Question

What is a lattice organization? What are the strengths of this structure? Why? What are the pitfalls of it? What are the remedies?

Answer 1

The lattice organization structure is characterized by self-management as this structure has no hierarchy and no defined leadership. The global economy is forcing companies and corporations to consider new organizational structures. The old hierarchical structure is too slow and unresponsive in the new marketplace. The lattice organizational structure is evolving as a possible replacement to the old hierarchical structure. The lattice organization structure is a flat organization with no traditional hierarchy. Work is done in self-directed and self-managed work teams where each team is responsible for specific corporation functions. Teams are self-directed; no traditional boss is required or needed, teams manage themselves through a sense of mutual benefit, responsibility and common purpose. Leaders gain authority based on demonstrated knowledge, skills, experience and natural leadership ability.

Strengths -

A lattice organization structure can facilitate the creation of an ideocracy where anyone in the organization can contribute ideas regardless of position and how long they’ve been with the company. The benefit of this is that the best ideas can prevail and organizations can benefit from ideas they may not have heard in more hierarchical organizations where lower level employees often have a more limited voice.

Employees have greater freedom to cross train and learn different aspects of the business and expand their knowledge, skills and expertise by not being restricted to one specific functional area.

A lattice organization structure can also enhance employee retention as employees are empowered by having an almost unlimited amount of learning and development opportunities.

Organizations utilizing this flat organizational structure can achieve competitive advantage from increased flexibility to adapt faster to the changing environment.

Pitfalls -

Not all employees have the ability and self-discipline to thrive without management, creating the potential for a chaotic work environment. The flexibility of the lattice organization structure enables employees to shape their careers by working in different teams making roles hard to define. As a result the creation of policies, compensation and performance standards is challenging.

Lattice organization structures have been most successful in new organizations. To transform from a hierarchical to a lattice organization structure is plagued by implementation challenges. As a result, organizations looking to become more flexible should look to incrementally change their structure, taking on some aspects such as self-managed teams; avoiding radical change.

Remedies -

Recruiting and retaining valuable employees is a component of the talent management process within the human resources disciplines. There exists no formal method to attract and select qualified employees. Rather a lattice organizational structure can be formed by a group of like-minded professionals who choose to work collaboratively to achieve common objectives. Joining a lattice organization has underlying entrepreneurial components, which can be problematic if the organization's purpose and goals shift.

A lattice organization requires employees whose discipline and motivation are off the chart. Unfortunately, that segment of the workforce isn’t a large one. In a traditional organizational structure--such as centralized, decentralized or even matrix structures--managers and appointed leaders establish motivational strategies, such as commendations, recognition and performance bonuses. Performance evaluation is an essential component for employee development in traditional organizational structures if in a latice organisation there are measures to evaluate own performance by self the obove said disadvantage can be disappeared.