Article 90. Organizational Analysis- a First Step to Reform
Analysis of an organization begins with a review of the organizations mission statements and its supporting culture. The culture or the “beliefs of employees leading to their actions” must support the missions of the bureaucracy. What employees say about the agencies mission reflects on the culture of the agency ultimately determining how well the mission is understood and supported. The missions are also supported by a set of rules usually found in voluminous volumes. These volumes also contain the Red Tape which has come to be associated with the bureaucracy.
Next a detailed analysis of the agencies organization charts will show how departments are managed how personnel are dispersed within the agency. This analysis should point out where redundant layers of bureaucratic management are located.
A thorough review of how an organization is structured will involve the assessment of how its functions are organized to support its mission statements and its culture. Functions are the names of specific independent sets of repeating activities and should be the foundation for the structure of the organization. What you are looking for is repeating independent sets of activities and any lumping together of difference sets of activities within a department. This is not big problem if the functions are budgeted separately
within a department but when departmental budgets are not broken down into functions confusion and inefficiency will result.
To find out how well an organization is meeting its mission obligations a survey of its “customers” or those in the general public that it services is needed. What the organizations customers say about the services they receive is the ultimate test of an agencies accomplishments but does not address how efficiently it operates. To determine where improvements can be made we need to analyze the each of the agencies functions with high level Flow Charts showing the major steps required to bring the services to the public.
When all of the above is completed a revised organization is built from the ground up rather than the normal top down method. First “customer” needs and requirements will drive the outputs of the organization. Then the functions required to fulfill these needs are identified. Followed by the customer interface personnel, those providing the services to the customer. How this level of the organization is managed depends on the mission statement they are to fulfill. For example is this a Service mission or a responding mission? The differences between these two are significant. In the instance of a service mission almost all of the needs of the customer are known in advance and can be preplanned. The responding mission is like that of a fireman the customers needs are not specifically known in advance and must be satisfied by training through drill scenarios. This will have a direct effect on the level and quality of training of the service providers. The differences in the management between these missions is again reflected by the needs of the customer.
Customers of a service missions want the services to be fully provided and in a timely manor. The best management structure for doing this is a team of personnel who can focus on providing continuous improvement to the processes that service the customer’s needs.
The responding mission management will require an on-the-scene manager to direct the actions of providing immediate services to the customer. However the next level of management may well be a team consisting of on-the-scene managers who will plan for future responses by implementing continuous improvement into the processes.
The upper management should consist of a director to head the agency with direct supervision of the organizations staff services such as Personnel Services, Accounting and budgeting, Information Management (computer services) and a high level Policy Team consisting of the various department managers. With today’s communication capabilities middle management should be kept to an absolute minimum number of levels.
Note that my method of rebuilding the organization focuses on the customer services required and builds from the ground up. This is the exact opposite of the traditional approach to the founding of a new agency where a new director is hired and top level staff service departments are created. Then department managers are hired and then supervisors are hired followed by the service providers for the public needs.
