(Relevance, formulation, synchronisation governance and practical aspects of ownership)
Opening comments
Much is being said and written around the dynamic trends in, and demands for more flexible, product- and client centric organisation designs. Not so much is however being published about how these designs are mandate dependent in centralised organisations, or how their ever changing nature should be sustained in an intelligent manner, preventing continuous escalation of cost, and increased risk of diminishing executive involvement.
This article is meant to promote an organisation culture which value mandate (or Designated Areas of Authority) and enterprise designs as key business capitals. It flags some challenges, and make some suggestions regarding sustainable mandate management with its direct impact on dynamically synchronised enterprise designs.
Business environmental context
Today’s dynamic business environment poses strong executive and operational challenges to deal with ever quickening market and product transition. Organisation design solutions now require a delicate balance between formalised organisation matrix structures and ad-hoc multi-disciplinary, often geographically distributed, self-managing teams, as both types of structures are based on designated “mandates”.
This complex and dynamic business environment poses such huge challenges to the effective management of enterprise designs, business efficiencies and cost containment that 92% of organisations in a recent international Deloitte survey rated organisation design as their key priority. (About 40% of them were busy, or preparing for restructuring.) Mandate management is not only a relevant topic during restructuring, but also there-after when strategy and enterprise design optimisation require mandate design and integration adjustments.
Relevance of the mandate
The “mandate” forms the core of any level of organisation’s strategy, business plans and capability development. Traditionally, at the highest level, business missions are translated into entity mandates. This starts with the Board mandating the portfolio of the CEO, who then cascade mandates down to subordinate executives, who in turn, further the cascading process.
In order to deal with continuous change, dynamic mandating (and dynamic alignment) of cross disciplinary work groups and teams becomes a growing focus and challenge. Because entities in modern organisations are interdependent and closely integrated from enterprise architecture perspectives, no mandate can be formulated in isolation. Teams and individuals imperatively participate in mandate formulation, and its synchronisation with other teams and entities. This strongly contributes to effective resource utilisation and realistic work loading on team resources.
Mandate formulation enablement and relevance
In the past, job descriptions and “delegations of authorities” were often used to reflect positional mandate content. Whilst these are sometimes not well defined or maintained for this purpose, work team mandates are usually not supported by this type of reference documentation. Leveraging the concept of a “mandate manifest” for the detailed outlining, communication and synchronisation of mandate specifics should be considered.
A mandate only becomes alive when it is fully owned/embraced by an individual or team, and is interpreted into a strategy and an enabling organisation capability. This requires the owner to fully grasp the core focus, scope, interfaces and implications of the mandate. Should the owner not execute the full implications of its mandate, the design and operational system goes lacking.
Strong ownership of the mandate will however:
- Empower the individual or team owner with a credible “license to operate”
- Enable the owner to exert appropriate influence and authority in the business
- Enable the owner to formulate an appropriate strategy and establish a suitable capability to execute the mandate
Need for synchronisation
Traditional organisations have often been designed and left unattended as if such a structure would last forever. This contributed to rigid and ever-more outdated designs, which were, from time to time, due for painful redesigns. Meaningful mechanisms to manage mandates and continuously adjust organisation designs hardly existed. Modern organisations cannot afford such rigidity, yet little progress has been made in the establishment of mechanisms to guide, coordinate, synchronise and manage continuous change of mandates and enterprise designs.
Enabling and continuous synchronisation of existing and emerging mandates requires strong but flexible mandate management mechanisms and governance frameworks with a “holistic view”. This “centralised view” should, however, cascade down the organisation with the increase of mandate granularity. It is suggested that the establishment of a Mandating Centre of Expertise (CoE) (integrated with a Synchronised Enterprise Design (SED) CoE, enabling a mandating governance committee system, will go a long way in addressing such challenges.
Responsible mandate ownership
Although uncertainty around any mandate content or alignment aspects contributes to ineffective management and operations, it is a general phenomenon in existing organisations.
Mandate owners are primarily accountable for their own mandate management. A suggested good practice is to periodically conduct a mandate review. The initial formulation/review should unpack the mandate in a manifest which should detail aspects such as the mandate intent, core focus, scope, objectives and deliverables, key decisions and authorities, required capabilities, interfaces etc. This document should be leveraged as a communication tool during the synchronisation process and serve as reference document for mandate approval, motivation for resources and future reviews. Intent, focus, scoping and synchronisation are critical during manifest development.
It is critical that the focus and scope provide for all relevant strategic, tactical and operational grounds to ensure organisation relevance and value add, with reference to the mandate intent. Simultaneously it should exclude any aspect not contributing to its intent.
Synchronisation of the mandate is about alignment, sound integration, removal of overlaps and closure of “gaps”. Every mandate owner should ensure total alignment with his/her higher level sponsors’ mandate, and the mandates of peers. He or she should also ensure full alignment, clarity and flawless functionality amongst delegated subordinate mandates.
Once mandate designs have been completed and approved, execution of the full mandate becomes an obligation, not a choice. In order to ensure mandate sustainability, responsible owners should interrogate and flag the effectiveness of the enterprise mandate governance framework.
Governance ownership and mechanisms
An inadequate enterprise mandate framework contributes to escalating cost and managerial/operational inefficiencies. Mandate formulation and synchronisation require a specialised skill and dedicated focus. It is complex and time consuming. The leveraging of a centralised “Enterprise Mandating Center of Expertise (CoE)” may become valuable, especially when integrated with a CoE SED / “Synchronised Enterprise Design”.
Such a Mandating CoE should be suitably mandated with visibility on all enterprise mandates. It should assist all managers to formulate, clarify and synchronise their mandates with other entities.
Whilst an executive mandating governance committee should own and oversee execution of the mandating policy, the administrative custodianship should reside with the mandating CoE.
This CoE can be well situated in a strategically positioned “Organisation Design” function, which is supposedly closely involved with the translation of mandate to enterprise capability.
Whilst responsible executives and mandate owners must raise the flag for the requirement of an effective mandate governance framework, the mandating CoE should conduct the legwork for governance committees, whilst enabling mandate formulation and interpretation
Closure
“Over 80 percent of respondents to this year’s global survey report that they are either currently restructuring their organization or have recently completed the process. Only 7 percent say they have no plans to restructure.”
(Deloitte report: Global Human Capital Trends 2016, The new organization: Different by design. Bullet on P 17)
Mandate management has not yet received much attention as a specialised focus area within the organistion (re) structuring environment. As we have tried to highlight in the article, is an ownership accountability of every responsible executive, manager and work team member to insist on effective mandate management frameworks, and to optimise his / her own mandate.