Intervention To Change

Many experts consider designing to be the essential function of management. The goal in many cases is design in the role of intervention to create or change something. Designing typically focuses on three areas:

• Designing Strategies - - Managers are "engineers" - - the person who designs on paper so that everyone else can build - - in the language of strategic management, formulates strategies for others to implement. This assumes that strategy making in a process of deliberate design, in order to control behavior.


• Designing Structures - - Managers also design organizational structures: they divide up the work in their unit; allocate responsibilities for it to individual members; and then organize this around hierarchy of authority, as depicted in those "organizational charts." Such structure helps to set people's agendas, and so control their actions.


• Designing Systems - - More directly, managers can take charge of designing, and sometimes even running, various systems of control in their units - - concerning plans, objectives, schedules, budgets, performance, and so on.

Alan Mulally is president and CEO of Ford Motor Company. Mulally holds bachelor's and master's of science degrees in aeronautical and astronautical engineering. The attached graphic are notes that Mulally made on his Ford strategic planning notebook. It looks like the engineer as manager - - designing strategies, structures, and systems.