Organizational Design Errors: Structuring a Business Around People Instead of Organizational Needs

In media and data industries, it's essential to prioritize organizing around the organization's collective, operational goals, priorities and needs rather than accommodating individuals or any other interests other than focusing on the business plan.

Neglecting this approach can lead to inefficiencies, conflicts, and major frustrations that impede progress and growth opportunities. Embracing adaptability becomes crucial in maintaining competitiveness, especially in the context of increasing remote work arrangements.

Understanding the Error

Misalignment with Organizational Goals:
When businesses structure themselves around individual preferences, skills, or personalities, they risk becoming misaligned with their strategic goals. This misalignment can lead to inefficiencies, fragmented operations, and inconsistent decision-making.

Inflexibility and Rigidity:
A structure that heavily relies on specific individuals becomes inflexible. It struggles to adapt to changes such as employee turnover, evolving business strategies, or market shifts, thus impeding the organization's ability to remain agile.

Dependence on Individuals:
Over-reliance on key individuals creates organizational vulnerabilities. The departure of these individuals can disrupt operations, resulting in significant knowledge and skill gaps that are hard to fill quickly.

Imbalanced Workloads:
Tailoring roles too closely to individuals can lead to uneven workload distribution. Some employees may be overburdened, leading to burnout, while others may be underutilized, causing disengagement and dissatisfaction.

Slow Innovation and Growth:
Innovation thrives in environments where roles and structures evolve with business needs. A people-centric structure can resist new ideas and hinder growth opportunities, particularly in fast-paced industries like media and data.

Misguided Loyalty and Emotional Decisions:
A common yet detrimental mistake is "finding a role for someone" based on emotional attachment or a misguided sense of loyalty. Managers may feel they are helping by accommodating an employee who no longer fits the organizational needs. However, this can create roles that lack clear purpose or strategic alignment, leading to inefficiency and morale issues.

Inheriting Employees from Group Companies:
Another prevalent issue is "inheriting" employees from other group companies rather than hiring the best candidate for the role. While this may be driven by corporate politics or attempts to utilize existing resources, it often results in suboptimal matches between roles and skills. The inherited employee may lack the specific expertise or experience required, leading to reduced performance and potential friction within teams. Prioritizing internal transfers over open, competitive hiring processes can compromise the organization’s ability to bring in fresh talent and new perspectives essential for innovation and growth.

Impacts on Media Agencies and Data Industries

Reduced Efficiency:
In media agencies and data industries, where efficiency and timely delivery are crucial, misaligned structures can cause delays and increased operational costs. This inefficiency can hinder the delivery of marketing solutions and data-driven insights.

Poor Communication:
Effective communication is vital for distributed teams working on marketing campaigns or data projects. A people-centric structure can disrupt communication channels, leading to misunderstandings and errors.

Lack of Clear Accountability:
Clear accountability is essential for performance management. When roles are designed around individuals, accountability becomes blurred, impacting performance and client satisfaction.

Decreased Employee Morale:
In the competitive and high-pressure environments of media and data industries, imbalanced workloads and unclear roles can lead to employee frustration. This frustration can decrease morale and productivity, ultimately affecting the quality of services provided to marketing teams.

Difficulty in Scaling:
As media agencies and data firms grow, a people-centric structure makes scaling challenging. New hires may struggle to fit into an inflexible structure, hindering the organization’s ability to manage larger, more complex projects.

Counterproductive Emotional Decisions:
Creating roles to accommodate individuals out of a sense of loyalty or emotion can result in inefficiencies and misplaced resources. This practice will, in my experience, hinder the overall effectiveness of the team and prevent the organization from making necessary changes to stay competitive.

Solutions and Best Practices

Focus on Roles and Responsibilities:
Design structures roles and roles and responsibilities based on the Founder and Management vision of the future and, in turn, the organization's needs and strategic goals. In media and data industries, this means creating roles that support efficient project delivery, clear data analysis, best-in-class insights, audience management, channel planning, and effective client communication.

Develop a Flexible Structure:
Create a flexible organizational structure that can adapt to personnel changes and evolving business strategies. Cross-train employees and develop processes that are not reliant on specific individuals to ensure continuity and resilience.

Align Talent with Organizational Needs:
Match employees’ skills and abilities with roles that best suit the organization’s needs. This may involve reassigning tasks or providing training to ensure employees are well-equipped to support marketing teams effectively.

Implement Strong Succession Planning:
Develop succession plans to prepare for inevitable personnel changes. This ensures continuity and minimizes disruption when key individuals leave the organization, maintaining service quality and client trust.

Encourage Collaboration and Communication:
Foster a culture of collaboration and open communication. Ensure that distributed teams understand the importance of their roles within the larger organizational context and encourage teamwork across departments. Leveraging digital communication tools can enhance collaboration and keep distributed teams connected.

Make Objective Personnel Decisions:
While it’s important to care for employees, decisions about roles should be based on objective criteria such as skills, expected behaviors, performance, and the organization’s strategic needs. It’s also fundamental to address situations where an individual no longer fits the organization’s requirements with honesty and integrity, even if it means letting them go. This approach, though difficult, ultimately benefits both the individual and the organization by ensuring that roles are filled by those best suited to advance the business's goals.

Passion and skill drives culture and structure

In Short

In the media agency and data industries, as in other soft skill service industries, structuring a business around its needs rather than individual people is essential for maintaining efficiency, innovation, and adaptability. By focusing on clearly defined roles, fostering flexibility, aligning talent with organizational goals, implementing succession planning, encouraging collaboration, making objective personnel decisions, and avoiding the practice of inheriting employees from group companies without proper evaluation, organizations can better serve their marketing team clients and thrive in a competitive landscape. Addressing these common organizational design errors is crucial for achieving long-term success and resilience in these dynamic industries.