Organizing Staff

Entered by Carter McNamara, MBA, PhD

(This document is referenced from Starting a For-Profit or Nonprofit Business: Some Early Preparation.)

Sections of This Topic Include:

Basic and General Guidelines
Additional Resources About Organizational Design

Basics and General Guidelines

(If you have already done some basic business planning and drafted a basic business plan, then you probably already have the answers to all or many of the following questions.)

Lewis, Lewis and Souflee, in Management of Human Service Organizations (Books/Cole, 1991, p. 80) list several key questions developing an organizational design. These questions apply, whether for-profit or nonprofit organization. (Items in brackets "[!]" were added by Carter McNamara.)

1. What are the primary goals and objectives that the organization should be designed to meet? (The topic strategic planning can help you determine what these goals are.)

2. What continuing activities need to be performed in order to implement the strategies that have been selected as part of the planning process? (The topic strategic planning can help you determine the answer to this question, too.)

3. How can the necessary activities to be divided so that individuals or groups can be assigned responsibility for performing them [that is, organized into separate roles and jobs!]? [Activities should be grouped into related and similar activities as much as possible so that individuals are working on tasks that are related and similar.!]? (The following links can help you answer this question.)
Workforce planning
- - - Succession Planning
Specifying Jobs and Roles
- - - Job and Task Analysis
- - - Job Descriptions
- - - Specifying Competencies (desired capabilities)

4. Once activities have been grouped into specific jobs, what kind of authority and responsibility should be assigned? (You might take a look at Basic Terms in Management.)

5. How and by whom should decisions be made? [Attempt to always and ultimately have one person who is singularly responsible for decisions!]. (You might take a look at the topic Making Decisions.)

6. How specialized should roles be? (The following links can help you answer this question.)
Workforce planning
- - - Succession Planning
Specifying Jobs and Roles
- - - Job and Task Analysis
- - - Job Descriptions
- - - Specifying Competencies (desired capabilities)

7. Who should control the work being performed? (See the topic Management Control. )

8. How can communication and coordination among members of the organization be facilitated? (Se the topic Management Control.)

9. How can job and role descriptions be developed to take into account both functions and accountabilities? (The following links can help you answer this question.)
Workforce planning
- - - Succession Planning
Specifying Jobs and Roles
- - - Job and Task Analysis
- - - Job Descriptions
- - - Specifying Competencies (desired capabilities)

10. How can coordination and communication with the external social environment be facilitated? (See the topic Management Control. )

Also:

11. Strive to have every employee ultimately reporting to one person, if possible, and they should know who that person is. Job descriptions are often complained about, but they are useful in specifying who reports to whom.

12. Carefully consider the span of control, that is, how many people are reporting to whom. Can each manager really supervise that many people in an effective fashion?

13. When done designing the group, always build structure into the new design through the use of organizational charts, job descriptions, policies and procedures that document the design and who is doing what in it.

Additional Resources About Designing Organizations

Principles and Practices of Organizational Design

Submit a link

For the Category of Organizational Development:

Related Library Topics

Recommended Books

Managing Organizational Change

Growing Your Organization


Managing Organizational Change

Book Cover Field Guide to Consulting and Organizational Development
by Carter McNamara, published by Authenticity Consulting, LLC. Provides complete, step-by-step guidelines to identify complex issues in for-profit or government organizations and successfully resolve each of them. This book is also helpful to organizations that are doing fine now, but want to evolve to the next level of performance. This is one of the truly comprehensive, yet practical, books about this complex subject! Includes online forms that can be downloaded. Many materials in this Library's topic about guiding change are adapted from this comprehensive book.
Book Cover Field Guide to Consulting and Organizational Development With Nonprofits
by Carter McNamara, published by Authenticity Consulting, LLC. Provides complete, step-by-step guidelines to identify complex issues in nonprofit organizations and successfully resolve each of them. This book is also helpful to organizations that are doing fine now, but want to evolve to the next level of performance. This is one of the truly comprehensive, yet practical, books about this complex subject! Includes online forms that can be downloaded. Many materials in this Library's topic about guiding change are adapted from this comprehensive book.

The following books are recommended because of their highly practical nature and often because they include a wide range of information about this Library topic. To get more information about each book, just hover your cursor over the image of the book. A "bubble" of information will be displayed. You can click on the title of the book in that bubble to get more information, too.

Growing Your Organization

The following books are recommended because of their highly practical nature and often because they include a wide range of information about this Library topic. To get more information about each book, just hover your cursor over the image of the book. A "bubble" of information will be displayed. You can click on the title of the book in that bubble to get more information, too.

Also See

Capacity Building (Nonprofit) -- Recommended Books