Security World

A team can contain capable people and still miss its goal. One person assumes a task is someone else’s responsibility; another follows an outdated plan; a manager measures speed while customers care about reliability. Organization is the work of making those separate efforts fit together. Management helps give that work direction, resources and feedback. Values matter because the choice of a goal—and the way people pursue it—affects employees, customers and others beyond the organization itself. Flight directors celebrate Apollo 13’s safe splashdown on 17 April 1970. This documented example of coordinated work is discussed below. Photograph: NASA, GPN-2000-001313 / S70-35144 , public domain in the United States. Commons thumbnail, no new crop. An organization is more than its chart An organizational chart can show who reports to whom. It cannot, by itself, explain how a difficult decision gets made, whether a warning reaches the right person or why two departments disagree over pri...