Lets talk about organizational structure

When I was invited to join a department in one of our subsidiaries in the early 2000s, I did hear that I was entering a dragon’s lair. I shrugged it off and thought that I had faced tougher challenges in my life and I was not called an Iron lady for nothing! (not ironing lady,ok?)

True enough, I was delighted to find so many deficiencies in this new workplace because I prided myself to be a problem-fixer of all sorts! And the situation was like one of my case studies in college!

Let me share with you one of the scenarios in that department! It had around 16 personnel headed by a manager and assisted by two senior executives. The organization structure was as follows:



Aaahhh…seemingly so simple! But it all started to unravel when I suddenly realized that none of my subordinates were reporting to me! Sometimes some documents came my way requiring my review and most days it didn’t! Most of the times I was asked to handle some urgent requirements (there were many ) as I was known to be the ‘get things done ’ gal and since my English writing was good, I was also asked to prepare a lot of board papers and memos. There was also a lot of rush orders due to some stock-outs of critical chemicals, packaging materials and the likes that required my intervention ( we’ll talk more on how to andle such problemsin my upcoming blogs). Upon enquiry, I was told to just handle contracts as I was new to the department! Ok, so people needed help and I felt honored to be turned to in times of difficulties but hey, there was something wrong there!

I found out the bulk of my job was actually the job responsibilities of the Senior Exec Inventory. If I was doing his job, then, what was he doing?

The answer is “NOTHING!” He shuffled around not even bothering to look busy but humbly making return trips to the manager’s room for a daily verbal abuse every morning! Since he was so incompetent, the manager had to redistribute the job to almost everyone else in the department, including me!

One of the recipients of the additional workload was a purchasing senior clerk who started out as an office boy. His task was to record some daily deliveries of chemicals to the company. Never being trained in accounting, it was only expected that things began to go very wrong in this area after a few years of his doing this task. This Purchasing supervisor was also ordering and receiving the products and he reported directly to the manager, bypassing his executive and his senior executive. So basically nobody knew what or how he did his job.

When things started to go wrong, suddenly I was asked to report and explain the discrepancies in the quantity received! Whoaaa…..too much already!! I thought. How could I explain about somebody s work who did not report to me? I was indignant, after all, I had a master’s degree in accounting and the first thing was sooooo BASIC so much so I did point out that there was a grievous lack of check and balances when ordering and receiving was done by the same person!

I immediately realized that :
1. The people in the position boxes were doing things differently than what they were supposed to do.
2. Everyone reported to the manager.
3. People were doing tasks outside their training, qualification and know-how.
4. The performance rating was done on rotation basis, i.e, the manager will rotate the person who would get good rating year by year without referring to their actual performance results!

Ok got to go, will write more on the effects of the invisble org chart!

Walking the talk

I have been working in a big corporation all of my life, except for a short stint as an accounting lecturer and my observation has normally been about corporate executives. I know enough about many of them to intuitively know whom I can rely on to get things done or whom I can get to hear a lot of excuses. The types you find when you read Dilbert cartoons, believe me, we are all represented there!

My earliest contact with an entrepreneur was our neighbour in my village whom have obtained some grant from some governmental agencies. Sometimes I would be sent off to buy the hot kuih bahulu from his factory and I once saw his small office with the impressive rotating chair. In those days ( 70s) having a rotating chair was BIG! When asked about him, he was always flying off on business trips (obviously selling his bahulu to out of the state customers, I surmised). But after merely 7 months into the business, the taste of the bahulu somehow deteriorated. Why, oh Why? I asked after coming back on a short holiday from a boarding school. Ahhh…Abg Mat Zain had to change the recipe because the patent owner, whom was his co- proprietor (aka : wife) had already been replaced by a new partner ( aka: new wife). The first partnership fell through and so did the business. I swear I saw that rotating chair still surviving in that small room well into the 90s!

The next batch of entrepreneurs I met was a group of American businessmen who were in the same Honors Colloquium as I was when I was in college. It was a special class for outstanding students, (ehem, including ,yours truly) to learn about entrepreneurship. The first day of the class I introduced myself as a 19 year old student from Malaysia to 9 other so called students who were so OLD ( that’s what teenagers think of people the age of thirty and above)! There were actually graduate students holding the likes of a double degree in Physics and Engineering and Mathematics and some other annoyingly tough sounding degrees and each of them had set up and operated their own company! They were talking about venture capitalists, incubators, interest rates and boy, did I feel intimidated and outclassed! Suffice to say, I did not learn much from that class except that we did some graphology test ( study of handwriting) and got to find out that I have the most rare condition of being able to use both left and right brain equally well!

And now, my vendors in the development program actually belong to these groups:
1. Those that I can help for various reasons.
2. Those whom I cannot help because I do not know their modus operandi.
3. Those whom I could have helped but would not let me.
4. Those whom can do well on their own.
5. Those whom humour me by reading my blogs!

So I am writing this blog as part of my journey in being an entrepreneur myself, having my own SWOT, strategies, organization chart and lets see whether I can walk my own talk. Now I have met a new entrepreneur. ME. Lets share our experiences…..

“I have been rich, I have been poor. Being rich is better.”
- Quote from “Rich Dad, Poor Dad”