In early 2022, there was a startup that I did an organizational review. The CEO had been running the company for over 8 years. The company had grown to over 100 employees and was starting to make stable revenue. The CEO wanted to make the evaluation system clearer.
After interviewing the HR team and leaders, they found that the roles and responsibilities (R&R) for evaluations and rewards were not clear.
People's roles were unclear. For example:
- The CFO managed finances and the main product sales team
- The CTO was in charge of product planning team
- The COO ran product operations team
- The CMO chose detail items in the product.
Think of it like our body: eyes are for seeing, legs are for walking. It's important to understand and share each role's basic function. This is HR's most basic job. Planning pizza parties for company morale is important, but defining these basic jobs should come first.
After interviewing the HR team and leaders, they found that the roles and responsibilities (R&R) for evaluations and rewards were not clear.
People's roles were unclear. For example:
- The CFO managed finances and the main product sales team
- The CTO was in charge of product planning team
- The COO ran product operations team
- The CMO chose detail items in the product.
This meant it wasn't clear who was responsible for product performance. The responsibility was spread out.
Ideally, business & development and support & management functions should be separate to allow for checks and balances.
But in this company, one person decided on spending, execution, and control money. This was like a referee playing as a player in a soccer game. This might be okay in a small organization, but it's a problem in a company with over 100 people.
Because the roles for the main product and whole company were unclear, other departments were also vague and not well managed. Even the HR team thought they were just there to support people. No one tried to clarify jobs, and everyone seemed to think it was fine because they were making money.
This is why the CEO wanted to make the evaluation system clearer.
Because the roles for the main product and whole company were unclear, other departments were also vague and not well managed. Even the HR team thought they were just there to support people. No one tried to clarify jobs, and everyone seemed to think it was fine because they were making money.
This is why the CEO wanted to make the evaluation system clearer.
The first step in checking an organization's health is understanding the work.
You need to clearly define what each person does, what their function is, and what results they should produce. The company had complex documents about R&R and job analysis, but too much complexity can reduce clarity.
Think of it like our body: eyes are for seeing, legs are for walking. It's important to understand and share each role's basic function. This is HR's most basic job. Planning pizza parties for company morale is important, but defining these basic jobs should come first.
Tags:
HR
