Today we will wrap up our management discussion on the topic “Business Structure for Sustainable Growth”
ORGANISATIONAL CULTURE –CONT
VALUES – An organisation’s values are the nucleus of its culture. The vision expresses the organisation’s purpose while the values provide a set of guidelines on the behaviours and mindsets required to bring the vision to fruition. It is, therefore, germane that the organisational values especially as it relates to how to service the customers, and the level of the interrelationship among the staff are thoroughly communicated to them (the staff) in order to get their buy-in and ultimately live by it.
PRACTICES – There is a need to incorporate the organisation’s values into its practices such as accounting, marketing, and organisational practices.
PEOPLE – No organisation can survive without a formidable culture and the people who believe in the organisation’s core values and desire to embrace those values. This is why an organisation’s human resources policy, especially in terms of recruitment, succession, and promotion must be very robust to attract and retain the brightest and the best.
NARRATIVE -Every organization has a unique history — a unique story. And the ability to unearth that history and craft it into a narrative is a core element of culture creation. Many successful Nigerian businessmen are guilty of this. They neither tell the story nor write a book for younger generations to read about how they started, the ups and downs they had to go through, and the motivation that kept them going till they got to where they are now.
PLACE – Place — whether geography, architecture, or aesthetic design — impacts the values and behaviours of people in the workplace. For example, Guaranty Trust Bank, FCMB, buildings speak volumes of their values.
ORGANISATIONAL STRUCTURE
This is a typically hierarchical arrangement of lines of authority, communications, rights, and duties of an organization. Organizational structure determines how the roles, power, and responsibilities are assigned, controlled, and coordinated, and how information flows between the different levels of management. A structure depends on the organization’s objectives and strategy. In a centralized structure, the top layer of management has most of the decision making power and has tight control over departments and divisions. In a decentralized structure, the decision making power is distributed and the departments and divisions may have different degrees of independence.
The organisational structure is important because it defines the foundation on which the business builds on. Many businesses fail because of improper organisational structure. A good organisational structure defines how far the business can grow. Do you see your business as a going concern with a separate entity? Do you want your business to live after you? It depends on how you carved out the organisational structure. In designing your organisational structure, let it be SMARTER.
S- Make it simple to understand and implement.
M- Professionally match jobs with positions.
A – Actively define your practices. That is; define your practices in a deliberate and positive way.
R- Let your organisational structure be very robust. That is; strong and healthy. Let it be so robust as to give space to accommodate organisational and employees’ growth.
T – Let your organisational structure be as firm and flexible to accommodate changes in time. Let it be dynamic.
E – Please exclude yourself and/or persons when designing the organisational structure.
R – Let your organisational structure always reinforce customer centrism.
Customer-centric is an approach to doing business that focuses on providing a positive customer experience both at the point of sale and after the sale in order to drive profit and gain a competitive advantage. It entails understanding the customers and designing or creating products/services based on their wants/needs; Put in place the required metrics to continually measure, evaluate, and increase the effectiveness of the organization’s learning portfolio at driving employee engagement; use feedback to drive continuous improvement and provide the needed leadership focused on satisfying customers.
Sunday Ade Bello is a multi-talented and an analytically inspired management trainer, writer and examiner. He is the CEO of WorkLife Training Professionals, Lagos.
