CULTURE, LEADERSHIP AND COMMUNICATION / Albert Andreu

I don't understand why when we decide something in this committee , it is so difficult for it to be executed; if it is executed at all". "Every morning I wake up thinking why is everything so difficult, why does it cost so much to move this house". How many of us have heard or said these and similar phrases? I can bet more than one, for sure.

Why is everything so difficult? After more than 25 years teaching class Organizational Behavior with training executive students and working in top tier organizations in oil, banking and telecommunications, I believe the cause lies in their level of "corporate health". I am convinced that companies, like people, can also get sick.

What does "corporate health" depend on? In my opinion, on two very specific variables

1. Clarity in the power structure". We are not only talking about the formal structure, not even about organization chart. We are talking about knowing the scope of competence or responsibility of each person in the organization. We are talking about a "Management Model" that makes it possible to know who makes decisions; at what levels they are made; the scope of competence of each body; and the speed with which decisions are made (and executed) as a result of this clarity. It is typical to find "dirty" power Structures , in which many decide on the same topic and, consequently, no one decides.

2. Linkage with the corporate project . The linkage with the corporate project involves knowing how much the management team and the organization in general identify with the company's vision, its brand, its values and principles of action or its ethical system. It also involves knowing how much the company's strategy is shared by both management and intermediate levels. It also involves knowing whether the decision-making system takes into account all these premises or, on the contrary, responds to other variables (personal, circumstantial, external, etc.).

Around these two axes or constants of the corporate health matrix, we can find four types of companies:

A. Fragmented companies: those where the global power structure is diffuse and people do not identify with the project of business global, but with the objectives of each of its parts. In other words, companies whose Departments function in silos, which do not share resources, objectives, customers... and where power is delegated to each of the divisions.

B. Autarchic companies: those where all power is concentrated in one person and his environment, since both major decisions and those corresponding to the micro-managemet are taken by a small issue of people. There is not really a shared project , but rather (blind) loyalties to whoever holds the power and, if dissensions occur, they are solved with the exit of the company of the one who fights for power or questions it.