I’m going to disagree with you slightly, because I find that the “well defined org chart” to often be a crutch, or in the worst cases, a smokescreen to cover for the fact that management often has no clue what it is doing. One of the worst examples I can think of was a company I worked for some years ago where the founder/owner/CEO famously stated that “Success is 1% inspiration and 99% last-minute changes.” This company, despite having only a few hundred employees, a very detailed org chart, and an employee manual over a hundred pages long, was constantly failing to get things done, because even at the upper management levels, they couldn’t decide what to do and when they did decide they often kept it secret, apparently presuming that well-informed employees were somehow a threat. An org chart won’t help you if that’s the case, as appears to be the situation at BAC.

I prefer Jon Carroll’s definition of what works:

Too many bosses try to be nice guys. A little common courtesy is always appreciated, but what people really want from their bosses is clarity. “Just tell me the truth” is the common cry of the confused employee. (Competence is also nice in a boss, but competence is really gravy. Clarity is the pearl beyond price.)

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/04/27/DDG27BCCUL1.DTL

Note that he complains about a lot of the same things you do, but he reaches to the core of what’s missing from some companies, and it’s not org charts, formal heirarchies, dress codes or modes of address.

“Clarity” is the key. You can have clarity even when the organization and relationships are complex. I’ve seen this in some of the better organizations I’ve worked for over the years. Intel and HP in their heydays practiced amazing clarity, despite flat and often fluid organization structures, and a great deal of informality in their internal operations. Look at any great Silicon Valley company and you’ll probably find much the same state of affairs. It’s what works when rapid change is the name of the game.

Throughout my work history with both of those companies and many others like them, I often had multiple projects and almost alwayshave had to work across organizational lines to get things done.My boss’s job (and the job of the formal org chart) was to make sure my goals were clear and well aligned with the goals of the organization, and to provide an evaluation of my performance. Beyond that, the heirarchy was largely irrelevant. What I needed to get donewasn’t always neatly defined by an org chart. It was always clear.

I’ll take “clarity of goals” over “neatly defined organization” any day. The former is the key.

This is, another, excellent article.

~~
Bruce,

re: Maersk, and “Maersk abandons recovery hopes.” I agree, that is an ominous Bell tolling..

additionally: “Maersk Line is the core liner shipping activity of the A.P. Moller – Maersk Group, and the leading container shipping company in the world. The Maersk Line fleet comprises more than 500 vessels and a number of containers corresponding to more than 1,900,000 TEU (Twenty foot Equivalent Unit – a container 20 feet long). This ensures a reliable and comprehensive coverage worldwide. ..”
“…World trade would not be the same without the modern container, invented in 1956. Today, it carries more than 90 percent of all goods in world trade. Every commodity and type of goods can be loaded and carried in ‘the box’, as the container is often referred to. As a result, modern container shipping has changed the way we transport goods around the world and has played a key role in globalisation.

*A single 20-foot container can hold about 48,000 bananas. So, in theory, a PS-vessel such as the EMMA MAERSK can transport approximately 528 million bananas in a single voyage – enough to give every person in Europe or North America a banana for breakfast.
*If all Maersk Line containers were placed one after the other, they would reach about 19,000 km. This is more than the distance from Copenhagen, Denmark to Perth, Australia, via Cape Town, South Africa or almost half of the earth’s circumference or almost three times the earth’s radius.
*If all the Maersk Line containers were stacked on top of each other they would reach approximately 2,500 kilometres high, equivalent to stacking 8,550 Eiffel Towers on top of each other.
*At any one point in time, Maersk Line is transporting cargo worth approximately three percent of the world’s GNP (world GNP in 2005: USD 36,356,240,000,000).
*In 2007, Maersk Line made around 41,500 port calls – equivalent to approximately five port calls per hour or one call every 13 minutes.
http://www.maerskline.com/link/?page=brochure&path=/about_us/company_info

Excellent metaphor Bruce. The cracks are showing in the recovery thesis; large enough that even the folks with blinders on won’t be able to ignore them for too much longer.

Maersk abandons recovery hopes and looks to slash officer jobs
Richard Meade – Friday 2 October 2009

Maersk Line currently employ around 3,000 officers
MAERSK Line is seeking over 280 voluntary officer redundancies from the UK and Denmark in a bid to slash costs across the company.
Confirming the industry’s worst fears, the box giant admitted that hopes of an early economic upturn have now been abandoned and frontline jobs are on the line.

….off topic, but this is MAERSK!….your 6’7″ offensive lineman……