Hands up if you work for, or belong to, an organisation. Do it. Do it now.
Everyone? Good start.
Now keep your hand up if your organisation is organised...
Come again?
Keep your hand up. If and only if: your organisation is organised.
Not so sure about that one I bet.
People don't spend nearly enough time thinking about what things mean (whereas I spend far too much). When we "know" something we take it for granted, and in the last couple of months it's really come home to me what happens when we do that.
We all know we work for, or belong to, an organisation. We don't even think about it, we just stick our hands up. And we don't think about it because we know it. Common sense right? Why waste time thinking about something we know? But knowing things isn't the same as knowing what they mean. So what does it mean to be part of an organisation, to be organised? I'll probably come back to the question of what knowledge means in another post (bet you can't wait huh).
organisation (ˌɔːɡənaɪˈzeɪʃən) — n
1. the act of organising or the state of being organised
2. an organised structure or whole
3. a business or administrative concern united and constructed for a particular end
4. a body of administrative officials, as of a political party, a government department, etc
5. order or system; method
Anyone who knows me professionally shouldn't be surprised to hear that what I want to talk about is the last of those definitions. But we don't always get what we want, and I'd be a hypocrite and an idiot if I didn't think about everything I didn't want to think about first, right?
Consider this; a fairly plain and simple description of the heirarchical layers of a theoretical organisation in terms of their outputs, and one I've used myself very recently to frame an argument about why certain things weren't being done in accordance with a policy I had reasonably, but quite wrongly, assumed everyone involved in the work to which it related was aware of and understood the implications of:
Vision
Strategy
Policy
Process
Practice
Leaders are good at the Vision and Strategy thing. Managers are good at the Policy and Process thing. And the rest of us are good at putting all that into Practice. That's the idea, anyways. Organising these elements so that they are aligned, however, seems in most of the places I've ever worked to be a matter of serendipity more than anything else. We have people responsible for these things, and they all communicate, so all these things must be connected and aligned correctly right? Because the people are. But making sure individual layers are organised is not the same as making sure the structure as a whole is. The "big picture" is not the Vision or the Strategy. It is all of the above. And who is directly responsible for all of the above? Why, nobody of course. We're only human after all.
I've worked in plenty of organisations that had a clear Vision. I've worked places where there was a Strategy that explained how that Vision was to be achieved. I've worked in places where there were very clear Policies that informed the development or re-engineering of Processes. I've seen places with clearly defined and well-mapped Processes that people understood and put into Practice.
But I've never been anywhere, in the public, private or third sectors, where all of these elements were present and deliberately organised and aligned in a clear, consistent and communicable fashion.
I've never worked in a real organisation. An organised organisation. But I think I'd like to. How about you?
Cheers,
Alex.
Next time: My Definition - Using method to give order to a system
