This is the result of organizational alienation, the mission is ignored, and the survival of the organization itself becomes the ultimate goal.
The earliest organizational model of human beings originated from the army. The organizational structure can be divided into the following three levels:
Front-line departments directly realize value or face goals. For example, the sales or production department in an enterprise; Infantry, armored forces and aviation in the army.
The second-line departments directly support the first-line departments. For example, the marketing planning department behind the sales department, the technical department and the quality control department behind the production department; Support the engineers, artillery and intelligence departments of infantry, and support the ground handling system and communication department of pilots.
The third-line department supports the first-line and second-line departments and maintains the organization's own operation. For example, the administrative, financial and personnel departments of enterprises, the political work, logistics and medical systems of the army.
The front-line department should be the core department, because it embodies the reason for the existence of the organization. Therefore, an efficient organization should be the support department behind the leaders of front-line departments. However, with the alienation of organizations, the survival needs of many organizations cover up their functional purposes, leading to the third-line departments increasingly becoming the leading departments above the first-line departments. As a result, the front-line departments are constrained everywhere, and often need to spend a lot of extra energy to deal with the supporting departments behind them, which greatly reduces the effectiveness of the organization.
The advantages of pyramid vertical management organization structure are clear responsibilities, clear division of labor, smooth vertical information communication, easy hierarchical authorization and unified command, and especially suitable for the management of large projects and organizations. Disadvantages are:
First, communication between superiors and subordinates is smooth, but communication between departments at the same level is not smooth. Although the division of labor is clear, coordination is weak. The coordinated actions between any departments need to be achieved through higher-level leadership.
Second, various departments rob resources, beggar their neighbors, bully their superiors and deceive their subordinates, and strive for power and profit.
Third, the leader's wrong decision will cause overall harm, and there is no power of checks and balances to reverse it.
Fourth, too clear professional division of labor will lead to uneven busy and idle of various departments. Clear responsibilities and rights have caused obstacles to the horizontal deployment and coordination of human resources and greatly reduced labor productivity.
In ancient times, transportation and communication were underdeveloped, and the vertical organizational structure had its indisputable reasons. The above shortcomings are the price that must be paid for this reason. Now that communication is developed and the labor cost exceeds the equipment investment cost, the advantages of this organizational structure are lost, and its disadvantages are becoming more and more prominent.
The flattening of the organization and the return of functions will become the general trend. The reform principle of flat organization is to cut off those levels that only transmit information and have no decision-making power. The return of the initial function of the organization is to focus on the realization of values and goals. This goal is to destroy the enemy for military organizations, to serve customers for enterprise organizations and to serve the people for government organizations. We usually call this flat target organization project organization.
A typical project organization should be a front-line organization. It reversed the above alienation trend and reflected the return of the original function of the organization. As the origin of human organization, the army is also evolving in the direction of project organization. According to the traditional military establishment, infantry, artillery, engineers, armored forces, aviation and scouts are all functional departments based on professional division of labor. However, in modern wars, there have been strengthened battalions, mixed brigades and mechanized divisions, which can be temporarily equipped with all the above arms and directly face the target. Each infantry battalion is equipped with complete sets of equipment ranging from guns and ammunition to communication, navigation, night vision, protection and medical care. You can even call the headquarters directly for air support. This fully embodies the characteristics of a project-based organization, which is highly flexible and has full initiative, and everything is based on the principle of achieving goals.
Enterprises are also developing towards project-based organization. In the process of flattening and slimming, many enterprises have got rid of functional departments:
Throw out the production department and become an independent OEM outsourcer;
Throw out the engineering department and become an independent contractor;
Throw out the sales department and become an independent product distributor;
Throw out the planning department and become an independent advertising planning company;
Throw out the legal department and become an independent law firm;
Throw out the human resources department and become an independent labor service company;
You can even throw out the core financial department and become an independent financial company (the predecessor of China Merchants Bank is the financial company evolved from the financial settlement center thrown out by China Merchants Bank).
After these functional departments are thrown out, the only thing left in the company headquarters is the project department and a group of project managers, whose task is to deal with customers. The functional departmentalism that has been thrown out (that is, the ideological style or behavior that is planned only for the interests of themselves or their own small groups regardless of the overall interests) is gone, and they will regard these project managers as customers.