“It requires a very unusual mind to make an analysis of the obvious.” [Alfred North Whitehead]
Here you can find some comments on organisation and on project management.
Operational and organisational structure plays an important role in business. For each business there are certain peculiarities of hierarchy and workflow management. Make sure that you have access to key experience and keep in mind that mid-level management tends to create burocracy. More employees mean more power and influence to them.
Define the key processes of your business and make them lean and effective. Think about minimizing waiting time for retail customers and minimizing throughput time of paperwork, for example.
Create a Staff / Task Matrix
Organize the work in tasks and distribute them to your people. In a normal organisation you should have two persons who can execute each given task. If you invest some little thought about the value of each task you are able to create a small but instructive organisational framework, a staff/task matrix:
| [2=Responsible, 1=Substitute] | Staff | Antony | Barney | Cesare | David | Edward |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tasks | Points | 1,900 | 700 | 1,350 | 500 | 600 |
| 1. Ad hoc Tasks | ||||||
| 1.1 Special Performance Evaluations | 200 | 2 | 1 | |||
| 1.2 Trading Support | 100 | 1 | 2 | |||
| 1.3 Communication to IT / Finance | 200 | 1 | 2 | |||
| 2. Monthly Tasks | ||||||
| 2.1 Credit Curves | 250 | |||||
| 2.2 Ratings | 100 | 1 | 2 | |||
| 2.3 Month End Report | 200 | 2 | 1 | |||
| 3. Annual Tasks | ||||||
| 3.1 Years End Report | 350 | 2 | 1 | |||
| 3.2 Performance Evaluation | 300 | 1 | 2 | |||
| 3.3 Bonus Calculation & Negotiation | 350 | 2 |
Priorize each tasks and give it a value (due to necessary knowledge and thinking and responsibility involved). A responsible employee must be defined for each task (insert 2 in corresponding row/column). In case of normal ongoing business define a substitute, too (insert 1). Substitutes can/should be omitted for project groups or for tasks which are well documented and rarely executed.
In out example you would presume that Antony is group head (maximum of points) and Cesare is group vice. The other employees are more junior - this is mirrored by their lower sum of points. For a career development consider more tasks for a person or think about enrichment of current tasks.
Do not argue about salary. Discuss number and complexity of tasks!
Create an Information Structure Plan
Define an information structure plan. That means: Let EVERYBODY know where and how (name & format) to store paper and electronic files. Make sure that paper folders and structure of directories on your network are identical.
A rough example for a folder structure [which still has huge parts to be translated from German into English]:
Please read my Disclaimer.
Information_Structure_Plan.docx [26 KB Word file, download, open and use at your own risk]
Keep in mind that you can use colours to be able to see at once to which category a folder belongs. Store documents if and only if a process or state is finalized/stable. Write storage category on document. For files: Naming convention could be YYYYMMDD_CreatorInitials_Number_SelfexplainingTitle.Suffix, for example: 20210530_PB_05_Guide_to_store_files.docx.