Everybody recognizes London’s Trafalgar Square, even if they’ve never been there. The square, and its pigeons, have been a staple of movie establishing shots and B-rolls for decades.
It is right in the middle of the city, and in the center of the square is a statue of Admiral Horatio Nelson, who is admired and revered for his naval victories, including, of course, the Battle of Trafalgar for which the square is named.
He was the master of the complex technology of sail-powered warships of his time and converted that mastery into the advanced, detailed battle plans that yielded so many crucial victories for Britain in the Napoleonic Wars.
He understood a lot about leadership psychology, and how organization and a detailed plan made his ship captains and their officers and crews feel assured that he understood the enemy and the situation and was in full control. In battle it was a structure that they could lean on.
He also understood, though, that in the harsh reality of a battle at sea, even the clearest communications can be obscured and the best plans overtaken by events. Before Trafalgar, then, he said to the officers commanding each ship, “No captain can do very wrong if he places his ship alongside that of the enemy.” In other words, if you are not sure what to do, pull up close to an enemy ship and blast away. Do what we came to do. In the end, that’s the plan.
The workplace is not a naval battle, even though the noise and confusion can sometimes make it seem like one … at least a little. But Nelson’s approach to leadership and organization has great value to today’s business managers.
Under considerable competitive pressures, some businesses bought into the “team” concept, especially the “self-guided team” idea that promised great improvements in productivity in exchange for management’s simply getting out of the way. Others went in the opposite direction, documenting the minutiae of work in tedious, pixel-level job descriptions.
Neither approach, though, has proven to be totally satisfactory — for big corporations or small businesses. It’s time to return to some management fundamentals; the kind that remain true whether you are building a jet airplane or putting a smile on a child’s face with an ice cream cone.
Today’s business managers face many challenges. Having a plan that inspires confidence that you know what you’re doing and an organizational structure that supports your workers and clarifies your goals can prepare your business to meet those challenges head on.
The best teams are made up of people who know what their responsibilities are, and what the goal is. Successful business organizations can be loose only to the extent that these responsibilities are held tight and the goals remain clear.
A business organization with the right structure, though, can absorb all kinds of shocks or disruptions and still survive and succeed.
A classic symptom of an organizational problem is a CEO’s being repeatedly disappointed in the decisions that workers, supervisors or managers make. Often enough the organizational structure is the problem, not the people.
One way for an owner or CEO to check whether a business organization has the right combination of strength and flexibility is to imagine some “what if” situations. The important ones will vary a lot, depending on your business, but the basic element involves decision-making.
Consider a simple, “what if” situation like this. Just as the shift supervisor is closing the doors of the business for the evening, a busload of kids from Eastern Washington shows up. They are headed for the Mariners game and although they had been delayed by a traffic jam on I-90 they had heard about your store and wanted to see it and maybe buy some stuff — even if it made them late for the game.
As the supervisor stands there, with the door keys in her hand, what is going through her mind? The business has a strict, no-exceptions, policy against overtime and in this case staying open for these kids will mean putting overtime for three or four workers on the books. What should she do?
The question for the CEO is: Do I believe that the supervisor will make the right decision in such a situation?
From a management analysis standpoint, are the goals of the business so imbedded in our organizational structure that “when in doubt” a supervisor, worker or manager will make the right decision? Will he or she “do what we came here to do?”
If the answer is yes, you’ve got a solid organizational structure. If it’s no, then it is time to rework your business organization. Admiral Nelson understood this. It’s time that we did, too.
James McCusker is a Bothell economist, educator and small-business consultant. Send e-mail to otisrep@aol.com.
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