notes-groupDecisionMaking-universalDelegateStructure

Preface

So i was looking at lists of departments, org charts, etc, and trying to see if there is some common 'default set' of divisions into which almost any organization could be divided, so that this could be put into some generic bylaws that i making and serve as a good default. Along the way i thought of a generic set of roles that could be employed by almost anyone in a managerial position who wants to be assisted in their job by a group of up to 7 trusted subordinates who have similar expertise as the CEO (by 'trusted subordinate who have similar expertise as the CEO', imagine if you could make 9 copies of you for the purpose of getting more stuff done. For clarification, i am NOT suggesting that it is usually a good idea, in most situations, to surround most key decision-makers with a bunch of delegates; although i guess this might be a good idea sometimes, other times not only would this be expensive but it also insulates the decision-maker; this is just a thought experiment, not a univeral prescription.

Summary

One executive could hold more than one of these roles, and the CEO could do some of them themself; so this structure could be used for a group of less than 9 assistants.

• President/COO
• Executive Vice President of inward-facing activities
• Executive Vice President of outward-facing activities
• Executive Vice President of administrative/organizational/meta activities
• Executive Vice President of risk management
• Executive Vice President of community
• Chief of Staff
• Control/audit/accounting/money management/metrics/CFO
• Analyst

Here's how it works. For ease of explanation, call the manager who is delegating the 'CEO' (although this structure could be used by non-CEOs or outside of a commercial context). Call these 7 delegates 'executives' (the CEO is also called an 'executive'); call the other people whom the CEO is managing (whom the CEO would manage alone if there were no other executives) 'vice-presidents (VPs)' (I'm imagining there would be about 7 VPs). Call the union of the CEO, plus these 7 delegates, the 'executive team'.

Executives report to and are subordinate to the CEO; the CEO has final authority and can overrule any or all executives. VPs also report directly to the CEO (not to the other executives). By 'report to', i mean that the CEO selects who is to fill these roles, can fire people from these roles, meets with them periodically (even if the VPs more frequently meet with the EVPs and the President), and that the subordinates can immediately get the CEO's personal attention when they feel strongly that it is warranted.

Motivation

The executive team is intended to function as a unitary decision-making entity, which together does the same job that a single CEO would. Ideally, the C-level executives augment rather than insulate the CEO. The purpose of these additional people is to allow the executive team as a whole to maintain personal contact with more people throughout the company than a single CEO would have time to do, providing a way for many people throughout the organization to influence decision-making and to communicate ideas and concerns to management, bypassing lower hierarchy and functional silos. A secondary purpose is to employ people other than the CEO whose job is to think cross-functionally and strategically, giving the CEO a sounding board and a reality check for their ideas, without diluting the unitary decision-making power of a strong CEO role.

That being said, this may be an anti-pattern; there may be plenty of times when a manager thinks that by extending themself into an 8-person team, they can do more, but when in reality the additional complexity and insulation isn't worth it.

Description of the 9 roles

The President helps with overall day-to-day execution (in some organizations they might be called a 'COO'; 'Chief Operating Officer'). The President is perhaps slightly senior to the other executives, and can overrule the EVPs, but the EVPs, and the other delegates are free to persuade the CEO to overrule the President.

Next come the five EVPs (Executive Vice Presidents). Like the President, they help manage day-to-day-execution, but they each focus on one broad topical area, whereas the President focuses on all of their areas. In a sense they are 'under' the President, who has the union of their roles and who can overrule them, but they report directly to the CEO, not to the President. The three topical areas are things that you could probably find within any organization:

• 'Inward-facing activities' which are the ostensible core competency/key contribution to the world/defining purpose or work of the organization; for example, for a non-profit, this would be the 'program area'; for a company that creates X product or service, this would be the creation/providing of X; for a government, this would be policing, social services, dispute resolution, public goods, etc
• 'Outward-facing activities' are activites that are not the 'core purpose' of the organization, but rather than connect to the outside world; for example, in a non-profit, fund raising; in a for-profit, fund raising, marketing, sales, customer support, PR, business development; in a government, diplomacy, PR, the military.
• 'Administrative/organizational/meta activities' are secondary activities that involve supporting and organizing the organization itself, rather than the core purpose of the organization, or connecting with the outside world. For example, budgeting, predictions, purchasing, administrative support, money management, tech support, supply chain management, analysis and optimization of the organization's structure and processes, governance, HR. Note that the purview of this topical area is not just bean counting and support activities, but also inward-facing meta-activities such as community management.
• 'Risk management activities' involve all of (a) measuring risks and preventing the organization from taking too many risks, (b) emergency preparedness activities (both physical emergencies and 'business emergencies' such as getting one's computers hacked, or a service provider suddenly going out of business); including preparation of fallback procedures for a long-lived 'emergency' that would reduce the organization to operating in a more primitive mode; and taking command in emergencies, (c) directing and executing 'martial' activities (both defensive and, if applicable, offensive), that is, zero-sum competitions with outside entities that demand urgent response, hierarchical command-and-control, and familiarity with the nuts-and-bolts legal/financial/administrative infrastructure which may be attacked.
• 'Community activities' relate to individuals within the organization on a personal level (rather than administrativly and legally; that's HR), communication with the community, arbitrate or mediating conflict, dealing with individuals who break rules, and mass propagating and guiding the organizational culture, including values, morality, and organizational vision (although chief of staff helps to propagate vision among executives)

The Chief of Staff is the manager of the executive team. They do roughly what the US White House Chief of Staff does; it's a people-focused role coordinating the people who interact with the executive team; it includes 'executive secretary' functions such as gatekeeping and scheduling, but also managerial functions such as deciding which issues are important enough to bother the CEO or other executives with, getting to know people, mediating disputes, communicating vision; may serve as the confidante of the CEO and be given special tasks requiring a high degree of discretion; may effectively share management of some of the VPs who nominally report to the CEO and may manage non-executive support staff supporting the executive team, if any. This role could also be called Secretary, although in a corporation they may not be Secretary to the Board of Directors (often Control is the Secretary-Treasurer to the Board).

The Control/audit/compliance/accounting/money management/metrics person helps manage centralized control function/compliance/reporting activities such as Accounting (and budget, treasury, credit, tax, insurance), Legal, and calculation of KPIs. They serve as the 'conscience of the organization', making sure that numbers are accurate, unpleasant truths are told, and rules are followed. They are sort of like the for-profit company role of CFO plus Compliance, except that a CFO typically also makes creative decisions regarding money-management and process improvement, whereas here the EVP-Admin would do that.

The Analyst (Realist/Critic/Predictor/Newsreader/Outsider) seeks out external and contrary points of view and brings them to the attention of the rest of the executive team. Seeks out and communicates with outside analysts, academics, pundits, internet forums, customers, and internal critics (both anonymous and not). In addition, the Analyst keeps up with external news and trends, learns about new developments in the outside world, and attempts to make predictions about the future and keep up with the predictions made by others.

todo/some missing roles:

• In the context of a country, the above VP positions would loosely correspond to cabinet-level positions; but at least in the US government, the US President also has various white house aides which are advisors to the president without executive authority. US President Obama once remarked on the importance of three of these positions, Chief of Staff, National Security Advisor, and Counsel: "how you staff—particularly your chief of staff, your national security adviser, your White House counsel...". A Chief of Staff is included in my system but the other two are absent. In addition, US Presidents often have a (often very partisan) political strategy advisor, and a communications person. These positions are interesting because they are more advisory roles than delegates, although they are delegates to an extent (eg the National Security Advisor often meets with the Secretary of Defence and the Secretary of State without/in place of the President); and because, at least in the case of political strategist and counsel, they are partly an advisor to the President on how to interact WITHIN the organization, and in some cases, how to win fights against other factions within the organization. In my system, the Analyst is purely an advisor but e is not a specialist on how the president should interact within the organization (and, if anything, they are a critic rather than a partisan ally of the president's faction); the Chief of Staff is focused on managing the team rather than strategy or giving specialist advice; the other roles are more delegates than advisors and are concerned with the business of the organization more than how the president should interaction WITHIN the organization. So maybe we're missing a few.
• in a continuation of the above quote, US President Obama also remarked, "...how you set up a process and a system to surface information, generate options for a president, understanding that ultimately the president is going to be the final decision maker...". This brings up more questions on how an executive team operates. If they are really topic-delineated delegates, they wouldn't the delegate just make the decisions on the issues within their topical domain, without the president's involvement? In that case, what would the president do? They would (a) hire, fire, and manage their delegates, (b) resolve disputes and make decisions that aren't in only one topical domain, (c) facilitate communication between delegates, and (d) set strategy for those parts of strategy that crosses domains (which might be the atypical or typical, depending on the context). One might also imagine that, if the president can't find the perfect delegate for some role, but instead can find someone they trust to handle some issues but not others, than the president would continue to overrule/micromanage that topical domain in those issues that they don't trust their delegate to handle correctly. But, especially taking into account the previous bullet point, another sort of system can be envisioned; you could have different advisors who are specialists in different aspects of issues (eg in a country context, internal political, economic, legal, security, etc); for each issue, all of these advisors would be consulted, and then, as a team, they would decide (with the president deciding when consensus cannot be reached). Obama's comment suggests that, at least in a country context, either cross-topical-domain issues are common, or that e used this second system. The second system would boost the importance of having some of a legal expert, a financial expert, a tech expert, a communications and/or political expert, a business expert, and in some contexts a risk management and/or security expert, and in some contexts a health expert, on the team.

Rank

The President is of higher rank than the EVPs.

Often, the Control executive would also be of higher rank than the EVPs (so that they have the authority to demand compliance and to effectively audit them). The Control executive could be of equal rank to the President, or could be lower.

The Chief of Staff and Analyst might be of lower rank than the EVPs, since they are not managing large sections of the organization; otoh the Chief of Staff is sort of the manager OF the EVPs, so maybe make them higher rank, like Control.

The simplest system (unless the President is omitted) would be to have two ranks, one with President and possible Control, and the other with all of the others.

A more complex system would be to have four ranks; President, Control, VPs, Chief of Staff and Analyst (although the VPs would be well-advised not to disrespect the Chief of Staff!).

Common combinations

9 people is very many. I hypothesize that organizations with some but not all of these roles tend to combine them in certain ways:

• Chief of Staff can be combined with Community to have one person taking care of 'people issues' throughout; such a role might be called General Secretary
• if the organization's primary activity is martial, 'risk management' may be folded into 'inward-facing activities'
• all of 'risk management' may be folded into Admin, as the risk manager needs to have a deep understanding of administrative and logistical systems
• or the 'martial' aspect of 'risk management' may be folded into 'outward-facing activities', and the rest may be folded into Admin
• inward-facing and outward-facing activities can be combined into 'primary activities'
• inward-facing, outward-facing, and admin activities can be combined into 'production activities'
• Chief of Staff and/or Community can be folded into into Admin, since these all relate to 'organizational activities'
• Admin can be folded into 'inward-facing activities' because it's inward-facing
• Analyst can be folded into 'Outward-facing activities' or into 'Admin'
• Admin can be folded into Control to create a typical CFO position
• the President (or any other role, but especially the President) can be omitted, under the assumption that the CEO takes on this role personally
• the Analyst can be folded into Control as they are both 'critic' positions
• the Chief of Staff can be abolished, with their support functions either not provided, or provided by an adminstrative support person rather than an executive, and with the CEO personally taking on their remaining 'executive management' functions

(written independently at a different tim: Can we condense any of these roles?

• Risk management is often a specialist role, eg in a country context it would be the military. In some other contexts however (eg a greeting cards company), it's probably not important enough to have its own VP.
• It's good for Control/compliance to be separate from any other executive delegate because other delegates have a 'positive' duty to 'succeed', whereas Control has the 'negative' duty to make sure that they aren't bending the rules, cooking the books, or redefining success; combining the two in one role is a conflict of interest. In many organizations compliance is separate from other roles for this reason.
• Similar to Control, Analyst is supposed to be critic and a realist, which is a 'negative' role that would conflict with the 'positive' duties of many of the other delegates. However, this role isn't often found in today's real executive teams, so maybe it is dispensible
• Chief of Staff is clearly a full-time job in a large organization
• In a country context Outward would be Secretary of State, who clearly would be too busy to also hold another cabinet-level position at the same time.
• Inward is the ostensible core competency of the organization, so is clearly a job in itself
• This leaves VP admin, VP community. In real organizations VP admin is often combined with compliance (a CFO role), and VP community is either combined with these or with Inward (HR) or even Outward (PR/communications). For the reasons given above however i don't think compliance should be combined with anything positive, and i think organizational community and culture is important in its own right. But these are certainly among the positions i'd eliminate first if i had to choose. )

Note: there is some research that shows that if you have a group of people who vote, then to prevent deadlock, that group size should not be 8. This should not be an issue here since i am proposing that these people don't vote; they are only delegates of and advisors to the CEO, and that the CEO can single-handedly overrule any or all of them; however in a context in which this is not the case, i'd recommend not having 8 people here.

Unstable combinations

I hypothesize that certain combinations would give one person a lot of power:

• Chief of Staff combined with Control combined with Community (combined with or in the absence of a President). This 'general secretary' type of position gives one individual the power to make it unlikely that their opponents are appointed to other important positions; to attack their opponents via Control; possibly, to evade the rules themselves via Control; and to stifle popular dissent via Community. Stalin and Mao may be examples of this.
• Outward-facing combined with Control combined with Admin (combined with or in absence of a President). This position allows one person both to monopolize contacts with the organization's outside investors/sponsors, and also to control the administrative/legal machinery within the organization, putting them in position for a sponsor-supported coup.
• Risk-management combined with Chief of Staff combined with another EVP (combined with or in the absence of a President). This position allows one person to organize an internal coup supported by various executives and enforced by the 'martial' powers of Risk-management.
• Community combined with Control combined with Analyst (combined with or in the absence of a President): This position allows one person to cover up corruption and censor dissent everywhere except among the other executives, by controlling both internal communications (Community and Analyst) and punishments (Community and Control).
• Risk-management combined with Community combined with Control (combined with or in the absence of a President). This position allows one person to control both sources of punishment (Control and Community) and the third source of force (Risk-management)

in the presence of a President who is not in the clique, i hypothesize that even more roles would have to be combined to cause instability.

Commentary

The name 'analyst' doesn't completely capture the 'keeping up with new developments from the outside world' part of this role. A better name for 'analyst' might be 'outsider' but that sounds too weird, and also the 'analyst', although trying to think like an outsider, is in fact an insider.

There are two three-part thesis/antithesis/synthesis structures here:

• inward/outward/admin: the inward activities are the 'main idea' of the organizaton; the outward activities tether the main idea to reality by fulfilling the contraints that external society places upon it (eg in non-profits, getting society to authorize continued expenditure on the organization via donations; in for-profit capitalism, to demonstrate that it is a worthwhile thing to spend time on by making a profit through sales; in governments, interacting with and defending against external governments); the admin activites are the 'meta' secondary activities which in a sense transcend the primary activities
• President/Audit/Analyst: the President (and the EVPs) are 'positive' and wants to succeed by hitting their numbers; the Auditor is 'negative' and wants to prevent the President from 'succeeding' by simply gaming the numbers (or otherwise breaking the law or rules), by constraining the President to follow procedure; the Critic transcends the rest of the system, taking a wholistic look and commenting on it

The division into inward/outward comes from my observation that in the US federal democracy, voters regard 'domestic' and 'foreign' concerns quite differently; they tend to elect Presidents based on domestic concerns (eg a President who admits to not knowing much about foreign affairs is electable if voters like their domestic programme enough), but then ironically those Presidents have more power in foreign affiars. Similarly, in for-profit and non-profit corporations, often there seems to be leaders who focus on the core purpose of the organization to the exclusion of effectively connecting to the outside world, or the reverse, suggesting that these concerns should be separated to reduce the chance that either will be neglected. Breaking out 'organizational' activities comes from the observation that there activities which are 'inward' yet, like foreign affairs, are not the 'core purpose' of the organization.

The breaking out of the audit/control functions comes from advice (eg [1]) that compliance functions like Legal need to report directly to the CEO, as well as advice that even in companies with independent divisions, functions like accounting should be centralized (a point made in the book [2]