The Key To Staff Management: Balancing Organisational Structure And Entrepreneurial Flair To Meet Global Ambitions
by Craig Parker | COO
“Results have very little to do with goals, and nearly everything to do with systems” – James Clear, Atomic Habits
Every company has strategic goals and objectives that direct activities, but it’s the staff and systems – or processes – which drive the results.
A delicate balance between organisational structure and entrepreneurial flair is the key to staff management, and success, at Eva-Last. It’s critical to co-ordinate our rapidly expanding operations across five different continents to achieve and surpass our global ambitions.
And just as our aspirations at Eva-Last surpass the traditional targets set by conventional management structures, so too does our style of staff management – guided by our four organisational values: Innovation, Sustainability, Customer Excellence, and Accountability.
At Eva-Last, we don’t conform to the typical “silo style” hierarchy of authority and accountability. Instead, we value our staff speaking directly to each other and taking calculated risks in the interest of our customers and our company, accepting and learning from whatever the outcome. Consequently, there is a high expectation of maturity from our talent. We don’t micro-manage their activities. Instead, we trust our employees to drive the business agenda. We’ve purposefully trained our leadership to manage our affairs organically to guide us in our quest for excellence.
We are proud of our “matrix” management style which is a hybrid approach combining the hierarchical vertical structure with cross-functional co-operation and communication. We welcome knowledge sharing and encourage direct dialogue across departments, and even continents, to leverage experience and expertise such as sales and scalability, product knowledge, logistics and tried and tested methodologies. We always strive to learn from our mistakes while delivering on our promises.
Eva-Last employs a global group strategy underpinned by regionalised implementation and localised tactics. Our decentralised personnel model – optimized by world-class technology, including ERP, demand-forecasting, CRM and project management systems and software – facilitates faster decision-making, stimulates organisational learning and enables professional growth and development for our staff en route to achieving our ambitious global goals.
Our rigorous recruitment process and induction training, with periodic reviews ensures all our personnel are aligned with our organisational values and goals. Given the required support, we ensure that our team have the skills and expertise, and necessary network, to meet those targets.
Every person, from the most junior to the most senior, is coached and scored on their responsibilities and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in their roles as Leaders or Team Members. Thanks to our strategic annual planning, our team have a clear understanding of our strategic initiatives, objectives and targets for the year ahead which ensures alignment.
We regularly review and score our performance across different departments and regions and recognise and reward excellence accordingly.
Eva-Last strives to be a Value Based High Performance company. This is WHO we are and determines HOW we do the things we do. We welcome likeminded stakeholders along for the journey and believe our clarity of direction, and our remuneration policy’s aligned to our objectives drives business success, and flows naturally as a consequence of our dynamic management approach.
