The summer has been flying by! I can’t believe it is already August!
In reviewing the past few issues of The Agenda, I realize that most of my posts have related to the structural changes within the university and changes that we are making within our organization to adapt. This month I would like to take a step back and look more broadly at organizational structures—especially those that are most effective in rapidly changing environments—and how these might apply to Rutgers University Libraries.
Essentially every large organization today (including the Libraries) is structured according to principles developed by Max Weber’s industrial revolution-era organizational theory and management practices for running large organizations. Weber proposed a top-down structure in which each element of the structure (he called them offices, but today they more likely represent departments or divisions) has a specific role within the organization. These hierarchical structures are stable and predictable, but hierarchical organizations need robust communication—horizontal, vertical, and within units—to be effective.
During periods of rapid change, hierarchical organizations often face communication challenges. Communication from the top, related to mission and strategies—vertical communication—can be slow to reach all parts of the organization. Also, the connections between the well-defined units within the hierarchy—horizontal communication—can be weak. The hierarchical organization places impossible demands on a unit head who must manage both horizontal and vertical communication while keeping abreast of the functional requirements and activities. With insufficient information about mission and strategy and in the absence of strong connections to other units, units can become internally focused and inadvertently act at cross-purposes with other parts of the organization.
In recent years, organizations, including many academic libraries, have experimented with replacing hierarchies with more adaptive structures that circumvent these communication challenges. I spent five years working in the University of Arizona Libraries, an organization that pioneered a team-based approach for academic libraries. The goal of these experiments is to create organizations where all decisions were data-driven and could be made at any level. We hoped that the availability of good data could replace some of the communication necessary to be effective. The experiment at the UA Libraries—and, I believe in other academic libraries—eventually failed and they reorganized into a traditional hierarchical model. It seems that establishing reliable data sources is at least as complicated as improving communication.
People are beginning to look at networked structures for organizations. Networked structures lack formal hierarchical relationships and units can freely communicate with other units. This is quite effective in small organizations; however, as organizations grow, the lack of structure can become a problem. I do not know of any large organization that relies solely on a network structure; however, the Occupy Wall Street movement is a useful case study of the pitfalls associated with a large organization that has strong vertical coordination but lacks structure. Although the movement might have had some impact on society, it essentially dissolved, possibly due to its lack of structure.
Among these three organizational structures, it seems that hierarchical models are the best structure for large organizations. However, in order for organizations to adapt during periods of rapid change and to react accordingly, communication must be strengthened. While newsletters like this are important—as are agendas and minutes—in communicating activities and decisions, organizations need deeper communication to truly adapt in times of change. It is important for every individual to understand three interdependent things: the mission and strategies of the organization at large; their unit’s vertical and horizontal impact on the organization; and the effect of their workplace decisions on the organization.
The structure of the Libraries is hierarchical, but we are drawing on lessons from these experiments and taking big strides to improve communication. In Cabinet, we spent the last few weeks developing charges for new groups to help manage our shared infrastructure. You can see a list of the issues that we are addressing in my post from last month. While these groups are being charged to address specific short-term priorities, most of them will eventually become cross-unit workgroups. It is through these workgroups that communication will be improved and the charges for these groups pave the way by including specific communication requirements.
These workgroups have important work to do and the work includes rich bidirectional communication between the work groups and the functional units. We have spent some time at Cabinet discussing the communication responsibilities of Cabinet representatives, group members, and group chairs. The expectation is that Cabinet representatives act as conduits of information—providing two-way communication that includes direction from Cabinet-level discussions and boots-on-the-ground experiences from members of the workgroup to help guide the work of the group.
Members of the group, including the group chair, are responsible for considering organizational goals and developing a deeper understanding of broader issues, but they also must act as representatives of their functional groups (most often, this is their department and/or university). In this representative role, they must clearly communicate issues, findings, and actions back to their functional units; develop mechanisms for gathering feedback from their constituents; and then report to the workgroup on how their functional unit will be impacted by the proposals of the workgroups. Group chairs bear an additional responsibility of making good communication a priority for the group by encouraging and using this multidirectional communication to improve outcomes.
As we shift the loci of work to these shared workgroups, we know we need to be proactive to avoid communication and work silos. It is also important to acknowledge the impact on our workloads and our organization. Our new task force charges include a section on Timeline/Communications and an Appendix that explains members’ participation is a significant part of their primary job responsibilities and will be evaluated as such. What this means in practice is that meetings are not extra work, but an essential part of our organization. And good communication is not optional, it’s a priority.
I know that activity never stops in the Libraries, but I hope that the slightly slower pace of summer is giving you some time to catch up, reflect, and rest. I look forward to working together to continue our progress in the academic year to come.
