Christchurch is a small city but attracts a good stream of tourists. It is the gateway to the Antarctic and holds among the most stunning scenes in the world when traveling to the other coast. Hotel Commodore is an interesting place with about 120 Executive Rooms, several conference facilities, buzzing restaurants, swimming pool, spa and a golf course across the road. We were picked up at the airport by Charles (names changed) and on reaching the hotel I noticed the sign that the Duty Manager that time was Paul who was actually at the reception and not his swanky office behind it. He checked us ‘in’ with all the forms filled and personally carried our luggage and showed us into the room while Charles minded the desk. That evening, I was pleasantly surprised to find Charles, the driver, fixing the telephone in one of the lobbies and a while later, he was helping the deputy chef in setting up the grill on the terrace for the barbeque party.

The next day, when I wanted to be dropped at the city centre, Irene, who was at the reception checking in people, answering the telephones and minding the cashier desk, took charge of the SUV that Charles drove the previous day and drove me, leaving the desk to another girl to manage. A day later, when I needed to check the internet and print an attachment, Irene did all that in a flash. As I watched this happening, I noticed Charles, the driver, putting in a set of disposable glasses at the water bubble and taking away the waste bag which was up to the brim. Later in the night, I found one of the waitresses who also minds the cash box in the bar when needed and advises you on various wines, reappeared in casual cloths to baby sit for a family staying in the hotel. This, even as I found Paul, the Duty Manager, making a Board with plastic letters for the next day’s engagements!

The hotel was not small with about 150 guests at that time and two conferences and a host of parties. Very few employees were visible and yet they were all hungry for work and no one was willing to relax. The driver was minding several things than snooze in the van. At first impression, it appeared easily explicable - the management has trained or selected people with multiple skills. Thus Charles can drive, fix the telephones, attend to electric problems, and innovate when the magnet in the treadmill broke. Irene must have been trained in driving an SUV, operating the internet, fax, printer, on-line booking, buying and selling foreign exchange, checking guests in, and answering all their questions regarding tourist spots. Paul has obviously been trained not merely to supervise the entire operations, but also to attend at the front desk when others are busy and double-up even as a concierge to carry luggage and show you the rooms.

Multi skill has been an old concept but we hardly see it happening except at home by fathers and mothers. Every organization has initially been advised of the need for multi skill training among employees to optimize manpower and reduce over-time. This is particularly so in the case of large, traditional, stable systems which Henry Mintzberg noted as machine bureaucracies. In the 60’s and 70’s, multi skilling was considered an important strategy for efficient manning and cost control. Thus, operators and technicians were given training in related or additional skills in a painstaking manner. Many times, such multi-skill training and manning were a part of the collective agreements arrived at after much cloak and dagger drama. Despite heavy expenditures and painful processes, multiple skills acquired were hardly implemented, either due to lax manning standards or for lack of commitment. In the process, many jobs in the machine bureaucracy became narrower and narrower coupled with restrictive practices. Desks proliferated, people bloated in numbers & size and the processes became more and more intricate. An illustration of how this can happen is from Al Gore`s famous report on reinventing the U.S Government, where he records dozens of steps to purchase one ash-tray!

The lesson from Commodore was that the key to multi skill happening in reality is commitment or ownership. Ownership was so evident that there was perpetual hunger among the people to be physically active and do things that will end up in satisfying the customers with least cost. The jobs have not been standardized. The skills have not been standardized and even the processes have not been standardized. Yet, there were standards implicit in each one of these actions to ensure quality of output arising from the commitment to perform and achieve the end result of satisfying the customer at low cost and quickly. On the contrary, in the machine bureaucracy of the large systems, the principles of chain of command and scalar chains, spans of control and functional differentiations over-power every thing else.

In Henry Mintzberg`s classification, there is a second variety i.e. that of professional bureaucracy that may typically arise in hospitals and evident from its concentration on standardization of skills. It is reported that the colonial regimes relied very much on the standardization of skills as a method of controlling the operations of distant lands where neither the processes nor the outputs could be defined very well.

Mintzberg also referred to adhocracy arising from the terminology used earlier by Alvin Toffler. Adhocracy, as per Mintzberg, would suit large complex projects where a high degree of improvisation, innovation, teamwork and mutual adjustment are required. In fact, the primary coordinating mechanism in this type of organizational design is mutual adjustment. Adhocracy relies on little formalization of behaviour with little jurisdictional lines. Though the concept of adhocracy was conceived as applicable to huge projects such as NASA, in the new world of the 21st century, adhocracy could indeed be the spirit and soul of all high performing organizations. Such adhocracy should not be mistaken for anarchy or chaos but as empowered behaviour that relies on mutual adjustments to deliver the envisioned targets or goals. In such a design, the administrative and operative/functional work blend well and do not suffer from red-tape and deep hierarchy. The processes may be churning all the time reckoning the contingency factors to be able to meet the set targets.

The challenge for the HR function is not merely to copy an organizational structure on an intuitive basis or from models in another country but to ensure that the people and their behaviours synergize well with a customised design. A machine bureaucracy design will act as a constraint to committed customer oriented output. At the same time, a dynamic network type of an organizational design will be ill-suited if the people are narrowly trained and also lack commitment. Consequently, an effective and high performing organization may have a deliberately designed adhocracy with multi-skilled employees who also are committed to producing the standardized output or steep targets.

Life being full of paradoxes - I landed in another airport en route home, nearly missing the vehicle as the driver was sleeping in the car instead of holding the placard as it was infradig. Later, while one the way, he would not attend to a simple problem in the distributor that was stalling the engine as it has to be done by the ‘maintenance department’. Fresh from the multi-skill euphoria, I promptly fixed it for the driver!