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Know what n-1 in your org is involved in!

By Bamboo In The Wind

Industrial age businesses are used to hierarchical structures that over time become overheads. To know the actual work taking place, we have to penetrate the peel layers of the management structure. As an organization grows and receives customer interest, we see the need to add to the army of people to create sliced-up responsibilities. This army of people requires supervision for carrying out organizational processes.

Over time supervisory role has become responsible for knowing who has the information about the work. 

In organizations that do well, the supervisory role is encouraged to know everything about the n-1 layers in their work units. Knowing what your teams are involved in at a thorough level is a competitive advantage in such organizations. Communication is uncluttered and unambiguous. That supports sound data from a responsible person and triggers quick decision-making.

Interested, informed, and involved supervisory personnel is an asset that makes an organization make continuous forward progress, thoroughly engage in the right ways of doing the work, assessing the impact of the decision to carry out work. There are numerous examples of companies that did well in the early part of their life cycle only to falter as they tried to scale. The difference was how they set up leadership structures and expectations about their team's daily work.

It's no wonder some organizations build a culture of high-intensity work that requires high individual involvement.  Their leadership ethos of high involvement begins to rub on their team. Such organizations go on to achieve higher feats. They also adapt to fit the environments they operate in. They retain their leadership positions also for long periods.

Knowing what the n-1 layer in the organization produces and providing them direction daily and without micro-managing them is a great organizational enabler. It's a definite enabler for smoother and transparent communication that builds similar cultures' across depth and breadth. 


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