For many, the term structure conjures up images of the boxes and lines comprising an organizational chart. Organizational charts typically depict the names, levels, titles, responsibilities, and reporting relationships of each member of an organization. As such, they are one of the most common artifacts used to describe a community of effort. Although they are comprised of very basic elements, they are often the first picture we get of an organization’s strategy. Like a military battleplan, they graphically display the total troop force, types of leadership and expertise arrayed, and often how the leaders and experts are dispersed geographically.

However, while organizational charts are an essential tool for describing the structure of a community of effort, there is a lot more to describing the business architecture or organizational design of a team than just the boxes and lines of an organizational chart. As applied within the context of the LeadershipSOPs, structure implies all of the work leaders must do to devise, describe, and eventually populate a community of effort.

This work includes:

• Assessing the ecosystem of stakeholders for needs, challenges, and opportunities;

• Determining the primary purpose of the team (i.e., defining the value it should supply the ecosystem);

• Identifying a long-range vision and its corresponding mid-term and short-term objectives;

• Articulating which cultural objectives should balance the business objectives;

• Devising strategies to inform resource deployment and action;

• Translating the strategies into an operating model that clarifies work processes and tools;

• Crafting an organization structure which supports the operating model, strategy, culture, objectives, and purpose of the team;

• Calibrating rewards to incentive and reward the right behaviors; and

• Identifying the knowledge and capabilities needed to populate and develop the team.

Operating the team as it was structured is key to ensuring the vision laid out in the design is brought to life through consistent action.

While this domain could relate to an endless number of operational duties, the LeadershipSOPs framework focuses on just three broad functions:

• Tactical and financial planning

• Work assignment, performance monitoring, and other accountability routines

• Stakeholder assessment and engagement

The Perfect domain is comprised of the work leaders must do to continuously improve their communities of effort:

• Personal development;

• Coaching and feedback;

• Team development;

• Organizational change; and

• Performance improvement.

Since all four of these items have transformation (from a current state to a desired future state) at their core, the LeadershipSOPs Transformation Model offers leaders a best practice process for EXPLORING, CLARIFYING, TRANSFORMING, and MASTERING change.