Organizational Design and Trends in Marketing Organizations

Editor's Notes

1. Discussion Points / Don’t need to go through all of these….Organization Charts show how exceptions are processed when someone needs to escalate. They do NOT show how work flows between organization areas or people.People usually START here because it satisfies a leader’s EGO as to how big my domain is. Actually organization charts / exception processing comes as one of the last steps.Avoid the temptation to start with organization charts.In Customer-centric organization designs, the customer shows up on your organization model.Once you look at an organization model, you know how the work flows.Key Failure Point in Organizations is Hand-offs.Understand how work flows from one entity or one person to another.Most organization designs do not describe coordination mechanisms – service level agreements, standard operating practices, common goals, common incentives, policies, ways of working, etcThink of a Specification as a Trail Marker for someone to do their work. Trail Markers are job descriptions, policies, performance guidelines, procedures, service level agreements, etc. Anything that guides my behavior.Which specifications are most critical to operate in the new environment? Provide the minimum number of Trail Markers to guide. Too many specifications frustrates the hiker.We tend to over-specify or over-engineer -- preparing details that collect dust.Worry less about when two groups converge on solving the same problem.Worry more about when no one is solving the same problem.Organizations are BUILT on conflicting objectives: COST versus CUSTOMIZE; INNOVATION versus PREDICTABILITY; It is important to build these conflicting objectives into the organization or else CONFLICT RESOLUTION will evolve – probably to the strongest personalityTypes of Business Scenarios to TestCreative Brief creation – with and without AgencyCreative Brief approvalSales Aid creationNew brand launchesBrand missing planLabel changeNew Promotion / CampaignAnalytics Shows Early Indicators of Gross Failure in Campaign Effectiveness (1/3 of the way through the campaign)