Understanding Organizations ... Finally!

“At omorganisere er så populært i organisationer, fordi det er så nemt. Alt, hvad du behøver, er et stykke papir og en pen – endnu bedre, en blyant med et godt viskelæder.”

Henry Mintzberg, 2023

Kort om bogen
I 1978 udgav Mintzberg klassikeren ”Structuring of Organizations”. Dér introducerede han ”Machine bureaucracy” som én af fem fundamentale typer af organisationer. Denne arketype lever nu videre som ”Programmed machine”, og denne udgør, ifølge ham, den typiske forståelse af hvad en organisation er.

I kapitel 4 beskriver han forskellige ”koordinerings-mekanismer” (”mutual adjustment”, ”direct supervision”, og forskellige typer af standardisering). I kapitel 5 beskriver han forskellige design-elementer, f.eks. ”designing positions”, ”designing the superstructure: grouping into units”, og ”fleshing out the superstructure: lateral linkages”.

Når man har læst kapitel 4 og 5 åbner det for en meget mere nuanceret måde at se organisationer. Alle der står foran at lede en omstrukturering bør absolut læse disse to kapitler!

Mest relevante pointer i kontekst af transparent mødepraksis
Centralt i bogen, og for mig, er definitionen på hvad en ”organisation” hhv. ”organisationsstruktur” er:

“An organization can be defined as collective action structured for the pursuit of a common mission… a number of people work in some formalized arrangement to accomplish something. And the structure of an organization can be defined as the pattern of relationships designed to enable its people to take that action together.”

Lateral linkages
Her introducerer han fem begreber (design elementer) som alle kan fordre tværgående forbindelser og koordinering:

• Liaison position → forbindelsesposition eller bindeledsrolle
• Integrating managers → integrerende ledere eller koordinationsledere
• Meetings → møder
• Standing committees → faste udvalg (fora)
• Task forces → arbejdsgrupper eller ad hoc-grupper (projekter)

Mintzberg kalder disse elementer for mindre formelle. Og her er møder og faste udvalg de elementer som jeg arbejder med.

Matrix struktur
Her beskriver Mintzberg at matrix bryder med den hellige regel om ”unity of command” dvs. at man kun kan have én chef. Matrix kan være bygget ind i superstructure ved at folk formelt referer til to personer, eller det kan være midlertidigt som ved etablering af et projekt.

Yderligere citater fra bogen
“What the organizational chart certainly shows is that we are obsessed with authority, seduced by status”

“Designing the superstructure: grouping into units. Here we come to the skeleton of the organization, the bones that hold its parts together. We consider how the positions are grouped into formal units, and how these units are grouped into successively larger ones to form the hierarchy of authority, also how large these units should be.
Grouping gets so much attention that is has come to be seen as almost synonymous with structuring – hence the obsession with those organization charts. Well, just as there is a lot more to our bodies than our skeletons, so too there is a lot more to our organizations than grouping, even though they can no more exist without such grouping than we can exist without our skeletons.”

“We have trained hard, but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up intro teams, we would be re-organized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by re-organization: and what a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization.”

“Believing there is one best way to structure organization is the worst way to manage them.” 

Forlag og link til køb

Published by Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2023

Kan f.eks. købes på Saxo her.

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