Reality

Thankyou for your comments. When reflecting on what determines our own view of organisational reality, obviously it is the written and unwritten rules that do the shaping. It is interesting though when you start to manipulate the organistaional system and see the effects that even seemingly small changes have.

My initial ponderance was whether structure determined culture or was it something else. Since this time I have changed the structure in one of two similar business units to see what changes happened with the culture.

I should at this point tell you what behaviural problems I am trying to correct. Essentially they are to do with caring, hence: attention to detail; punctuality; following up to ensure satisfaction; passing on work that doesn't require rework etc.

The change that I made was basically to change a command and control type structure and replace it with a leadership team coresponsible for outcomes and performance. The previous structure consisted of a manager 4 heads of dept and 5 frontline supervisors. I replaced this with 8 process owners retrenching the manager and one supervisor. I then gave to this team a restated set of goals and performance measures, that I would be reviewing with them weekly, but told them what they did was up to them.

Guess what happened @#!!!

(I just reread this and it looks like I have been rambling again. Sorry, but the content is still there.) If you have any theories or comments on what happened I would be most interested.

Replies:

Great Results, by Don Nowill, 1/20/99 Hawthorne Studies, by Marvin Gottlieb, 2/2/99

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