Applications of Requisite Organization Principles in My Organization

Speaker A Applications that we were able to put into place. What we found was that our level stratum one and stratum two operations, probably by luck or by trial or by error, we had pretty much managed to implement a lot of that theory into the part of our business where the mortar and the bricks hit the wall. And we were doing quite well with that. But the nature of a family owned, privately owned entrepreneurial business was very difficult. Once you got into those office relationships, you stop and think about it. I have a business office located in Pennsylvania, which is the main office. At 1997 we opened an office in Maryland because that Baltimore Washington market. Much larger opportunity for geographical expansion and increase in revenues. But how do you divide those functions up? We don't have the same skills and talents available in each of the areas. Have a dominance of our managerial talent and operations residing in Pennsylvania, a dominance of our ability in marketing and selling new business there. At the Maryland office, each of the two facilities needs to operate in a vertical column. Also, because it's an individual office, the interrelationships between people is becoming now much more complex and frankly, I'm not doing such a good job of managing it. So by three or four years ago, 2005, 2006, I am really seriously looking at issues that I need to deal with within my business. Certainly know that requisite organization is the manner in which is the framework in which it needs to be attacked and that we need our future success is going to be built on the requisite organization principles. Very difficult to implement though. Found out quickly that I'm not going to apply Elliot Jacks directly out of his books in 2004 2005. We had a little bit of a rough session again, which worked itself out business wise. I had to revert somewhat in my own role back to a more direct hands on approach and found at that point in time that I was really getting into an issue. I needed my own age approaching 60. Really needed to begin to assess whether or not we had the talent internally to succeed me and in fact, to grow the business beyond what it is now or whether we needed to recruit from the outside. So requisite organization principles, assessing the roles of myself as president and CEO of my operations, vice president of my marketing, vice president is really necessary to define what those roles should be, particularly in context of the two offices and also of all the support roles within the organization. Again, a business of our nature, no matter how large it gets, has to maintain a large interpersonal function between all of the office support staff and the frontline managers, the level two managers that are operating out of remotely in the field. In fact, I liken construction to manufacturing with the exception that we go out into the middle of a field, build a factory, do the project, tear the factory down and move it to another open field. The relatively remote location of it gives some particular issues. We decided to implement requisite organization starting by defining roles of president and CEO, then the two vice presidents and our three field superintendents project managers. The manner in which these people need to work with each other, the cross authorities that they require, the permissions that they require to deal with each other can become relatively complex. Amazingly enough, some of the relatively minor level one positions where are some of the ones that are also going to be most difficult to work with and I could go on for that for quite some time about what the payroll clerk is involved in and who does she work for. In fact it's a question I haven't asked yet but I think the answer is going to be somewhat astounding when we hear it I work for you.

Speaker B I work for you. I work for you. I work for you.

Speaker A Obviously a person can only have one boss. That's a principle of jack's. But it's a principle we all know within our own businesses. Yet if unmanaged if unstructured those relationships between themselves and other people are not going to define themselves naturally. It takes a process. It takes a theory, it takes a process and it takes a process that's going to be put in place such that it can and will be maintained over time. So we've dedicated ourselves to this to beginning to use the requisite organization process now within the business. This past summer, as a result of the ongoing process of developing my senior management team operations, marketing and accounting, I introduced to them the first volume produced by the Go Society. And in fact, we assigned the first four chapters in that which sort of comprise a book within the book and began to read that information together and study it. One of those three individuals was right into it, another one was skeptical. The third could have cared less. We have nonetheless persevered and I think we're getting to buy in into the process. Now I do have some concern as we go down within the organization the manner in which we're going to present the material and the depth with which we're going to present the material. But frankly everyone seems to be on board with the concept. We need to get moving with it's.