How to Ensure the Success of a Position Your Company Hasn’t Had Before
Executive Summary
According to the World Economic Forum’s 2018 “Future of Jobs” report, many current organizational roles are likely to be disappear as early as 2022, only to be replaced by new organizational roles. You may already be seeing these changes in your organization. Does your organization have a data analytics manager yet? How about a social media specialist? Organizations are increasingly hiring people into novel positions, but often struggle to support these new roles. Too much structure will stifle creativity and innovation. Too much freedom will lead to ambiguity and chaos. To better understand the tension between control and freedom in new roles, we analyzed more than 4000 pages of interview data, company documents, and media reports from 21 organizations that recently established a “sustainability manager” position and appointed someone to the role. Our research found that organizations vary in how tightly they structure new positions, but almost all fall into one of three configurations: too tight, too loose, or just right. This last group of organizations displayed a broad overall commitment to sustainability, but the specific sustainability initiatives were not rigidly formalized. Sustainability managers in this configuration have considerable discretion to launch and champion innovative social and environmental initiatives. They leverage their discretion to successfully collaborate with internal (i.e., colleagues in other functional areas) and external (i.e., communities and regulators) stakeholders. Sustainability programs are decentralized, so social and environmental initiatives are not viewed as top-down directives but are embedded in the routine activities of other functions. Managers in this configuration feel empowered.
Source
https://hbr.org/2018/12/how-to-ensure-the-success-of-a-position-your-company-hasnt-had-before