Improving your Mind Maps

Once you understand how to make notes in the Mind Map format, you can develop your own conventions to take them further. The following suggestions may help to increase their effectiveness:

Use single words or simple phrases for information:Most words in normal writing are padding: They convey facts in the correct context, and in a format that is pleasant to read. In your own Mind Maps, single strong words and meaningful phrases can convey the same meaning more potently. Excess words just clutter the Mind Map.

Print words:Joined up or indistinct writing can be more difficult to read.

Use color to separate different ideas:This will help you to separate ideas where necessary. It also makes your Mind Map easier to remember. Color also helps to show the organization of the subject.

Use symbols and images:Where a symbol or picture means something to you, use it. Pictures can help you to remember information more effectively than words.

Using cross-linkages:Information in one part of the Mind Map may relate to another part. Here you can draw in lines to show the cross-linkages. This helps you to see how one part of the subject connects with another.

http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newISS_01.htm

http://www.bestpricecomputers.co.uk/glossary/mind-mapping-software.htm

TRANSLATION

10. Translate the text “The New Organisation in writing .

11. Translate the text “Big is Back”.

12. Translate the text “The Limits of Structural Change” orally. Pay attention to the words in italics.

The Limits of Structural Change

Corporate America has spent the last few years in restructuringmode, drasticallyreorganizingprocesses in orderto wringprofitsfrom abattered economy. However beneficial these efforts may be to thebottom line, a reliance on restructuring has had unintended negative side effects, ashierarchiesthat oncecontrolledthe direction of many companies become less relevant, and loyal employees become increasinglydisheartenedbydisruptive— and often short-sighted —strategies.In response, companiesresort toeven more restructuring, frequently with less than optimal results.

Experts recommend that companies shift awayfrom knee-jerk responses such as restructuring andhierarchy buildingtoward a transformation of established corporate structures, a widerdistribution of knowledge, and the use of modernperformance-measurement systemsand technologies. Only companies developing their advantage upon theagilityandflexibilityof their processes, people and technologies can build lasting value for their company, customers and employees.

MITSloan Management Review, Fall 2003

LANGUAGE FOCUS

13. Translate the following verbs paying attention to the prefixes.

1. centralise; decentralize; recentralise

2. organize; reorganize; disorganize

3. construct; reconstruct

4. merge; demerge;

5. stock, restock; destock

6. motivate, remotivate; demotivate

14. Underline the odd word

1. top-down; military style; flat; hierarchical; vertically oriented

2. horizontal; flat; control; vertical

3. accountable; responsible; liable; answerable; executive

4. units; divisions; layers; arms

15. Explain the following words. Find out the difference in their meaning.

nouns	verbs	definition	examples
restructuring
delayering
reengineering
turnaround
overhaul
reshuffling
streamlining
	reinvent oneself
	remake oneself

16. Suggest the Russian for the following.

to flatten an organization; to remove layers of management; consensus-based decision-making; overlapping responsibilities; to streamline overlapping divisions; to be rigidly hierarchical; to create a new management hierarchy within the company; to repatriate control; economies of scale; to command a premium; to be in sole command of the billion of dollars; vertically oriented organisational structures; top-down decision-making; to avoid pitfalls; regulatory burden; to be up to the mark; to embrace national champions; to takeover faltering suppliers; company-wide brainstorming exercise; destocking

17. a) Using your dictionaries find collocations and prepositional phrases with the words commandandcontrol; b) Study the worddevelopment(s).

18. Suggest the English for the following.

ликвидировать дублирующие подразделения; сократить двенадцать уровней управления до пяти; быть подотчетным непосредственно главному исполнительному директору; иметь строгую иерархическую субординацию; придерживаться вертикальной структуры управления; создавать новые подразделения; вновь образованная фирма; проводить реорганизацию имеющихся подразделений; компания с горизонтальной структурой управления; давать уверенность в своих силах; нарушать производственный цикл;; риски, связанные с использованием субподряда; предпринимательский

BUSINESS SKILLS

19. Read what Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric and the world’s best manager for years, said about delayering. Give arguments for and against flattening a company. Should a company have one managerial layer?

Lay off the Layers

Jack and Suzy Welch

We're constantly being told that hierarchies are bad and we must flatten companies to make them more effective, but don't companies need some layers in order to organize for success? -David Gionet, Toronto

Don't take another step — you're right at the edge of the old "Come on, one more layer won't hurt us" slippery slope that has tripped up more managers and companies than perhaps any other natural disaster. O.K., maybe "natural disaster," is too strong a term, but the organizational compulsion to insert layers is just about as inexorable as, say, hurricane season every year. And it can be just as damaging. The only difference is that layers can be prevented. And they must be.

The reasons, as you suggest, should not be new to anyone. First of all, in a world where faster is not just better but necessary, layers slow everything down: Take decision-making. The more layers, the more people who have to thump their rubber stamp: The more PowerPoint presentations to be made to bosses and bosses' bosses before the rubber stamp. Or take communicating change. Layers make that process — hard enough as it is — like that children's whispering game, telephone. Every time a piece of information passes through a person, it morphs a little. Layers do that, too, adding spin, interpretation, and buzz with every telling. Or take gettinga business going. Layers bury startups, particularly within large companies, under piles of bureaucrats and processes, depriving any entrepreneurial venture of the oxygen and sunlight it needs to thrive.

Perhaps the worse outcome of layers is meddling. When there are a lot of layers, it usually means managers have too few people reporting to them. Tom in Kansas City can have, basically, three sales reps he's responsible for, or Maria in Toronto can be boss to two financial analysts and an administrative assistant. So what do Tom and Mary do with their massive underutilization? They end up babysitting their direct reports, or worse, doing their jobs for them. Talk about killing morale and initiative!

But do not harp on the all-too-familiar consequences of layers. Your job is to fight them, even if it is against your organization's gravitational pull. After all, layers pop up because they seem necessary, especially with growth. "Uh-oh, we've got more sales," people say, "We'll need more district managers in the field." Or, "More employees? Better add a few positions at headquarters." Ironically, even when there isn't growth, companies feel compelled to add layers. Often this form of layering masquerades promotions, as in, "Look, people are still moving up around here!" To be sure, such promotions don't have raises attached — but they're better than nothing. Wrong.

So what is right when it comes to layers? You'll know you're there if you're, well, uncomfortable. That is, you've probably gotten to the right level of layers if your company is 50% flatter than you'd like. Managers should have eight direct reports at the minimum and up to a dozen if they're experienced. CEOs should have more. Indeed, the higher you are in an organization, the more direct reports you should have. After all, senior people should be good enough to operate without their boss's constant glare. That's why they're senior.

Look, we're not saying this is the end of the world. We're just saying you should think of every layer as a bad layer. And like a hurricane, if you see one coming your way, batten down the hatches. Better yet, escape to higher ground and let the danger pass you by.

BusinessWeek, June 25, 2007

20. Read the following texts and sum up the information on matrix organizational structure. Use the Internet resources for more data and make a presentation analysing the benefits and the failings of this structure.

a) Matrix Management

A structure for running those companies that have both a diversity of products and a diversity of markets

Matrix management is a structure for running those companies that have both a diversity of products and a diversity of markets. In a matrix structure, responsibility for the products goes up and down one dimension and responsibility for the markets goes up and down another. This leaves most managers with a dual reporting line: to the head of their product division on the one hand, and to the head of their geographical market on the other.

Despite the potential confusion that this duality creates, matrix management was enormously popular in the 1970s and 1980s. Leading the fashion was Philips, a Dutch multinational electronics company, which first set up a matrix structure after the Second World War. It had national organisations (NOs) and product divisions (PDs), and for a while they operated successfully as a network. The network was held together by a number of coordinating committees, which resolved any conflict between the two.

The crux came with the profit and loss account. Who was to be held accountable for it? At first, the answer was both the NOs and the PDs. But this was unsatisfactory, and the NOs eventually got the upper hand. Philips’s PDs did not like that, and they fought back. In the 1990s, when the company was not doing so well, its organisational structure was completely overhauled. A few powerful PDs were given worldwide responsibility for the profit and loss account, and the NOs became subservient to them.

In an article in Harvard Business Review in 1990, Christopher Bartlett and Sumantra Ghoshal suggested that the problem (especially for multinationals) was that:

Dual reporting led to conflict and confusion; the proliferation of channels created informational log-jams as a proliferation of committees and reports bogged down the organisation; and overlapping responsibilities produced turf battles and a loss of accountability. Separated by barriers of distance, language, time and culture, managers found it virtually impossible to clarify the confusion and resolve the conflicts.

The authors maintained that matrix management had been part of an attempt by companies to create complicated structures that matched their increasingly complicated strategies. But it focused only on the anatomy of the organisation. It ignored the physiology (the systems that allow information to flow in and around the organisation) and the psychology (the “shared norms, values and beliefs” of the organisation’s managers).

Organisations could implement matrix management successfully, Bartlett and Ghoshal claimed, if they started at the other end. Their first objective should be “to alter the organisational psychology … only later do they consolidate and confirm their progress by realigning organisational anatomy through changes in the formal structure”.

Nigel Nicholson of London Business School says that the matrix structure is “one of the most difficult and least successful organisational forms”. Evolutionists like him allege that matrix forms are inherently unstable because they have conflicting forces pulling towards too many different centres of gravity.

Matrix management still has its admirers, although most of them think that it works best in situations where there is a finite task involved and where everyone shares a similar sense of purpose. This includes situations like launching a new product, or starting a new business, or putting on a Broadway show, or getting a man to the moon.

From Economist.com, Oct 23rd 2009

b) The Matrix Master

PHILIPS, a Dutch electrical giant, was one of the earlest champions of the matrix structure. After the second world war it set up both national organisations and product divisions. The boss of the washing-machine division in Italy, say, would report to the head of Philips in Italy as well as to the washing-machinesupremoin the Netherlands. This network was loosely held together by a number of co-ordinating committees designed to resolve conflicts between the two lines of command.

By the 1990s Philips had decided that this structure wasno longer working well. There had been more or less continual problems over accountability. Who was to be held responsible for the profit-and-loss account — the country boss or the product head?For a while; the country heads had had the upper hand, but the product bosses had fought back. A reorganisation in the early 1990s created a number of units with worldwide responsibility for groups of the company's businesses —consumer electronics, medical products and so on. The national offices became subservient to these new units; built around products and based at the firm's headquarters.

Gently does it

In the past three years the company has been gently drawing back from this structure without attempting a radical reorganisation. For instance; it has appointed a chief marketing officer to help counter the criticism that it has been paying too much attention to technology and new productsand not enough to its customers.

Gerard Ruizendaal, head of corporate strategy at Philips, says the company has learnt that whenever it creates a new organisation; it creates a new problem.

Philips redraws the lines

So, under the slogan "One Philips", it has introduced a number of low-key changes such as encouraging employees to work across different business units. In November, it handed out awards for three business initiatives in which people had created value for the company by collaborating with others outside their immediate units.

Philips is also making it clear that employees are expected to move around in their careers rather than stick with a single geographical regionor product area. Mr Ruizendaal says that 70-80% of the changes requiredwill come about by shifting managers' attitudes; the rest from putting in place incentives; not all of them monetary: To help change minds, Philips last year brought together its top 1,000 managers fora series of workshops expressly designed to talk about issues that cut across organisational boundaries.

The Economist, January 21^st, 2006

TEAM WORK

20. Working in pairs, create an organisational structure of your own company. Substantiate your decision.

REFLECTION SPOT

Would you require knowledge of the organization in your future work? What skills did you practice in this Unit?