Rethinking Structure Several Times Over
LIS0070 Case 1
Working for World Wide Energy, Inc. (WWE) was generally rewarding, never dull, and very often incredibly challenging. With more than 200,000 employees working in twenty-three countries, there was never a doubt that its information services had to be operational 24x7x365. As a global company, there was no question about how to employ technology to advance its interests and needs. Shelia Shitary, the director of the Information Services Section (ISS), had almost two hundred people under her direction – 70 at headquarters and 125 located in eight regional offices around the globe. The staff fielded information inquires around the clock from employees anywhere in the world. Exploration teams might request geologic data about a remote area, production managers had technical and engineering concerns that needed to be addressed, while marketing people would request the latest economic data from this or that country. The range of topics was virtually limitless and the number of requests for speedy replies almost never dropped. An inquiry that contained some variation of the phrase, “when you have time,” just never occurred.
Shelia was entering her third year as director, after working her way up through the ranks at WWE over the better part of twelve years. Most of that time had been spent in the head office, but most recently she had worked in two of the regional offices – one year in Hong Kong and another year in Kuwait. Each experience provided a different perspective on WWE and its varying styles of workplace behavior and approaches to challenges; realistically such variations had to exist within the overall framework of the firm. Needless to say, sometimes the variations did not mesh well with one another, much less with WWE’s organizational “standards.”
Based on her last several years in “corporate,” and certainly reinforced by her overseas experiences, Shelia was aware there were operational issues within the section. After the glow of excitement of being named a sectional director began to fade, she spent some time thinking about what she thought of as “her perceptions from below” regarding how the section operated. She also recalled what one of her professors had said about taking up a new post – “Yes, the new broom can sweep clean. But when you are using it for the first time, you should be certain that what you are sweeping needs cleaning or you may find yourself in the dust bin.” That comment seemed rather pertinent in her new position and, before she started making changes based on the thoughts she had about how things were when viewed from below, she decided to take some time to really try to understand the “whats” and “hows” of her section. She had developed a plan of action and was now at the point of making some decisions.
After gaining the approval of the Vice President she reported to, Sheila began planning visits to all eight regional offices during her first full year as director. Her plan was to visit one location and then spend time back in the office before going off on the next visit. Being away from “home” for too much time has gotten many leaders into trouble with the home office staff, regardless of how legitimate the time away may be. After all, these would not be one or two day, “Hi, I’m your new boss,” meet and greet junkets, but rather one-and-a-half to two week stays, depending on the number of offices using the regional site, to explore how things operated. She was well aware that her visit would cause concern, worry, and probably rather atypical behavior at least for a few days. Her hope was that, after several days, people would begin to return to something that represented their typical activities and behavior.
When her friends outside of WWE heard about her “world tour,” she was on the receiving end of comments such as;
“What a job! Globe trotting and someone else pays the bills!!”
“I wish I had such a wonderful opportunity in my job.”
“Don’t you feel just a little bit guilty going off on these trips?”
“Gosh, it must be great to get to do all that sightseeing.”
Few of her friends truly believed her when she said it was hard, tiring work. Moreover, these trips were not vacations by any stretch of the imagination. For Shelia it meant staying in hotel rooms that looked very much the same and working in company conference rooms that were more or less identical, whether they were in Shanghai, Sydney, Southampton, or Springfield. What her friends believed about the trips was not much of a worry; what did begin to worry her was the possibility people in the section might be having similar thoughts. Knowing there was little she could do to counteract staff beliefs before completing the trips, she went forward with her plans. She was expecting/hoping the spacing between trips would help make it clear the trips were part of her responsibility to fully understand the Division’s operations. By the end of her third year - with what had been a tiring time on the road while keeping things operational in the home office - Shelia had, what she believed, was a sound understanding of the issues facing her section.
After visiting the third regional office on her schedule, Shelia thought she discerned a pattern that was more or less confirmed by the end of the tours. Even at the regional level, there were language and cultural challenges between regional offices and their local support office. Variations in work behaviors did not keep information from flowing but they often appeared to make the process less efficient. There were complaints about how this or that regional office established priorities when inquires started backing up.
In Shelia’s mind, part of the problem resided in the overall structure of WWE. There were three major divisions – exploration and development, production, and marketing and distribution. Over the years, ISS had taken on a somewhat similar internal structure, with staff members assigned to put 95% or more of their time in on one of the three main areas of WWE interests. That in turn had led to WWE naming three ISS “coordinators,” – one for exploration, one for production and one for marketing. Each coordinator reported to the section director. Because of the need for 24x7 services, very soon assistant decision makers became part of the mix as well. Over time, ISS found itself with a very top heavy centralized administration. Part of the “specialization” was understandable, as people in exploration and development had very different information needs than those in production or marketing; there was almost as great a difference in need between production and marketing. Perhaps some flattening of the structure was in order, as well as finding a way to increase regional decision making power while still maintaining the requisite corporate control.
Another point of concern for Shelia was the lack of coordination between the three areas. Coordinators and their assistants rarely shared information across units on the assumption that the issues/concerns were more or less unique to their service population. There was almost no cross-training, as a result staffing was a challenge; there were times when the individual who did not have a pressing inquiry worked on low priority activities while someone else had a backlog of inquires requiring attention. Essentially there was no way to share the workload across unit lines. In one sense, there was no “ISS team,” yet almost everyone took satisfaction and even pride in working at WWE and ISS.
Finally, there was a question of what, if anything, to do about cultural issues. WWE’s three major divisions had rather different demographics, some due to chance and some deliberately put in place. The marketing division employed mostly local people with just a few managers from other countries. Production included a mix of people at the administration/supervisory level, as well as local workers. Exploration teams were primarily drawn from countries with strong science backgrounds with degrees from institutions around the world. Communicating effectively across so many cultural and language lines was a challenge.
Questions to ponder:
1. How should Shelia begin to address her concerns coming into the position, as well as those she learned about during her site visits? List a series of steps and explain why each is important.
2. What mechanisms/advantages does Shelia have at her disposal for gaining staff involvement? Should Shelia set up a special reorganization planning group? If she were to create such a group, who should serve on it?
3. What can/should be done to address geographic and cultural differences? List at least 5 things that could be done and explain why they each have merit.
4. Might Shelia encounter some issues of “saving face” if she were to reduce the number of “administrators” in her section? How could she address this? List a series of steps and explain why each is important.
5. Should Shelia plan for additional visits to the regional offices? If so, why; if not, why not? If she were to plan additional visits, how might she justify them and what timetable should she set for such visits?
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