Lateral Work
A while back as part of our ongoing series “Organizations that Work” we wrote about what we call “Cross-Boundary Work”—which is work that requires two or more employees, who report to different managers, to collaborate to produce an output neither of them could do alone. While work levels and layers of management describe the vertical distribution of work up and down through the organization, Cross-Boundary work describes the distribution of lateral work —frequently, the work that is accomplished as part of an organization’s business processes.
In that article, we described the different types of Cross-Boundary authorities that can be established to help role holders understand their part of the process and the decisions they get to make.
In this article, we’ll talk a little more about what happens when people are not clear about their accountabilities and authorities for cross-boundary or lateral work. These are the symptoms we see that signal to us that cross-boundary work is not clearly articulated, or not clearly understood, or not appropriately managed.
Escalation of lateral work decisions
Perhaps the most common symptom we see is escalation. Our clients experience this in two forms: 1) managers who tell us that “every issue” related to cross-boundary work is brought to them for resolution, and; 2) employees who tell us that “everything has to be brought to the managers for a decision”.
Imagine a situation where a product manager wants to promote a particular product in a particular market and relies on a centralized marketing organization to produce ads, in-store displays or social media marketing. Everything’s going well until marketing brings the proposed materials to the product manager for “approval”. The product manager doesn’t agree with the approach marketing is suggesting… and the marketing people insist they are right and that “it’s their decision”. Who makes the call?
What we see very often, is that the managers will be called in to referee this dispute and in the end, a solution will be agreed upon. This small example describes both ends of an unnecessary escalation—employees who feel like they should be able to decide, and managers who are frustrated with being “dragged into the weeds”. The end result is delays in execution, frustration all around, unnecessary costs and work effort, and potentially, conflict.
Wouldn’t it be better (and faster, and less frustrating for everyone?) if each of the participants understood their accountabilities and authorities, and acted accordingly? We can’t be prescriptive about how this should work (i.e. who decides what in this example) but we can and do work with our clients to clarify and document these things as part of our implementation process.
Operational bottlenecks
Another common symptom we see is role holders overstepping or misunderstanding their decision authority and creating operational bottlenecks.
One of our clients was experiencing persistent issues with late shipments, which was creating some very unhappy customers. As we worked with them to understand and clarify their value chain (from raw materials to finished product delivered to a happy customer), one of the issues we uncovered was with how the quality function was being executed.
Quality Assurance (QA) is, fundamentally, a lateral work function. QA is almost always organized outside of the production unit to ensure the integrity of the quality function. Imagine the head of quality reporting to the VP Manufacturing and the conflicts of interest that might arise when a bad batch is identified, but the VP wants to meet a shipping deadline…
In this case, the person managing QA truly believed that they had the accountability to set and enforce quality standards to protect the site’s licenses to operate in the highly regulated industry they were part of. In their view, this extended to the authority to decide to hold a batch or a shipment, or even to order the disposal of an entire batch of product if their testing revealed issues with quality of any kind, or if their tests were inconclusive and needed to be run again.
In reality, however, not every issue with quality is a deal-breaker. There’s a big difference between finding a higher than acceptable level of a toxic chemical in a batch and identifying that the labelling does not meet the customer’s specified standards. While both of these would be identified as quality issues, only one of them threatens the license to operate and creates a substantial risk to the company.
Once we convened a discussion between the QA functional leader and the manufacturing leader to identify which decisions could only be made by the QA function, and which decisions were at the discretion of the manufacturing leaders, procedures and processes were updated accordingly and the manufacturing process operated much more smoothly.
Lack of Clarity in lateral work
A third common symptom that indicates cross-boundary issues to be resolved is a lack of clarity about who is accountable to actually resolve a known lateral work issue—a challenge that is often compounded by ineffective managerial leadership.
As we worked with one of our clients to implement a new organization design, we convened a working session to address the key roles (and their accountabilities) that would be necessary to enable a smooth handoff between raw materials handling and production.
The existing approach had been identified by virtually everyone who participated in it as being problematic. The existing stakeholders had countless stories about how the current state “just does not work”. And yet as we worked with the relevant stakeholders to clarify roles and accountabilities, a consistent theme emerged—no one in the organization was fully accountable for making this process work.
Working through this challenge with our client, we emphasized the principle that there needed to be a single role holder (someone other than the CEO) who was accountable to ensure that this process actually worked to serve the needs of the organization. As discussions progressed there were many ideas about how to make things work better; participants agreed on ways they could share information and collaborate in real time to make the process work. As part of this discussion we asked why the issue had not been previously addressed, and the answer we got was that no one was clear on whose accountability it was to craft a solution.
This example highlights two issues: 1) a lack of clear accountability and requisite decision authority for the role holders involved in process, and; 2) a lack of managerial leadership to address and resolve a known issue.
The first issue is fairly simple to address; the second issue implies that there is some work to be done with the managerial leadership role holders to help them understand their accountability for continuous improvement.
In this case the leaders who were aware of the issue and did nothing need to be held to account by their manager. And if their managers don’t do that, then they need to be held to account by their manager. As a manager, it is simply not acceptable to identify a problem and do nothing to resolve it. At the very least, escalating the issue to your manager to begin the process of resolution is the right first step.
This last example calls to mind the reality of any work that is designed to improve the overall system. Helping role holders understand and clarify their accountabilities and decision authorities is a necessary first step to a better functioning organization. But if this activity is not coupled with effective managerial leadership throughout the organization, clearly documented roles may remain just that—a set of documents.
In order to see the improvements you desire, role holders need to execute the work of their roles, a necessary part of which is a vibrant and well-functioning managerial leadership system that ensures accountability at every level.
This blog is part of our ongoing series Organizations that Work. To see all of the blogs in the series that have been posted so far, click here.
Every Tuesday over the next few months, we will be posting blogs that take you from the pain of poor organization design, to identifying the root causes, to the benefits of undertaking strategic organization review. We will discuss the steps needed to effectively align your structure and work with your strategy, and we’ll discuss the processes that take out the guess work and help you to get it done. Through it all we will discuss how to lead the change from start to finish.
If you’d like to speak with us about how we can help you on your journey to an organization that works, please follow us on LinkedIn or book a call directly with one of our partners.
This blog was written by Ed McMahon. Ed is the managing partner with Core International, and specializes in creating organization designs structured to deliver strategy and improve performance.
Our approach draws on several bodies of work including Stratified Systems Theory, the work of Dr. Elliott Jaques. For more on Dr. Jaques and his work visit the Requisite Organization International Institute at ROII Requisite – ROII Requisite.