As I reported on the Claromentis Intranet Software blog, we are about to welcome 2 new developers to our UK office.
This has automatically brought up the discussion of who people should report to, as well as the much more interesting discussions of how the new team can collaborate better to create agile development environments for Claromentis bespoke code, to deliver the best web based client projects in the most efficient way.
My point is – should we even have a reporting structure in a small, dynamic, customer centered company? The only meaningful role of a ‘boss’ in our company is someone to notify if you aren’t well, or if you would like a vacation. Apart from that, every task allocation and priority decision should revolve around project meetings and a holistic approach to customers.
Are we ready for such a company structure? In other words, a company with effectively no structure at all, just natural areas of expertise and a project centric approach to our task allocation?
I think we might be – which is exciting, and I am sure would please our clients - which is what matters.
4 comments:
In my opinion, this all comes down to the characteristics of people we employ in the company. I believe the company has been lucky on employing people who are able to make decisions by themselves with keeping the company targets and profile in mind, therefore there hasn't been any problems under this management structure.
Having said that, the company is aiming towards having a bigger team in general, specially in the UK at first. This is all due to exceed client expectations in general, as well as providing an outstanding service, equally across all of our clients.
As we discussed in one of our recent internal meetings, I believe it will be necessary to assign managers to clients/regions/sectors etc.
One of the many ideas I have about our internal structure is this.
MANAGING DIRECTOR, CEO
| Marketing and Sales Manager
-- Sales Assistant
| Product Planning and Development Manager
-- Senior back-end Developer
| Production Manager
-- Senior front-end Developer
| Support & Quality Assurance Manager
-- Junior Support
This is so interesting. Thanks for your comments Emrah.
I just read an article about Gore-Tex - a $2.4 billion company with no reporting structure at all. They just have a logical division into business units, and whenever a business unit gets too large they split it ( around 200 people is too large )
They voted their CEO on the basis of who you would 'most like to follow'.
Really provocative, though provoking stuff.
You can find teh full article here http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/nov/02/gore-tex-textiles-terri-kelly
Very interesting article. Specially the following part of the article matches with the fact about the characteristics of the people Claromentis had employed on my previous comment:
Bill Gore, who set up the company with his wife Vieve (short for Genevieve) in the family garage in 1958, wanted to build a firm that was truly innovative. So there were no rule books or bureaucracy. He strongly believed that people come to work to do well and do the right thing. Trust, peer pressure and the desire to invent great products - market-leading guitar strings, dental floss, fuel cells, cardiovascular and surgical applications and all kinds of specialised fabrics - would be the glue holding the company together, rather than the official procedures other companies rely on.
Companies can be placed on a continuum of organizational structure ranging of a small company is to reorganize the workforce into small reporting units. Many companies are moving outside traditional reporting structures and channels to engage stakeholders in a more effective.
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