IDEO - Management and Organization - Organizational Structure

Organizational Structure

IDEO is a high-commitment management organization in that it consists of project teams, flat hierarchy, individual autonomy, creativity, socialization of recruits and engineer buy-in. As each component functions together as a system, this management style is critical to the success of IDEO. IDEO is a very flat organization that essentially functions around many teams. The organization is divided into “studios” to manage its growing size. Each studio operates independently and usually seeks business locally. However, studios are highly communicative and share members as needed. A studio head is appointed at each site and is responsible for managing a number of “hot teams”. He or she is essentially responsible for administrative duties, such as overseeing the profits and losses of the group. Hot teams consist of people from multiple disciplines who are passionate about a client’s project and choose to work together temporarily on that project. Each team elects a project leader based on his/her skills related to the project. It is considered “the most sought after position in the company, because the project leader generally gets to decide what the future of the product will become.” Just as the teams are temporary, the project leader’s position ends with the completion of the project. Therefore, employees who serve as project leaders on one project may serve under another leader on another project. This also means that there are no fixed titles or positions in the company. In conjunction with studios, people are organized into disciplines and there are “discipline leads”. Discipline leads have strong reputations in their industries and serve as mentors to members of the organization in their related fields. Through a democratic process, only members of a particular studio make decisions for that studio. Studio heads, in a collaborative effort, make corporate decisions. With this structure, anyone is one step away from input by simply informing his/her studio head. The flat hierarchy and projects teams are key components of IDEO and more generally to high commitment organizations.

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