Organizational Structure - YouTube

In this video, we're going to talk about organizational structure. We'll cover the

classic hierarchy, the team based organization, and finally the matrix. So,

let's unpack the details.

Hello again friends. Alex Lyon here. If this is the first

time you have ever tuned in to this channel, Communication Coach, we put out

weekly videos on professional communication, leadership, and

communication skills more generally. So I invite you to subscribe if you've never

done that. In this video, we're going to talk about organizational structure.

There are different types of organizational structures that you might

experience in your professional settings and I invite you to comment on which one

you think is your favorite in that section below the video. I would love to

read those comments. So first let's talk about the classic hierarchy. Usually when

people talk about organizational structure, this is what they mean. This is

where you have a top level person in a top position, maybe the CEO or chairman

of the board or president of the organization, and then you have different

levels going down. So, under that, you're going to have your vice presidents most

likely. And then you're going to have heads of units and directors, and

managers, supervisors, and finally all the employees at the bottom of the pyramid.

In different organizations you'll have different names for these positions. In

fact if you're working in restaurants like I used to I was a busser and then

above me is the server like the waiter or waitress and it feels like above that

person is the bartender. Now that might be not really official but that's the

way it feels. You can sense that there is generally a hierarchy in most

organizations where you figure out where you fit in. I'm wondering if you could

comment in the section below this video, what are the names of those different

positions in your industry and the places that you work? I would love to

hear the different vocabulary that everybody uses out there. Typically in an

organizational hierarchy, we borrow our vocabulary from the military. You might

notice that we call the people at the bottom, the employees, the frontline

employees, frontline supervisor. Just like in a military campaign. You have people

on the front lines, all the way up to the top level where we literally call them

officers in a professional setting. The Chief Executive Officer. Chief

Operations Officer, just like you have a commanding officer in the military. So,

that's the classic organizational structure of the hierarchy. Next, let's

talk about a somewhat new one, the team based organization. This is

where the organization is organized in teams. So you're still gonna have people

in authority above all the teams but instead of this hierarchy and division

of labor, you have lots of different people from different areas of an

organization mixed together working as a team. So you're going to have engineers

working alongside software developers working alongside accountants and

marketers. You might have a team of just a handful of people you might have quite

a big team that feels like an organization unto itself. And in the team

based organization, you're going to have all these people getting cross-trained and

learning a common vocabulary. And over time, let's say I'm a software developer,

I'm going to learn a bit about engineering because I'm listening to that

engineering person. I'm going to learn a little bit about marketing because I'm

listening to that marketing person. So over time we start to speak a common

language that brings the team together and helps us do extremely high-quality

work, services, and products. So there are some advantages to a team based

organization. It also involves a lot of cross-training and takes some work but

that's the way team based organization works. Now finally we have the matrix

style of organization. This is where you really combine a team with a hierarchy

and you up with a kind of grid. So you still have people above you that are

ultimately in charge of you in the hierarchy but also you have people that

you are laterally responsible to that are, in a way, in some authority over you.

So let's say two teams overlap a little bit in what they do. You might have Human

Resources for example. We also might have a whole different recruiting team that

has recruiters and people that are going out there in the professional space

looking for new employees to hire. There's a lot of commonality and so even

though they might both might report to a boss above them they also have

responsibilities to each other. And it's not just recruiting and HR you have a

lots of different overlaps and people will work together in this matrix style

grid. So this can be a little confusing at first because you might feel like you

have lots of different bosses and you kind of do have lots of different bosses.

You have a lot of responsibilities and you have to perform for a lot of

different groups in the organization. So those are the three main styles of

organizational structure the most common one that we're familiar with is he

hierarchy, and then the team, and of course the matrix or the grid and that

tends to be I think the newest one that I've seen in

my experience. So again, I ask you to comment in that section below question

of the day. Which one of these is your favorite which one of these do you think

would work best for your professional setting. I look forward to reading those

comments and if you have not yet subscribed to this channel I invite you

to do so for weekly videos on professional development like

communication and leadership skills. So thanks. God bless and I will see you in

the next video.