Structure comes with growth
As organizations grow in size, there tends to be a move towards standardizing role functions, converging on a single set of well-defined responsibilities for each role.
In startups and small businesses, employees often play many roles based on their strengths and experiences, doing what is needed to make the business a success.
Potential risks
While adding employees and creating role clarity is often helpful (if not essential), it does come with some potential risks.
Loss of potential value add: Conformity may remove activities that are strengths from the roles of certain individuals, which can be frustrating for them and a net loss to the organization.
Loss of ownership mentality: In the best organizations, everyone is there to do whatever is necessary to win and there is a sense of shared ownership of outcomes. The less gray between roles, the less opportunity there is for taking ownership. “I agree that is a problem but it’s not my/our job to fix it”.
Limits in employee growth opportunity: By doing a small set of well-known tasks, it’s possible to lose in-role development opportunities.
Loss of adaptability: Tightly defined roles can stifle flexibility, making it hard for the organization to pivot or adjust to unforeseen challenges or new market conditions.
Stifling innovation: Employees restricted to a specific set of tasks might not feel encouraged or empowered to bring forth new ideas or solutions outside of their designated roles.
Create a singe point of human failure: Overly specialized roles can lead to individuals becoming a human single-point-of-failure for their tasks.
Potential Responses
Enable a flexible engagement model within each role: While roles may be defined, a good leader can create flexibility for a person to express their unique strengths within a role. On my team at work, we have several “Enterprise Technology Architects”, but they each show up a little bit differently and have different focuses based on their experiences, strengths, and interests. Preserving this ability is very important to me.
Leave some gray areas between roles: Make sure that everything is not “perfectly” defined across the organization. Leave blurry areas that employees have to navigate through relationship and finding ways to “do what needs doing”.
Foster a culture of responsibility and ownership: Do this verbally, by personal behavioral example, through coaching and mentoring, by incentive and reward structures. Do it repeatedly. It takes a lot of time to become natural.
Always include others in your “actions”: As a leader, include others in your decision making and execution process so they can see what you see and observe how you engage (for better or worse). Always be coaching.
This post reminds me of a book a read years ago titled "Freedom, Inc.".
https://a.co/d/dvf1E66
Freedom Works.
In every aspect of our lives--in politics, in economics, in entertainment, and in family life--we demand the freedom to decide matters for ourselves. And yet when it comes to our work lives, far too many people are stifled, constrained, hemmed in, and tied down by bureaucracy and rules that have nothing to do with allowing them to do the best they can in their jobs. These constraints leave people feeling out of control of their work lives, which, in turn, leads to stress, fatigue, and disengagement from work.
"If you put fences around people, you get sheep. Give people the room they need." 1924
-William L. McKnight
CEOs
3M