It doesn’t matter what drives it, organizations will want to try and leverage organizational structure for productivity gain. There is no doubt that the workforce is more mobile today and they are using mobile technologies to get work done. This opens the door to infinitely more organizational structure options. This can, in turn, lead to great gains (or great pains) in productivity.
While it is tempting to start tinkering with shared services, global centers of excellence, and other organizational structures, ironically, the answer to the organizational structure question hasn’t changed much over time. The best structure for still depends on the strength of process management capabilities. How strong are your organizational processes? How well are those processes communicated? Are those processes actually followed?
I agree 100% that mobility has increased the capability of the enterprise to monitor, alert, capture, and measure. The trend toward increased mobility started with telegraph and has exploded at a pace the flux capacitor can hardly match, but whether the person (or system) is housed in the USA, Asia, or the Cloud; or if it is delivered in a centralized, decentralized, or hybrid approach is not the issue. The health of the processes and the employee’s understanding of how they fit into that are the core to their success.
To build strong process management capabilities, you first have to start with a strong process framework to drive governance, facilitate communication, and effectively leverage mobile technologies. Without that, at best, you will end up with a very mobile organization not working toward common goals. That is a mobile disaster.
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Ron,
Great article. “…the strength of process management capabilities” definitely determines a companies success. No company is started to be a replica of another company; they always think they know a better way. Organizational structures already exist in every company and the one that can figure out a better process will win every time.
Done well, process will beat brand too. In this blog, http://www.babblewareinc.com/index.php/2012/09/process-versus-product-differentiation/
there are a couple of articles that demonstrate the importance of being the Second Mouse (the only one guaranteed to get the cheese). Process innovation can yield tremendous gains in revenue and margin as efficiency, accuracy, visibility and collaboration are unleashed. Entire industries can be disrupted and new leaders established when processes are streamlined to provide the most value for the least amount of effort. It is the very nature of business to improve their economies of scale.
Steve, thanks for the comment and the link to the blog post. I agree. Many organizations articulate they want to “be the Apple (or Facebook or Google) of , but they either don’t have the capability or feel they have a better way. Process is how work gets done. Innovative work usually is supported by innovative processes.