Local government department: staffing or management?
Initial situation
A large local government department has difficulty retaining its middle managers. Absenteeism and turnover are high. Positions must be filled by interim managers. The HR department is seriously wondering whether they’re hiring the wrong people or whether they’re making it impossible for good managers to work there.
Our view
The HR department has a common, legitimate question: are the organisational structure and working methods making it unnecessarily difficult for employees to perform their work well? This could be either a staffing or a management problem.
Our analysis
The department results from an enforced merger of various smaller departments, each with its own structure, culture and working method. We started by identifying the work processes, critically scrutinising the delineation of tasks, responsibilities and authorities at the various management levels. The conclusion: the various levels overlap in many places, creating a situation in which ambitious managers have been ‘enticed’ to take over each other’s work. Or, if convenient, to drop certain activities with the excuse that someone else was responsible. The same applied to coordinating with customers and partners in the area. While there were some gaps in the competences of the managers, we concluded that the main problem was in the management model. The model was complex, left a lot of room for undesirable behaviour, and made it difficult to address this behaviour with the parties concerned.
The existing situation at the department can be represented as follows: 
Our solution
We created a number of working groups representing the various managerial positions and consequently, during a number of meetings with managerial staff, drew up a new design to manage the department. This resulted in a model containing fewer levels, more clearly delineated key result areas and a better link with the environment. The new model is represented as follows:
The new management model makes it meaningful to assess the necessary and available competences of the managerial staff. Internal and external responsibilities are indicated more clearly and the competences needed for them are easier to recognise
