Keeping It Together
Unity of command is a military concept that means all involved in an effort are led by a single, clearly identified person with sufficient authority to direct everyone in the pursuit of a common goal. Imagine the chaos in a large military operation if thousands of people were executing complex tasks on the land, on the sea, and in the air without a clear idea of who is in charge? They’d be lucky to eat lunch on time, let alone accomplish what needs to be done.
This concept is also essential for successfully executing a business endeavor. However, today’s business environments often feature matrixed structures, shared decision models, and self-organizing teams; the idea of a true decision maker has become muddled or even lost entirely.
Do you assume that everyone you lead already knows who is responsible for what is going on or that they will be able to figure it out? Think again. You’d likely be surprised by how much confusion exists beneath the veneer of your well-formatted status slides.
When a new program or strategic initiative is considered, one of the first and most essential tasks of leadership is to clearly document the organizational structure and authority for each component of the overall effort. If you are an executive sponsor, this clarity is a gift for your team members to allow them to confidently execute your goals.
This concept is also essential for successfully executing a business endeavor. However, today’s business environments often feature matrixed structures, shared decision models, and self-organizing teams; the idea of a true decision maker has become muddled or even lost entirely.
Do you assume that everyone you lead already knows who is responsible for what is going on or that they will be able to figure it out? Think again. You’d likely be surprised by how much confusion exists beneath the veneer of your well-formatted status slides.
When a new program or strategic initiative is considered, one of the first and most essential tasks of leadership is to clearly document the organizational structure and authority for each component of the overall effort. If you are an executive sponsor, this clarity is a gift for your team members to allow them to confidently execute your goals.
Written Clarity
Without formal documentation, what you assume to be clear is often unclear to those who execute the work. In very large organizations, mutual understanding of what you are trying to get done tends to diminish exponentially with each silo or organizational layer further away from your own.
In the absence of clearly written and distributed guidelines that describe who is responsible for what and what their exact authority is, others may attempt to insert their own priorities and processes where they perceive ambiguity. Even with the best of intentions, multiple leaders getting their lines crossed and trying to control the same thing is a recipe for confusion—if not complete failure.
Most well-structured projects and programs will have a RACI (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed) matrix that documents at a very detailed level the role of every party involved. This is an important tool, but it tends to get buried in the project documentation due to its complexity. The written guidance you are creating here should take it up a couple of levels to paint a clear, simple picture of who is doing what. Having the RACI readily available in it with a direct link is a good practice.
When you document your leader’s areas of responsibility and authority, always use the most clear and concise language possible. Don’t just publish this via a PowerPoint deck and then leave it to gather dust on a SharePoint site. A decision or plan is only useful if it sinks in. A great practice is adding an appendix to your weekly status presentation that covers this topic to make it consistently and indisputably available to all relevant parties.
In the absence of clearly written and distributed guidelines that describe who is responsible for what and what their exact authority is, others may attempt to insert their own priorities and processes where they perceive ambiguity. Even with the best of intentions, multiple leaders getting their lines crossed and trying to control the same thing is a recipe for confusion—if not complete failure.
Most well-structured projects and programs will have a RACI (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed) matrix that documents at a very detailed level the role of every party involved. This is an important tool, but it tends to get buried in the project documentation due to its complexity. The written guidance you are creating here should take it up a couple of levels to paint a clear, simple picture of who is doing what. Having the RACI readily available in it with a direct link is a good practice.
When you document your leader’s areas of responsibility and authority, always use the most clear and concise language possible. Don’t just publish this via a PowerPoint deck and then leave it to gather dust on a SharePoint site. A decision or plan is only useful if it sinks in. A great practice is adding an appendix to your weekly status presentation that covers this topic to make it consistently and indisputably available to all relevant parties.
Make a Picture
Major programs can easily have dozens or even hundreds of leaders involved. If your company has done a good job of hiring, it is likely flush with empowered and motivated people who will seek to own and aggressively solve problems. The challenge is to make sure they are solving the right problems and not doing work that is already covered by someone else. This can create substantial organizational dilemmas if not managed well.
Without clear direction, your life can quickly become consumed by trying to keep everyone on the same page and out of each other's way. A bit of upfront analysis can pay big dividends toward ensuring that all the necessary bases are covered in your organization.
A great way to do this is mapping out all the leaders involved in your work via a simple organizational chart. As with documenting the responsibilities and decision-making authority of your initiative leaders, this can seem unnecessary, but again, you may be surprised by the amount of uncertainty and the lack of clarity existing in your team.
In many ways, this is similar to the stakeholder analysis that should be conducted for every business readiness plan. A very large program at a large company can have business leaders, technology leaders, project managers, executive leadership, and many others involved in a single project. Creating a visual will help you clearly present how the involved parties align, and it will help the people executing the project understand who is involved and where they sit in the company.
Very large programs also tend to be fluid because so many people are involved. Over the course of a multi-year effort, people will come and go and organizational structures may evolve. Keeping the initiative’s leadership chart accurate will require a good review process. Publishing it as an appendix to your standard update documentation will also help by allowing team members to see it frequently and to request modifications.
Without clear direction, your life can quickly become consumed by trying to keep everyone on the same page and out of each other's way. A bit of upfront analysis can pay big dividends toward ensuring that all the necessary bases are covered in your organization.
A great way to do this is mapping out all the leaders involved in your work via a simple organizational chart. As with documenting the responsibilities and decision-making authority of your initiative leaders, this can seem unnecessary, but again, you may be surprised by the amount of uncertainty and the lack of clarity existing in your team.
In many ways, this is similar to the stakeholder analysis that should be conducted for every business readiness plan. A very large program at a large company can have business leaders, technology leaders, project managers, executive leadership, and many others involved in a single project. Creating a visual will help you clearly present how the involved parties align, and it will help the people executing the project understand who is involved and where they sit in the company.
Very large programs also tend to be fluid because so many people are involved. Over the course of a multi-year effort, people will come and go and organizational structures may evolve. Keeping the initiative’s leadership chart accurate will require a good review process. Publishing it as an appendix to your standard update documentation will also help by allowing team members to see it frequently and to request modifications.
Empowerment
The final step to successfully solidify a clear project responsibility structure is to make sure that you utilize it. As with all things with long-term benefits, such as dieting or studying for a college degree, it takes discipline. Working through the leader that you assigned to be responsible for a function can clash with the easy path of going directly to subordinates several layers down for a quick answer.
Getting a quick answer or issuing a tactical directive without going through the responsibility channel that you created may seem harmless, but it can quickly erode the long-term health of your organization. This erosion will diminish the likelihood of accomplishing the team’s goals.
Getting a quick answer or issuing a tactical directive without going through the responsibility channel that you created may seem harmless, but it can quickly erode the long-term health of your organization. This erosion will diminish the likelihood of accomplishing the team’s goals.
Conclusion
In the modern age of automation, data, and flat organizational structures, many leaders are tasked with doing so much more than simply making decisions, creating strategies, and prioritizing work efforts. With all the day-to-day work that senior leaders are now responsible for, it is easy to overlook the basic foundations necessary for your team to succeed. This tendency is exacerbated by the assumption that everyone knows their responsibilities or that they know who has the true decision-making authority for a project’s various aspects.
Just because it is clear to you doesn’t mean it is clear to everyone working for you. An upfront investment in analyzing the managerial lay of the land and in formally documenting your expectations can pay dividends for years to come in more efficient and productive execution.
Just because it is clear to you doesn’t mean it is clear to everyone working for you. An upfront investment in analyzing the managerial lay of the land and in formally documenting your expectations can pay dividends for years to come in more efficient and productive execution.