Oliver Thylmann

(Originally published on the OUBS Blog)

Organisations need structure or they would just be a crowd of individuals and this structure is often equated with bureaucracy but downsizing and greater flexibility are in fashion at the moment. But:

“We cannot decide whether to have a structured or a structure less group; only whether or not to have a formally structured one.�? (Freeman, 1972)

Arguments for clear and public structure:

• Enabling participation: the rules generally enable people to find their way around, co-ordinate activity, make decisions and participate in the organisation.
• Providing a framework for the allocation of responsibilities and authority: The more appropriate the structure, the more effective the working relationships between individuals and departments.
• Establishing an organisation’s identity: structure conveys a message about the values and character of the organisation.
• Continuity and change: bring order into chaos.

Child (1984) suggested that there are recurring symptoms within organisations, results of ‘structural deficiencies’. There is no one size fits all structure. The challenge is to develop a structure that recognizes what is required while still achieving an efficient use of resources and providing effective services to customers.

In terms of organising work, Burns and Stalker (1961) broke down organisations in the mechanistic type and the organismic type.

You need to divide up work, possibly with specialisation and define a job in terms of allowable inputs and expected outputs, without having to specify what goes on in between.

Organisation chars reveal key elements of a structure:

• the span of control (how many do you control directly)
• the layers of management
• the degree of autonomy
• the extent of specialisation (expert or routine)
• the extent of overlap
• reporting processes

Forms of organisational structure include:

• functional
• product or service
• geographic
• project team
• matrix
• hybrid

To achieve co-ordination, you need something like:

• rules, programmes and procedures
• remits and referrals
• setting targets and goals
• creating slack resources
• creating self-contained tasks
• investment in vertical information systems
• creating lateral relations

Remember that information, especially processing and distribution, is crucial to effective integration/management.

Beware of:

• any one ideal structure
• sudden switches
• reactions to the terminology of structural issues
• trying to achieve perfection

(Originally published on the OUBS Blog)
An understanding of organisation culture is important because it defines the framework within which you have to manage and work. But it is difficult to define what a culture really is. Some say it is “what the organisation is really like when no one’s looking.�? Or “the way things happen around here�?.
Culture is important and successful companies have cultures in which people want to work and to succeed.
Cultures are not rules or formal and can differ from the defined one.
the collection of traditions, values, policies, beliefs, and attitudes that constitute a pervasive context for everything we do and think in an organisation. (LcLean and Marshall, 1993).
Recognise that what you see on the surface is based on a much deeper reality.
Trice and Beyer (1984) suggest the use of symbols. High-profile symbols are those designed to create an external image. Trice and Beyer suggest that there are 4 categories for low-profile symbols:
- practices: rites, rituals and ceremonies.
- Communications: stories, myths, sagas, legends, fold tales, symbols and slogans.
- Physical forms: building, floor plan, flipcharts or whiteboards, casual or tie …
- A common language: jargon. “crew members�? …
Handy considered culture in terms of shared rules of behaviour:
- power/club culture: personality is more important than formal structures…; organisation important.
- task culture: work as problem solving, people relying on their concerted abilities to deal with new situations; organisation important
- person culture: people first, org. second and just means to an end.
- role culture: individuals are role occupants; formal; certainty, predictability, continuity and stability is important.
But attention, culture evolves over time.
You need to understand your client’s cultures too.
Negotiated cultures says that through their inputs people construct and create an individual and a shared sense of organisational identity. There will always be a variety of cultures and subcultures in any organisation. Therefore, as of this theory, a company does not have a culture but a cultures is something more fluid, influenced and shares and created by everyone involved.
Cultural Change programs, often coming from a view that current behaviour of the organisation and its staff does not match the demands of its external environment, happen in four stages:
1. review external environment and current culture to see mismatch
2. develop a model culture for the external environment (total quality, customer-focused, user-centered, …)
3. programme of action, to develop the desired culture
4. embedding the new culture
It is not that easy though. Hendry and Hope identified for problems with cultural change:
1. resilience of the existing organisational culture: outsiders may see the need for change but employees may not. It’s like persuading someone that they need to change their character
2. complexity of culture change: informal processes, rituals, power structures and behaviours cannot be changed by dictate or in isolation from each other.
3. contradictions in the desired culture: managers want control but they really would like to have autonomy, creativity and innovation.
4. mismatches between individual and organisational values: people need to genuinely trust, respect and support their organisation’s behaviour.

(Originally published on the OUBS Blog)
How do organisational and personal values as well as ethics affect the management. You need to ensure compliance with the mission, values and ethics of your organisation.
We learn the values of our family, community and society we live in (normative system) Our values are split up by the SOGI (Society, Organisation, Group, Individual) acronym. Different sets of values may apply at each of the SOGI levels which is the result of conflict (Society Organisation; Group Individual; Individual Organisation;…).
An organisation builds a hierarchy which goes from:
1. Why? – Mission and Values – Why do we exist?
2. What? – Aims or Goals – What are we trying to do?
3. (What/How)? – Objectives – How will we do it?
4. How? – Targets
Mission and values are often put into so called missions statements (credo).
Creating this can help because:
- process is valuable in itself to identify the fundamental reasons why an organisation exists.
- Assist in communications between org. and stakeholders
- Helps decision making
- Provides a yardstick against which the org. can be evaluated.
It should address:
- Why does the org. exist?
- What are its aims?
- Who is it for?
- Where does it operate – internationally/nationally/locally?
- How should it pursue its aims?
There is always a difference between group and individual ethics and managers have to balance the need to get work done or control costs with the need to meet professional standards. It is helpful first of all to identify the role you are playing when seeking to manage disputes and you should pay attention to draw the line between private and public matters.
Miller (1999) suggested the following for managing ethics issues:
- Establish a written ethics policy
- Set an example
- Instruct by means of case studies
- Reward ethical performance
- Encourage social responsibility
There might be problems with competing pressures but some things just need to be done right.
Thomas and Ely (1996) looked at managing diversity where several perspectives are most common:
- Discrimination and fairness: Very bureaucratic in structure; staff gets diversified but work does not; “we are all the same�?; problem: important differences between people cannot count.
- Access and legitimacy: acceptance and celebration of differences; motivated by market share and commercial advantage.
- Learning and effectiveness: capture benefits of both the other approaches; all in the same team with their differences, not despite them.
Managers also need to pay attention to whistle blowing – workers exposing wrong-doing in their organisation. It can be good and bad.
As a manager, you have to make an assessment of the things you can change, the things you cannot change and, as an old saying goes, ‘pray for the wisdom to know the difference’.
There is no substitute for listening to people, trying to clarify issues and working out agreed standard of behaviour. To do this effectively Lawton (1998) suggests you need to understand:
- context: what is legal? What are the values of society? What is expected?
- The formal organisation: rules of behaviour? Accountability? Responsibility? Core values?
- The informal organisation: subgroup values? Where is the power? Different management practices? Cultures and traditions?
He emphasises the need for the ability to assess the way in which power is exercised in an organisation. Baddeley and James (1990) suggest two dimensions from self-oriented to acting-with-integrity and from politically-unaware to politically-aware.
- inept: politically ignorant and lacking integrity
- innocent: politically ignorant but full of integrity
- clever: politically astute but self-serving
- wise: politically astute and full of integrity
What is important is that manoeuvring and negotiating through the differences of opinions, power and personality in organisations are legitimate components of management. What matters is the motive and integrity behind them.

(Originally published on the OUBS Blog)
This is about what of and why corporations exist as well as how they work.
We are organisation people and the organisation where we work has most influence over our life but they also mean different things for different people and one view is not necessarily better than the other.
But organisations enable objectives to be achieved that could not be achieved by the efforts of individuals on their own and have three factors in common: people, objectives and structure.
You need to unite all the people by creating some kind of identity through purpose and co-ordinate their work and split it up at the same time.
Mintzberg and Van der Heyden created a dynamic understanding of organisations where structure is relatively stable and unchanging, whereas process refers to the faster-moving events that happen against the backdrop of the structure. Structure and process are interconnected and interdependent and at the same time formal and informal.
More recently quantum theory or rather chaos theory has been used to suggest the unpredictability of organisational life.
Although it can be helpful to view organisations as rational machines, capable of being diagnosed part by part and finely tuned, this is a limited view because organisations are also communities – inherently amorphous and changing as their component parts (that is, the people involved) and their environments change.
Differentiation and Integration is important, which is the same for all corporations. As animals become more complex they need to differentiate their cells and as the organisation grows it becomes harder to specialists to keep contact with others, resulting in the need for integrative mechanisms.
Lawrence and Lorsch (1967) asked why people build organisations and found that organisations enable people to find better solutions to the challenges of their environment. But:
- It is people who have purposes or goals, not organisations
- People have to come together to co-ordinate their different activities and thus create and organisations.
- The effectiveness depends on whether people are satisfied by their planned transactions within their environment (sub-unit)
The more you differentiate the more you need to integrate appropriately! And differentiations is important as you need to incorporate very different perspectives and concerns (not everyone should think like production staff).
Organisations need a purpose and identity where Paton (1991) sees differences between sectors.
- Commercial organisations => logic of profit
- Public sector => logic of accountability
- Social economy => logic of commitment (what needs to be done)
Organisational purposes are achieved by the strategic orientation to the outside world that an organisation adopts. And we are moving towards network organisations where instead of differentiation there are partnerships of several organisations. This can go as far as a virtual organisation.
All organisations are different is something else that is important.
- size and life-cycle (birth, youth, midlife, maturity)
- location
- use of technology
Diagrams can help understand an organisations: Organigrams (an organisations in action).
Mintzberg and Van der Heyden argue that the traditional organisational chart with the managers on top has had a debilitating effect and gives managers a misleading perception of themselves.
- sets of people doing their own thing.
- Chains of connected activities in a process
- Hubs of activities around a manager
- Webs of fluid relationships and actions
Managing itself is everywhere, facilitating collaboration, energising the whole network, encouraging people who already do their job well.
To cope better with your organisation:
- The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. (helicopter view)
- Complex and multiple interrelationships
- Reframing (visualise some other way to see new ways)
- Creating maps and models

(Originally published on the OUBS Blog)

This is about the second part of the entire decision making loop, monitoring and evaluating the performance of those decisions.

Monitoring is about what is happening. It is clearly a part of the process of evaluation, but it is not the whole picture. Evaluation seeks to assess how well the path was executed.

If you need to control something always put the control on the task, not on the people.

In terms of monitoring and objectives you should try to avoid standards that are open to interpretation to make them SMART. Ideally, they would also be meaningful, clear, fair, adjustable, honoured.

Monitoring is often associated with the gathering of information for control which can be done by:

• Involvement and observation
• Regular reporting
• Exception reporting
• Questioning and discussion
• Records and routing statistics

Next the Information you have gathered needs to be interpreted and you must take action upon that. Understand why something happened and the revise the standard or target or modify the activities or continue as is.

If you have control, you need to exercise it and this is what we call evaluation. Evaluation is about finding out whether you are achieving what you set out to achieve, and where and how things could be improved. You should continuously look for ways to improve, never settling down.

The process of evaluation is iterative, meaning you are going through the processes repeatedly.
1. Asking questions (-> Monitoring)
2. Answering questions (-> Review)
3. Drawing conclusions (-> Assessment)
4. Making necessary changes

Evaluation will highlight any differences in goals, values or objectives that exist in an organisation and force them to be addressed.

There are different kinds of evaluations as performance evaluation (are targets met), process evaluation (how do we work), impact evaluation (whether outcomes are achieved), strategic evaluation (doing the right thing), composite evaluation.

How do we design a formal evaluation? We take this from McCollam and White from 1993:

Define project aims -> Define purposes of evaluation -> Determine focus and audience -> Specify timescale -> Describe the work of the project – (possibly go back to defining the purpose) -> Choose evaluator -> Select Methods Collect Information -> Analyse and write up results -> Use results internally – (possibly go back to 1) -> Disseminate them externally.

The type of the evaluation depends on its focus and the balance between quantitative (measurable, results speak for themselves) and qualitative (reason behind everything) information is important.

Then you need to analyse and report the results. You need to look at your data looking for evidence relating to the achievement of your objectives, patterns in the evidence and unexpected results. Remember that analysis takes time and remember to write for the people that read it and make the report look good.

Then you need to make use of the results and disseminate the findings and if the evaluation results in changes to be made, then you will need to plan their implementation.

There are some issues to consider. Conflict can result out of discovered differences of expectations between groups, as slack is never popular and so isn’t a manager that makes savings, finding inefficiencies can result in some conflict too. Remember, 20% of the activities you do each day take 80% of the time.

Over-commitment is another important thing when activities are taken on without the necessary resources. It might be better to close down an entire unit then to cut everyone’s expenses.

Collusion means that people present misleading pictures of things important to your research if they feel threatened.

There might also be resistance to findings. Therefore you need to make the stakeholders feel involved and consulted from the start. Those people intimately involved need to be able to reflect on the findings and and you need to consider long-term changes.

(Originally published on the OUBS Blog)
How are decisions made and can we do a structured approach on them?
Past decisions as well as future ones will effect the ones we make today. We are concerned with the process that begins with recognition of the need to make a decision, establishing the outcome and identifies the choices as well as the consequences.
A structured approach to making decisions would be the following:
1.) identification and definition
a. Drucker (1955) commented: “The most common source of mistakes in management decisions is the emphasis on finding the right answer rather than the right questions.�
2.) Setting objectives (SMART)
3.) Optional appraisal and decision making
a. Once the decision has been made it is important to document it to provide an accurate record.
b. Pay attention to: financials, risk, resources
c. Identify uncertainties
d. User experience and computer models to predict probability
4.) Communication and implementation
5.) Monitoring and control
There are several limitations of the structured approach and one that is already mentioned a lot is that managers have to be satisficing!
de Bono (1982) has some ideas to get around the problems like execution speed.
- A modified structured approach (simplify)
- A less than ideal approach (but as close as possible. Visualise ideal)
- An intuitive approach (decide intuitive and then justify, then do)
- A negative approach (factor out bad solutions)
- A changing circumstances approach (forecast)
There are several techniques to help you find new ways for better solutions.
Lateral thinking is about freeing your mind to be stimulated into unpredictable and unaccustomed flights of imagination. All judgement should be suspended until a lot of ideas have been generated.
A very similar approach to this would be brainstorming which should allow your brain to work more freely than usual where the idea-generation stage is separated from the evaluation-stage. The wildest idea technique within this, described by Rawlinson (1981), takes one or two of the most off-beat and possibly senseless ideas trying to turn them into useful ones, generating even more ideas. Another more structured approach would be to give everyone a ticket so everyone has their turn or do it in four stages (Define, Redefine for new perspective, generate ideas, evaluate ideas). Brainstorming can be very complex and not easy to apply. Everybody in the team needs to be very open and members of the group should bring in different experiences and expertises.
On we go with lists (Advantages, Disadvantages), Matrices (2 dimensions with different choices and what is a criteria), Decision Tree (where do I really make them), Cause and effect diagrams (fishbone diagram)

(Originally published on the OUBS Blog)
In essence this part is about “making things happen�. It should help set a plan and ensure that it is followed.
You need a control loop:
Set Objectives -> Plan, identify markers and carry out tasks -> Monitor progress -> Act on results of monitoring (from there adjust tasks or do nothing or revise objectives)
To identify the tasks efficiently, several different techniques can be used:
- Mindmaps
- Task Breakdown Chart
If you want to display these tasks and put them in a specific sequence, other tools should be used:
- Gantt chart (a form of bar chart)
- Network Analysis aka critical path analysis
- Key events list
Next you need to monitor the progress by involvement and observation or regular reporting or exception reporting or questioning and discussion or by keeping records and routing statistics.
Monitoring without acting on the results is obviously stupid, so you need to either revise the objectives, make changes to tasks or do nothing.
All this is a learning process and you should reflect on what you are doing to improve the planning next time.
Next we need to deal with complexity, which means that the context in which we do our planning is changeable and complicated. Things are not simple.
It is only when you begin planning and assessing the work involved that the feasibility of objectives and timescales becomes apparent. You need to plan ahead:
- Potential Problem Analysis (What could go wrong?, How likely is it? How serious could it be? -> Prevent)
- Contingency planning (What if …?; where could extra resources be optioned; which are the serious dates; know your plan; keep people informed; learn; get more detail; overlap; pre-empt problems; leave some slack; bring tasks forward)
If you have a tight timescale then you should try not to think in absolutes. Do the tasks be in that set order or can some be brought forward? Overlapping tasks. Cark and Fujimoto showed in 1991 that Japanese firms too 20% less time than British ones because of that model.
Good communication is key!
This actually warrants more points to be made. Think from all points of view, who will loose? What can you do to make them happy?
Use a communication matrix to do that and expand on is as you learn more.

(Originally published on the OUBS Blog)
You should take charge of your personal development and plan your career as the burden of career planning has shifted heavily on to the individual.
Sonnefeld et al (1988) identified four classifications of companies:
- Fortresses: preoccupied with survival
- Baseball teams: recruit externally, you identify with the professions not the company
- Academies: Promote from within
- Clubs: more concern for seniority and status then profit
“ It is no longer functional to define education as a process of transmitting what is known; it must now be defined as a lifelong process of enquiry. “ – Knowles, 1980
There are 3 different ways of learning (MUD): from Memory, Understand and Doing.
Adults learn different then children and Knowles showed some differences:
- Self-directive
- Experienced
- Ready to learn
- Problem-centered
You will have four stages in learning: concrete experience, reflection, conceptualisation, testing.
People have different learning styles: Activist (concrete experience), Reflector (Observation, reflection), Theorist (Conceptualisation) and Pragmatist (Testing).
You need a plan, that is the most important part and some things will play a role in your future life. Those are bio-social, family relationships and career related.
To find out what are your core values, Schein used the term ‘career anchor’ in 1978. There are several classifications:
- Technical / Function competence
- General managerial competence
- Autonomy / Independence
- Security / Stability
- Entrepreneurial creativity
- Sense of service / dedication
- Pure challenge
- Lifestyle

(Originally published on the OUBS Blog)
Why do some theories not seem to fit with every management job? This is really due to the complexity in management: No two management positions are alike. Problems can be bound (small and well defined) or unbound (large and poorly defined). Simon (1960) provided a good insight into the problem-solving process of managers:
- Bounded rationality: We want to act rational but are unable to do so.
- Satisficing: You want to do the best but settle for what is “good enough�.
- Types of decisions: Programmed decisions are repetitive and routine, unprogrammed are new and unstructured.
Another source of complexity is that you are accountable to so many people: the organisation, customers, colleagues, self.
You will be depending on a group and not only on yourself. You need to manage that group well and pay attention on group size (5-7 is good), group composition (similar=harmony,different=innovative), nature of tasks, resources, external recognition, task and process (tackle task and maintain social relationship), interaction patterns, motivation, group development.
You will have some task functions (proposing/initiating, building, diagnosing, giving and seeking, evaluating, decision making) and some process functions (gate keeping, encouraging, resolving conflict, giving feedback, dealing with feelings, looking after physical needs).
There are several states in group development: Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing. (Tuckman: 1965)
You will also be managing conflict of which there are several layers:
- Misunderstandings
- Differences in values and beliefs
- Differences of interest and ambition
- Interpersonal differences
- Feelings and emotions
One thing you need to do is address the conflict and work towards a win-win solution (collaborating), which in many cases is very possible. This is a lot better then avoiding, accommodating or forcing a solution.
Once you have identified disagreements you need to do something about it either by non-intervention, prevention or resolutions.
One thing to remember is managerial opportunism(Williamson 1981) which means that you will want things for yourself, not the organisation. That is also part of the management reality and should be taken as such.
Networks are something you will need to build but you should pay attention that you are not in too many networks and that they are diverse groups of different people. It’s called Groupthink and will result in likewise thinking groups that make up unintelligent discussions.
To sum it up:
- Everyone is political
- Analyse yourself
- Understand others
- Listen and encourage
- Explain
- Match tasks to person
- Put negative people in jobs where they do not pull others down

(Originally Published on the OUBS Blog)
This part of Book 1 is focussing on how to handle transition into management, recognize and respond appropriately to stress and consider issues of time management.
Player-manager tension is a key point in this, as you will need to let other people do the job you did previously and let them learn and take credit. You will also need to pass your knowledge on to those people.
Also mentioned in the transition process that many managers see themselves in. This is based on a research by Adams et al. in 1976 which identified seven stages of transition.
- Immobilisation [you do not know what to make of your role]
- Minimisation [you carry on as though nothing has changed]
- Depression [you feel you cannot cope]
- Acceptance [you move on and see what you achieve]
- Testing [you form your own views and experiment]
- seeking meaning [you reflect on your experience]
- internalising [you have come to terms with your job]
What you need to learn as a manager is that pressure, the force from out side which could be motivating, can result in stress, a mind and body signal making you feel as if you cannot cope.
In 1993 Handy identified five common causes of stress:
- Responsibility for the work of others
- Innovative functions
- Integrative or boundary functions
- Relationship problems
- Career uncertainty
He argued that there are role-based sources of tension:
- Role ambiguity
- Role incompatibility
- Role conflict
- Role overload or underload
To deal with stress, the first thing you need to do is identify them early and you need to manage your time. One should analyse your actual use of time and compare it how you would like to use it (Plan, Analyse, Reflect, Change, Review).
You need to balance the urgent with the important.
To reduce stress you can delegate, put more emphasis on the work you should be doing, do training to reduce time spent on specific items, minimize urgent items, use task lists, remove disturbing repeating items, balance and compromise.
Delegation is a very important item that will both help you release time for other activities as well as train your staff. You need to delegate and monitor as you will have to keep control of the things you are responsible for. Things you can delegate are the following (as of Maddux – 1990):
- Decisions you make most frequently
- Functions you are an expert in (most of the time operating tasks)
- Tasks and projects for which you are least qualified
- Functions you dislike
- Work that will provide experience for employees
- Tasks that will add variety
- Activities that will expand a job
- Tasks that will increase the number of people who can perform critical assignments
- Opportunities to use and reinforce creative talents