If you are working for a company with a global headquarters not in your country or region, chances are that you will face some dilemma in prioritising between global and regional strategies. Your regional CEO wants you to help drive the business performances while your functional manager sitting comfortably in HQ wants you to execute his instructions asap. One good example is rolling out a strategic system to your region or country driven out from the global headquarters.
The benefits are clear. Senior management buy-ins have been obtained. They want to roll the system out in 6 months time. Yet, resources have not been freed up by other projects.; business in this region are demanding something else.
On the surface, it looks like a classic project management failure. However, it is usually a failure in the execution of a business strategy. The strategic priorities in a country and region needs to be aligned together with both business and the support functions.
One of the main causes of the strategic dilemmas faced by management is the organization structure. The organization structure holds the key to unlocking the conflicting priorities. In a typical regional organization structure, the regional CEO is in-charge of the support and the business functions. All the support department heads report directly to the regional CEO while having a dotted reporting line to their global functional bosses.
I noticed in some organizations, the direct reporting lines of the support department heads are to their global functional bosses while having a dotted line to the regional CEO. Only the business heads have a direct reporting line to the regional CEO.
Consequently, from a project priority perspective, the regional CEO priorities will be second fiddle because the delivery of global project has been accorded a higher one.
These competing priorities result in low staff morale and average turnover.
It is critical that management identifies the root cause and not address the symptons of staff morale and turnover.
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