Well, there are probably some reasons for that. Your boss may be addicted to doing whatever is next, constantly chasing the latest problem, the latest email, the latest request, or the latest interruption. There is a certain instantaneous gratification that comes from putting out a fire. You can see the problem, do something about it, and for a brief moment, the problem is gone. Perhaps your boss doesn’t have a plan, as I discussed in my article about planning, so there is no clear destination around which to organize the work. Perhaps your boss thinks organizing is about keeping a calendar, cleaning up a desk, or maintaining a neat filing system rather than structuring the organization around its purpose. Perhaps the organization has simply grown faster than its structure, leaving responsibilities, authority, and accountability scattered among people who have accumulated jobs rather than been deliberately assigned work. Or perhaps your boss is simply doing the job he or she was promoted from rather than the job they were promoted to. There are plenty of reasons people become disorganized. The problem is that understanding why your boss is disorganized doesn’t necessarily help you do anything about it.
What you can do is understand what organizing actually means and begin thinking about how the organization could be structured more rationally.
The word organize comes from the Greek organon, meaning a tool, instrument, or means of accomplishing something. That gives us a useful way to think about an organization. An organization is an instrument. It exists to accomplish something. The organization chart is simply a graphic representation of how we have structured that instrument, including how accountability and authority cascade through it.
In other words, organizing is how we structure the organization so that it can accomplish its objectives.
That means organizing should be systematic. In my approach to management, there is a very specific sequence: we plan before we organize, we organize before we lead, and we lead before we measure performance. There is a reason for that sequence. You cannot rationally organize an organization until you know what you are trying to accomplish. Once you know the objectives, you can determine what work must be done. Once you understand the work, you can determine how to organize people and authority around it. Then you can lead the people who have been given responsibility for accomplishing that work, and finally you can measure performance against the objectives.
The sequence matters.
In fact, I would argue that the only way I know to rationally dismantle an organization is if you have rationally built it to begin with. If you understand why the organization is structured the way it is, what each part is intended to accomplish, how much work exists, and how accountability and authority are distributed, you can make rational changes when circumstances change.
And circumstances always change.
Whether you are in the public sector, private sector, or not-for-profit sector, the question isn’t whether you will eventually experience a revenue shortfall. The question is when. When that happens, you need to be able to properly size, or right-size, the organization based upon the work that actually needs to be accomplished. That is very different from simply announcing that everyone needs to take a ten percent cut.
The across-the-board percentage cut is one of the most intellectually lazy approaches to managing a budget. It assumes that every part of the organization is equally important, equally productive, equally staffed, and equally capable of absorbing a reduction. It ignores the actual work.
A rational organization gives you something much better to work with. You can look at the objectives, the work required to accomplish those objectives, the people accountable for that work, and the resources required to do it. You can then determine where capacity exists, where capacity is lacking, and where the organization may be carrying work that no longer contributes to its purpose.
This brings us to another important part of organizing: how do you determine how many people you actually need?
Staffing levels should be based upon human-sized chunks of work. I don’t mean a collection of tasks that somebody has accumulated simply because a supervisor needed to keep someone busy. I mean a coherent body of work that exists because there is an organizational objective that needs to be accomplished.
There should be some rhyme and reason to it.
The work should be connected to the expectations of the people the organization exists to serve. Depending upon the organization, those people might be customers, constituents, citizens, clients, patients, members, or a community. Whatever we call them, the work should ultimately connect to an expected outcome.
That is why I believe we should organize around objectives, not around personalities.
This is a critical distinction.
I’ve seen organizations structured around people rather than around the work. Someone says, “Joe does a really good job of that. Let’s give it to Joe.” So Joe gets another responsibility. Then another. And another. Before long, Joe has become the organization’s solution to every problem.
What message does that send to Joe?
It tells him that being competent is a good way to get more work.
And what message does it send to everybody else?
It can tell them that they don’t have to develop the same level of competence because Joe will eventually get the assignment.
That isn’t organizing. That’s accumulating work around a personality.
There is another problem with organizing around personalities. What happens when Joe retires? What happens when Joe leaves for another organization? What happens when Joe gets promoted? Suddenly, the organization discovers that what it thought was a system was actually one very capable person holding a significant portion of the system together.
Good organizations don’t depend upon personalities to make the structure work. They depend upon clearly defined objectives, clearly defined work, clearly defined accountability, and appropriately distributed authority.
The question isn’t, “Who do we have who can do this?”
The better question is, “What needs to be accomplished, what work is required to accomplish it, and how should we organize ourselves to accomplish that work?”
Once you ask the question that way, staffing becomes much more rational. You can identify the human-sized chunks of work. You can determine how much of that work exists. You can determine what level of authority is necessary to accomplish it. You can assign accountability. You can establish relationships among the various pieces of the organization.
And you can make changes when the work changes.
That’s what organizing is supposed to accomplish.
We structure around community-based, constituent-based, or customer-based objectives. We manage toward those objectives rather than simply managing a collection of tasks hanging in space. And we establish staffing around meaningful chunks of work that are directly related to the expectations of the people we exist to serve. Read my article about flawed staffing algorithms here.
An organization is an instrument.
The question is whether yours is organized in a way that allows the instrument to actually accomplish its purpose.
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Author’s Note: The content provided in this article is designed exclusively for educational and informational purposes, reflecting opinions shaped by decades of leadership training and organizational consulting experience. It should never be interpreted as formal professional advice. By reading or engaging with this material, you acknowledge that no professional-client relationship is established and that these insights do not substitute for tailored guidance from a qualified professional familiar with your specific circumstances. Consequently, readers are strongly advised to seek independent counsel from licensed legal, financial, medical, or other appropriate advisors before implementing any strategies or making decisions based on these perspectives. Ultimately, you assume full personal responsibility for any actions you choose to take or omit as a result of reading this material, releasing the author and publisher from any liability for outcomes arising from your reliance on the text.
