Dysfunctional management can occur from many situations. One common situation is giving senior management split responsibilities that are both corporate (national) and local in nature.

As an example, I recently worked with a company that had a head office and five branch offices. A corporate level Vice President who had a corporate responsibility as well as a branch management responsibility managed each branch office. As well, there were department managers who had split responsibilities.

The primary advantage of this type of management structure is that it provides senior management at branch offices, supposedly with the ability to respond to local issues and hence provide better overall service to customers. In the long run, the disadvantages created by a dysfunctional management definitely out weigh any gains from local responsibility.

In this case, each branch had its own sales and operations staff. Marketing, and accounting were head office functions. Looking at the sales and marketing structure, there was a VP Sales and Marketing who was also a General Manager of a branch office. The sales people at the branch office where he operated from reported directly to him.

The sales staff at all the other offices reported to the GM of that branch. Of course, the GM who was also a VP reported directly to the President, hence the VP of Sales and Marketing really had no authority or control over the national sales force. To make matters worse, the company had two basic product groups, one had an independent GM. As the sales staff that was responsible for selling the products reported to their respective VP, the division GM had no control over the sales force.

To make matters even more complex that divisional GM was also the marketing manager for the company and worked out of head office, reporting to the VP Sales & Marketing who worked out of a branch office.

The VP Sales & Marketing was a free reign style manager, who believed that the sales people would come to him if they needed assistance. On the other hand the sales people who worked out of the head office reported to a VP that was a micro manager and had more forms to fill out than most government departments.

With no management consistency, the result was a sales force that lacked direction and support, a senior management that, in many cases were out of their management depth and a lack luster sales performance. Of course, the sales people received the blame for their failure to meet sales quotas.

The same situation applied in operations, human resources, and MIS, where there was a VP of the appropriate discipline based at a branch that also operated as that branches GM.

Under this type of structure, it is very easy to pass the proverbial buck, as everyone is responsible for success and yet no one is responsible for failure!

Creative management structures may look impressive on an organizational chart, but they are usually not functional. There are times when thinking outside of the box, is not the best road to success.