Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Taking from Seth Godin, what kills large organizations is that people don’t know what other people are doing. Managers at the top level are responsible for these problems.

Seth Godin has a recent post on his blog that I love to hate or hate to love or something. He highlights a problem in large companies – people don’t know what other people are doing. Godin’s post is about what a person does when they see a problem in their company’s product, but they don’t know who to tell about the problem. They don’t know which person is responsible for that product.

The problem is not unique to companies and corporations. Non-profit and community volunteer groups have the same troubles. The group becomes so large that a person doesn’t know who in the group is accountable for something else.

Godin understands the problem well and he knows who is responsible – the senior managers. These senior managers set the direction of the organization and hire employees or bring in new members. They determine the structure of the organization that allows and prohibits communication.

Technology to the rescue. Well, sort of. Organizations have web sites and blogs and such. These devices are places to hold the information that can answer the titular question, “Who does that?”

Of course, some person needs to keep updating those sources of information so that they are current. Again, the senior managers are responsible for that happening.

You might object that the senior manager eventually becomes nothing but a librarian, i.e., someone who points to sources of information. Yeah, that is about it. That is the job.