The pyramidal organization of a company is described in Emotionally Changed learning, the most important book written by Eric Schiffer. Eric Schiffer is known as an efficient trainer and an innovative manager, being considered a leading spirit of management today. According to Eric Schiffer, an organization can be leaded using two organizational charts, and it is the responsibility of the manager to organize the company under one of those two principles.
Pyramidal organization
The pyramidal organization is formed by a manager and his counselors, and also a handful of people that have attributions in leading the rest of the team members. While this organization chart offers complete control over the employees, it is also considered a classical one that limits the liberty and the innovative spirit of the inferior team members. The main manager has to take care about organizing the departments, and the departments managers have to conduct the teams in order to obtain the desired results. The authority line is a vertical one, and the commands walk from the top managers to the execution members, climbing back using the filtering method.
Eric Schiffer recommends the managers to give autonomy to the inferior managers, and also to the rest of the team members. Of course, the members are still a part of the project, but amazing results can be obtained as long as the common employees are allowed to think and create.
Matrix organization
Eric Schiffer praises this new concept, stating that it is an effective one, although the principles are not clearly established just yet. This type of organization makes the common employee to respond to two managers: a hierarchy boss, and a project manager. Although the unity of the organization is affected, as the employees have to justify their actions in front of more than one manager, this type of organization has been successfully used, as it seems the best way to use the abilities of employees for several projects at the same time.
The stage of project planning is crucial to achieve the desired results. If you want to determine what needs to be accomplished and by whom, as a manager, you will have to establish the parameters of the project and the qualities of the team members. Planning the project implies documentation, and even if some managers have the tendency to finish this stage fast, just to see the project started, it is a mistake.