Organizational boundaries

Boundaries exist in organizations to help split up work, responsibilities, and decisions. But treating any of these boundaries as Silos where information and interactions can only pass through predefined pipes is the wrong approach. Instead, view these boundaries as lines drawn on the ground. They are mutually agreed and followed, but if something needs to be done and it's not being done...go for it.

Types of boundaries

Based on a 1992 article from HBR: The new boundaries of the boundaryless company.

Authority (Who is in charge of what?)

In very hierarchical organizations, this is generally the boss that has the authority to make decisions. But that creates bottlenecks, lack of trust, and less informed decisions.

Instead, the formal authority figure does not need to make every decision. This person should focus on how to guide their team, accept criticism, and create a Psychologically safe environment.

For others, it means you need to understand when to follow and when to challenge. You need to challenge your boss on certain decisions, but understand there are times when you need to Disagree and commit.

As a leader, you need to understand when certain decisions need to be made by you or when they need to be made by your team. I approach this as a risk threshold. If the decision has low risk, I will let my team decide. If it's a high risk decision, I will ask for recommendations and make the decision.

Task (Who does what?)

• Work in complex organizations requires a highly specialized division of labor.
• Question: “Who does what?”
• Previously, managing task relationships was a matter of overseeing the formal interactions among R&D, manufacturing, marketing, and the other classic functions.
• To be effective, they cannot simply ignore the work of others—in effect, to say “it’s not my job”—any more than a subordinate can simply follow the orders of his or her boss.
• In a team environment, people must focus not only on their own work but also on what others do.
• when a work group has problems defining the task, dividing up responsibilities, and apportioning resources, individual members begin to feel incompetent, unable to accomplish their work, and sometimes even ashamed of the job they’ve done.

Political (What's in it for us?)

• Politics involves the interaction of groups with different interests, and any large complex organization contains many such groups.
• Political activity becomes detrimental only when people are unable to negotiate and bargain in productive ways and when they can’t define their interests broadly enough to discover mutually beneficial solutions.
• Question: “What’s in it for us?”
• When groups in a company do this effectively, people tend to feel powerful.
• when it goes bad members of a particular work group can feel unrecognized, underrepresented in important decisions, and exploited.

Identity (Who is or isn't us?)

• When people begin to think in terms of “us” versus “them,” of their in-group as opposed to other out-groups, they are engaged in a relationship at the identity boundary. Unlike the political boundary, which is about interests, the identity boundary is about values. Put another way, the identity boundary raises the question, “Who is—and isn’t—‘us’?”
• People acting at the identity boundary trust insiders but are wary of outsiders.
• creating and supporting a sense of elan or team spirit...without devaluing the potential contribution of other groups