Understanding Organizations Finally! Structuring in Sevens

by Henry Mintzberg

The four forms of organization are Personal (autocracy), Programmed (bureaucracy), Professional (meritocracy), and Project (adhocracy). Respectively, the coordinating mechanism of each form is direct supervision, standardization of work, standardization of skills, and mutual adjustment.

That last term should be defined before going further, as Mintzberg uses it throughout the book. “Coordination and control are two different concepts. Mutual adjustment is coordination without control… Currently, the literature of management gives considerable attention to teams, task forces, and networks, all manifestations of mutual adjustment.”

“THE PERSONAL ENTERPRISE… actually resists structure… It avoids the mechanisms of standardization and the systems of planning and control… Decision making and strategy formation tends to revolve around the chief.”

“New organizations, so-called start-ups, typically use this form of organization because a single person has to get them going—hire the people, establish the facilities, create the culture, set the pace.”

“Crisis is another condition where we can find the Personal Enterprise… An established organization in difficulty often reverts to a simple structure to save itself, through what is called turnaround. It suspends its established procedures to close ranks around someone who can take charge to clear out the cobwebs, rebuild the culture, refocus the strategy.”

“PROGRAMMED MACHINES love hierarchy, order, control, systems, and especially rules, rules, rules. Everything conceivable is programmed.”

“In the operating core of the machine organization, jobs are made as simple, specialized, and repetitive as possible, to be done with a minimum of training—often hours, even minutes… Coordination across these jobs is achieved especially by the standardization of work, supported by the standardization of the outputs.”

“The sharpest division of labor in the machine organization is found between the operators who do the work, the managers who administer it, and the analysts who design it.”

“When an integrated set of simple tasks must be performed precisely, predictably, and consistently, at least by animate human beings rather than inanimate machines, the Programmed Machine is unbeatable… On the other hand, the work in complex environments can’t be rationalized into simple tasks, while that in dynamic environments can’t be predicted, made repetitive, and hence standardized.”

“People can be treated as mechanical parts, but they never are. Nor are they economic things: treating an employee as a human resource is like treating a cow as a sirloin steak.”

“As Michael Crozier has described the machine organization, ‘the power of decision… tends to be located in a blind spot’: ‘Decisions must be made by people who have no direct knowledge of the field.’”

“Hard information may help to identify problems, but soft information is necessary to diagnose and resolve them. Lacking that, however, senior managers in the machine organization fall back on the tried if untrue: they tighten the controls, in other words, pour oil on the fire.”

“To paint a big picture requires mastery of the details, which look awfully hazy from a seventy-seventh floor office. As a result, machine organizations mostly come up with small pictures—marginal adaptations of their existing strategies, or else me-too copies of the strategies of other organizations.”

THE PROFESSIONAL ASSEMBLY. “While the machine organization defers to the authority of office, the professional organization defers to the autonomy of expertise. These are meritocracies.”

“Organizations whose operating work is complex enough to require extensive training yet stable enough to be able to do it with limited customization are drawn to the Professional Assembly. Hence, our examples have included hospitals, universities, accounting firms, orchestras, and baseball teams.”

“Training [is] the key design parameter of the Professional Assembly. Here is where the skills and knowledge of the operating workers are standardized, whether as scores in music, protocols in medicine, or principles of accounting.”

“Outside influencers who pay the bills (governments, donors, insurance companies…. foist technocratic controls on it… driving it to function like a Programmed Machine, which often exacerbates the very problems they are trying to fix. (Did you ever meet a number that cannot be gamed by a clever professional?) … Perhaps nothing has broken the spirit of our professional services—in schools especially—more than these imposed technocratic fixes.”

“THE PROJECT PIONEERS are the explorers of the modern world, staffed with intrapreneurial experts who collaborate to create novel outputs—ones that open new territory… It is in the Project Pioneer we find diagnosis in its full flowering, as open-ended problem solving, to encourage the development of fully customized solutions.”

“Project teams have to be kept small to facilitate coordination by mutual adjustment.”

“The project organization is selectively decentralized: power flows to whoever can deal with whatever is necessary at the moment, managers and nonmanagers alike… This enables the experts to move freely about the place, as do basketball players on the court.”

“But the managers of the Project Pioneer tend not to manage in the conventional sense. They connect more than control, especially across the teams. In other words, they coordinate by mutual adjustment more than dictate by direct supervision. Indeed, they, too, often work as regular members of the project teams.”

Squeezing the teams to be efficient, or taking away their slack, can kill creativity. The Project Pioneer gains its effectiveness by being inefficient.”

SEVEN BASIC FORCES FOR ORGANIZING.  “For every form there is a prevalent force: [1] consolidation in the personal organization, [2] collaboration in the project organization, [3] efficiency in the machine organization, and [4] proficiency in the professional organization.”

There are “three more forces for all four of the forms, catalytic in nature. One of them, [5] the infusion of culture, tightens up the structure, by encouraging people to pull together, and the other two loosen it up, [6] the overlay of separation by pushing the units away from each other, and [7] the intrusion of conflict that pulls people and units apart from each other.”

CULTURE. “Organizations with indistinct cultures are like people with indistinct personalities—they are more flesh and bones than heart and soul. But some organizations are distinct: they have their unique ways of doing things. This can render their culture compelling, thus infusing their structure with soul.”

“Money can buy stars, but it can’t buy conviction. Likewise, sometimes we walk into a hotel or a school and the place just feels different. The people are attentive, responsive, and energized; they serve well because they themselves are respected by their own management… Organizations generally function more effectively when people work in compelling cultures that reduce their status differences.”

“There are three stages in the development of a compelling culture: founding, diffusing, and reinforcing… Karl Weick wrote that ‘a corporation doesn’t have a culture. A corporation is a culture. That’s why they’re so horribly difficult to change.’”

DIVISION. “Sometimes there is the need to encourage further separation—to grant units greater autonomy within the structure… A telephone company that offers land lines, mobile services, and internet connectivity may be inclined to establish a separate division to deal with each.”

“There is no such thing as a related acquisition… It can take years to get the people to function together harmoniously… The opposite can be seen with internal diversification… Betty in banana beer called her old buddy at headquarters: ‘Hey Brice, can you help me with this problem?’ whereas Arthur in the acquired beer company has no buddy at HQ.”

POLITICS / CONFLICT. “When an established order of power has outlived its usefulness, a Political Arena that flares up may be able to remove it. In other words, intense conflict can sometimes be the only way to dislodge legitimate power that has become counterproductive—obsessive control, outmoded expertise, detached leadership, spent culture… Hence, no matter how illegitimate its own power may be, the Political Arena can function as the functional bridge from one legitimate system of influence to another.”

ANCHORED FORM. “An anchored version of the form, where some other force holds the dominant one in check, is better than the pure version.”

HYBRID. “To function effectively, some organizations require that two or more forces coexist… We can distinguish two main types of hybrids: blended ones, where two or more forms coexist across the whole organization, and assembled ones, where different parts of the organization use different forms.”

THE MAP IS NOT THE TERRITORY. “Not only do none of the seven forms of organizations exist in the real world, but they should not exist…. Depictions of reality, not reality itself”—a simulacrum. “Every organization is replete with nuances, complexities, and contradictions that cannot be ignored… In their purest versions, therefore, all the forms are flawed.”

EMERGENT STRUCTURE. “Organizations require emergent structures, just as they require emergent strategies: when possible, start marginally, tentatively, and let experience take it from there. In other words, allow structures, like strategies, to be learned, beyond being planned… The users who have to live the consequences of the structure need to participate in the design of it.”

STRATEGY. “Intended strategies that are realized can be called deliberate, and realized strategies that were not intended can be called emergent: the organization made its way to the strategy action by action.”

“Apparently, then, few strategies are purely deliberate or purely emergent. Most combine the two. And why not? Organizations don’t just plan, they learn. They don’t just think to get strategy; they also do in order to see strategy. Strategy is about synthesis, and you don’t get synthesis from analysis. Analysis can help, but as an input, not the process.”

“Strategy can be a position in the marketplace, as Michael Porter would have it, or a perspective of the organization, its vision, what Peter Drucker called the ‘concept of the corporation.’”

“Strategic Planning is an Oxymoron. The central tenet of Strategic Planning is that formulation is separated from implementation… But such immaculate conception just doesn’t hack it in the world of strategy. When a strategy fails… what should really be blamed is the very separation of formulation from implementation… Strategies have to be allowed to form, emergently, beyond being formulated, deliberately.”

MANAGEMENT. “The big picture has to be painted by little brushstrokes, with clues found on the ground. Hence, managing on the ground need not be micromanaging. The best entrepreneurs are masters at consolidating operating details into comprehensive strategic visions. Rather than formulating to implement, they cycle back and forth between concrete actions and conceptual inferences: they do in order to think, in order to do, in order to think…”

“Management is a practice, not a profession or a science. It is learned largely through experience… The overuse of science, especially in an obsessive reliance on measurement, has become a scourge of ‘modern’ management.”

“Efficiency reduces to measurable efficiency, and herein lies the problem…The next time you hear someone say, ‘If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it,’ ask them who has ever successfully measured culture, leadership, even management itself. Indeed, who has ever even tried to measure the performance of measurement instead of assuming that it is a holy grail? Whether or not you can measure it, you had better manage it.”

“External influencers with considerable power over an organization tend to drive it toward a bureaucratic structure. That is because they are inclined to exercise that power by imposing extensive performance measures on the organization… Some governments measure galore in the schools that they fund. This makes these organizations easier to control from the outside, no matter how much damage it can sometimes cause inside.”

“While the markets can bring down dysfunctional companies, there is no mechanism to bring down dysfunctional government departments. Hence, many just fester.”

“A small Personal Enterprise no more needs an organizational chart than a Professional Assembly needs measures that drive its professionals to distraction… To summarize,a narrow form of technocratic managerialism runs rampant in our organizations and thus contaminates societies.”

SILOS AND SLABS. “If silos are vertical barriers to the horizontal flow of information in an organization, discouraging lateral mutual adjustment in favor of hierarchical direct supervision, then slabs are horizontal barriers to the vertical flow of information, from one level in the hierarchy to another.”

“Much that matters in organizations requires lateral linkages of a less formal nature, to encourage mutual adjustment across the silos and the slabs.”

“By being grouped together, not only physically but also administratively, people are encouraged to communicate and cooperate… Meetings, standing committees, teams, and task forces also foster mutual adjustment… Plus many meetings are impromptu: people just bump into each other, and discuss what’s on their minds. Other meetings are scheduled on an ad hoc basis—one time only.” See also Boundary Spanning.

KEYNOTE LISTENER. “Colleagues and I created the International Masters Program for Practicing Managers in 1996… They learn in an open setting of small groups at round tables, where they spend half the time reflecting with each other on their personal experience, in light of the materials introduced by the faculty in the other half… Sometimes, one manager at each table is designated the keynote listener, to sit with his or her back to the others and listen to them. In the debrief that follows, these keynote listeners form an inner circle to chat about what they heard, around which everyone else sits. Eventually, anyone else who wishes to add to the chat can tap the shoulder of someone in the inner circle, to replace him or her while the conversation continues.”

Mintzberg, Henry. Understanding Organizations… Finally: Structuring in Sevens. Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2023. Buy from Amazon.com

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