Free Article By Paul Glen of C2
Consulting
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Who's In?
In my consulting work, I've often found that my
fascination with borders comes in handy. I suppose that I'm not alone in my
amusement that one can stand literally straddling a boundary, with one foot in
one country and the other in another.
I was reminded of this recently on a
cross-country drive here in the U.S. In large swaths of the country, crossing a
state border seems like a nonevent. We live up to our name as the United States.
Other than a sign announcing your arrival in the new state, nothing much changes
visibly. The interstate is still the interstate. The topography doesn't shift
dramatically. The vegetation remains the same.
But then there are some borders that represent
stark demarcations. Some things suddenly shift. For example, crossing from
Kansas into Oklahoma, endless fields of corn suddenly give way to rangeland
dotted with cows. But even there, the interstate is still the interstate. The
topography and native vegetation don't change.
I don't know if the discontinuity is due to
differences in cultures, tax laws, land use regulations or what, but the
Kansas-Oklahoma border is clearly one that matters. The boundary is obvious and
immediately apparent.
But even with the nonevent borders, the more
subtle differences between states eventually make themselves known. The types of
rest stops and restaurants change. The dress and comportment of patrons and
staff at the truck stops shift. The reminders of regional differences gradually
emerge from the veneer of national franchise uniformity.
Organizational boundaries are a lot like state
borders. When you walk through an unfamiliar office, you may not know whether
you've just passed from marketing into finance or even software development into
networking. The carpet remains the same. The cubicles are identical. The copiers
are all of the same vintage and brand.
But in some offices, it's immediately clear
when you've left one manager's domain and passed into another's. The boundaries
are distinct and unmistakable. You can almost imagine border guards standing
behind candy-striped barricades asking for passports and demanding bribes before
allowing you to pass. "Who goes there? Friend or foe?"
As a consultant, I frequently find that subtle
boundary issues become important in diagnosing and resolving performance
problems. At the staff level, organizational borders are usually pretty
indisputable. Joe reports to Sally in the SAP support team. Adrian reports to
Adam in the project management office. But absent the obvious border guards,
management teams often don't really know how they fit together.
When I ask a CIO who should attend the
management retreat that we're planning together, the answer often requires a lot
of thought. Even at the retreats, when I ask the participants, "Who are the
members of the management team?" a surprisingly long discussion usually reveals
many different perspectives on the relationships and boundaries among
leadership, management, sponsors, customers, users and vendors. Even the
citizens don't always know what states they live in.
This may seem like a silly semantic question,
but it often proves decisive in making sense of dysfunctional interactions
between individuals and groups. Misperceptions and disagreements over boundaries
are key sources of role confusion. Managers are usually clear about their roles
with respect to their subordinates, but they are rarely so clear about
responsibilities and relationships looking up and out from their domains.
To operate effectively, management teams need a
common understanding of both the location and the meaning of borders.
The location of boundaries provides information
about responsibilities and relationships among managers. Useful conceptual
models become available once people know where a boundary lies. For example, do
we need an ambassador to the networking group? Do we want to establish an
embassy outpost by sending someone to live with the finance department? How does
that budget money flow?
The meaning of boundaries offers much more
subtle but perhaps even more important information about obligations and
relationships among managers. For example, are borders fuzzy interfaces between
territories that blend into one another, or do we believe that good fences make
good neighbors? Managers interact quite differently depending on the meaning of
the frontier.
Making sense of the geopolitics of your office
can help you develop useful alliances and avoid energy-sapping border disputes.
Everyone can be more productive. Then you can focus on growing corn, and your
neighbors on herding cows.
© Copyright 2006 by Computerworld Inc., One Speen Street, Framingham, MA, 01701. Reprinted by permission of
Computerworld. All Rights Reserved.
