcomes than those focused solely on identifying star players with the belief somehow those stars, through heroics, will repeatedly, successfully get the job done.
Share your thoughts below.
Do you invest in defining structure or do you rely heavily on your top performers to achieve your goals? How do you define balance between the two?
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