PART 04: YOU MAKE THE DECISION: ORGANIZING

Organizational Design 2nd attempt Which of the following organizational designs is most likely to help in this situation? A. A functional design. B. A matrix design.

A. A functional design.

Organizational Design 2nd attempt Look at the following two organizational designs and indicate which one you would choose. A. I want my employees to have broad job responsibilities. I'll hire a small group of employees next year that have multiple skills, and ask them to work on anything that will help the company meet its goals. B. I want my employees to have very narrow job responsibilities. I'll hire more people with specific experience next year, and each person will form the basis for future departments in my company.

A. I want my employees to have broad job responsibilities. I'll hire a small group of employees next year that have multiple skills, and ask them to work on anything that will help the company meet its goals. I think the correct answer was B.

Structure Which approach would you chose to solve problems most commonly associated with highly specialized work? A. I would decentralize my company. B. I would centralize my company.

A. I would decentralize my company.

Feedback

Although you have a good understanding of centralization and decentralization, a basic feature of organizational design, you might want to spend a little time studying how and when to use different levels of job specification. The good news is that and you are able to match specific organizational design approaches with environment conditions. Grade: 67%

Organizational Design A. Look at the following two organizational designs and indicate which one you would choose. I want my employees to have broad job responsibilities. I'll hire a small group of employees next year that have multiple skills, and ask them to work on anything that will help the company meet its goals. B. I want my employees to have very narrow job responsibilities. I'll hire more people with specific experience next year, and each person will form the basis for future departments in my company.

B. I want my employees to have very narrow job responsibilities. I'll hire more people with specific experience next year, and each person will form the basis for future departments in my company.

Lack of Specialization 2nd attempt What approach would you choose to solve problems most commonly associated with a lack of specialization for employees? A. I would decentralize my company. B. I would make my company more centralized.

B. I would make my company more centralized.

Action Which of the following actions would best help to accomplish your goals? A. Assign a set of your best salespeople to reach out to customers and determine what products of yours they have liked best. Create groups of specialized employees to design and create new products that incorporate the best points of customer favorite products. B. Put employees from different departments into cross-functional teams and have each team identify a customer problem and work together to create a solution for it.

B. Put employees from different departments into cross-functional teams and have each team identify a customer problem and work together to create a solution for it.

Feedback 2nd attempt

Congratulations! Your answers indicate that you have a good understanding of the basic elements of organizational design, but you might want to do a little more studying to find out which types of design are more or less effective in different environmental conditions. Grade 67%

Narrow Responsibilities

Five years go by, and now you've hired 30 additional employees. Recently, you've noticed that some of your employees seem less happy than they were earlier. You hear complaints that people are bored and tired of doing the same thing all the time.

Broad Responsibilities 2nd attempt

Five years go by, and now you've hired 30 additional employees. You notice that each of your employees does the same task differently, and that there is not much consistency in your organization. You believe that this is because you did not create specialized jobs when you were originally designing your company.

Communication Problems 2nd attempt

It's ten years since you started your company, and you are facing an extremely turbulent environment. Customers now want apps that work on a wide variety of devices - everything from a mobile phone to in-car computer command centers. They also want more unique products, including ideas for events that can be part of their vacation and/or home life, as well as travel tips. You have competitors from all over the world, and you're finding it difficult to maintain your competitive advantage. In addition, it seems that your sales force doesn't know what your engineering team is doing. The sales force is always complaining that your engineers don't provide what customers want, while the engineers say that the sales force is making promises the company can't keep.

Introduction

Two years ago, you created GoForLess, a new app that shows people the cheapest way to travel by bus, train, or air between two cities. Turns out that your app was a big success, and now you've made enough money to hire some additional employees. You're trying to figure out what your new employees should do. What kinds of jobs should they have? How should they work together? How should they work with you? How can you give your employees enough freedom to be innovative, while maintaining enough control over their work to be sure that GoForLess will stay true to its overall goals?

Introduction 2nd attempt

Two years ago, you created GoForLess, a new app that shows people the cheapest way to travel by bus, train, or air between two cities. Turns out that your app was a big success, and now you've made enough money to hire some additional employees. You're trying to figure out what your new employees should do. What kinds of jobs should they have? How should they work together? How should they work with you? How can you give your employees enough freedom to be innovative, while maintaining enough control over their work to be sure that GoForLess will stay true to its overall goals?

Specialization

You start by thinking about specialization. To what extent do your new employees need to have broad job responsibilities versus narrow job responsibilities? You know that to build a good app, you need to have people who have infrastructure automation, community building, programming, copywriting, data visualization, user experience, business, innovation, analysis, design, testing, and domain knowledge skills.

Specialization 2nd attempt

You start by thinking about specialization. To what extent do your new employees need to have broad job responsibilities versus narrow job responsibilities? You know that to build a good app, you need to have people who have infrastructure automation, community building, programming, copywriting, data visualization, user experience, business, innovation, analysis, design, testing, and domain knowledge skills.

Decentralize

Your company is now 20 years old, and you are solidly in the maturity phase of your life cycle. You want to move away from the standard forms of organizational structure (functional, divisional, matrix) and create an organizational structure that will give you better insights into your customer's needs and help you react more flexibly to their wishes.