Task Forces

The organization is a sum-total system of formal arrangements that houses the interaction of the forces of strategy, structure, processes, systems, competence, and culture of the enterprise. These forces influence the tasks of individual workers. Leaders and managers need to understand the influence these task forces have on work if they want to better improve the interface between humans and the work the enterprise sets out to accomplish.

The task forces can either enhance or hinder accomplishment of the purposes of the enterprise. The manager crafts these arrangements to bring about congruence and alignment among these task forces to better lead change in the organization.

[Page 550]Strategic vision presents the mental picture of what the organization has to do to survive in business.

• Structure describes how the tasks are divided and coordinated using specialization and integration, decentralization and centralization, and formal patterns of relationships between groups and individuals (for example, which department reports to a division).
• Processes define and measure sequences of steps, activities, and methods that produce a specified goal, result, consequence, or an output for a particular internal or external customer or market.
• Systems entail the procedures for budgeting, accounting, and training that make the organization run, and a particular set of procedures or rules, policies, devices, guides, and practices, designed to control process(s) in a predictable way.
• Competence looks at the way managers manage, the way employees are selected, placed, oriented, developed, and rewarded, and the skills of both managers and employees. In a high-performance organization, management and employees work together for an integration of goals, policies, procedures, standards, information and feedback systems, incentive systems, training, and budget.
• Culture presents the patterns of basic shared assumptions, beliefs, attitudes, expectations, and values (Nadler & Tushman, 1997) as revealed in everyday work performance and practices. The formal aspects of culture such as policies, processes, and procedures influence those patterns and the balance between suppliers of resources such as labor, materials, tools, equipment, facilities, and so on and the efficiency and effectiveness of organizational performance.

The challenges of change in business today are often global in scale. Business, sociopolitical, and economic forces also drive the need for organizational change in strategies, policies, structures, processes, systems, and tactics. Managerial expertise in the design, development, and deployment of the task forces listed as well as the externalities of political, economic, social, and technological forces just mentioned has become even more critical than in the past. Learning, learning how to learn, participative informational exchanges with two-way communications, decentralized decision making, informal networks, and a common values set are the essential capacities to deal with the task forces. Leaders should avoid trying to “fix” the individuals in the workplace, rather than influencing task forces that influence the performance of the individuals.