Division of labor

Susan L. Kelly likes to think about flocks of birds and emergent structures.

Science hasn’t precisely figured out how birds know how to flock without a single leader, but Kelly is working on a similar construction with her nearly 500 employees at K/P Corp. Kelly, president and CEO of the $60 million comprehensive marketing solutions company, needs her people to move together through systems that make clear everything about everyone’s roles so that they can act independently while working together.

“Because if it all has to come top down, if I have to think of all the changes that need to be made and communicate that, it’s too late,” she says. “So we have to have a way for people inside the organization to change on a dime and not crash into each other and yet still make progress.”

Smart Business spoke with Kelly about why you need a distinct chain of command and how writing out what keeps you up at night can help you get your work done.

Accept nothing less than a clear division of labor. When I first came in here, everybody felt like they had the right to know everything about everything. It was really a mentality that people felt they had a right to vote on whatever capital items we would buy, and it’s like, ‘Wait a minute; this isn’t an entitled society here. This isn’t democracy; this is a business, and we’re going to get our division of labor going and we’re all going to shoulder the boulder and push from the same side.’

If I delegated a person to make decisions, let them make decisions. As much as they try to pull you in, have the discipline to stay out of it. Say, ‘No, that’s yours, decide, and whatever you decide, I’m going to go with it, and if you fail, then you’ll fix it.’

After awhile, everybody realizes, ‘Oh, OK, maybe I should just get back to my work,’ and when it’s their turn to have a say, they know they will be the person deciding.

The other thing is reinforcing natural consequences of action. I would get e-mails from somebody telling me what they thought of me or the company or what we should be doing, and I’m thinking, ‘There’s natural consequences to that because you didn’t talk to your manager. I will let that supervisor know that you came to me, and if they feel that that is wrong, you may be terminated.’

People realize my devotion is to my senior managers. You have a right to come to me confidentially, so long as you use the channels right — and your manager’s there to help you, coach you.

A couple of behaviors like that that deal with natural consequences, it doesn’t take long for an organization to snap into that.

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