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Management Structure
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Management Structure
I am wondering what other SU’s have for management structures. We went from having General Manager to having 2 Directors (Director of Ops and Director of outreach). the Director of outreach was meant to be more geared towards aiding the executives while the Director of Ops is exactly that (operations). This structure is extremely flawed as it leaves 2 top tier folks and makes our entire staff quite divided. There is talk about looking at other structures. My suggestion was to go back to a General Manager but perhaps have an executive assistant role (or something of that sort) that would be under the GM but there for execs. Does anyone else have a similar structure, or does anyone else mind sharing their structure if it works.
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4 Replies
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Hmm interesting – could I ask why you choose to move away from the General Manager position initially? And which one of your directors is responsible for the overall strategic direction of your org?
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I’m also curious to other SU structures. We are a SU for a University and I know that makes a difference. We have an ED (me) and a President/CEO (student) so our challenge is that depending on if your lens is from the By-laws, Student President is in charge of EVERYTHING and can overturn any decision of the ED. I’ve heard others with similar structures having the same issue. I see other members have an ED that reports to a Board and the lower reporting structure includes senior or middle management and then front line staff. In our org, I am hoping to build in an Administrative Support (for operations admin & documentation) and then a Governance Admin (for governance admin & documentation).
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We have a similar structure to Erica, we have an ED and a President, however we do clarify that the ED is the Head of Operations. Our hierarchy is more along the lines of
Board of Directors (includes Executives)
Executive Committee (President and 3 VPs)
President/ED (different portfolios)
Managers / VPs (different portfolios)Etc.
Our President wouldn’t be able to overturn the ED on their own, however the Executive Committee could. Supporting the executives is part of our ED’s job description and vice versa.
I am the Governance & Finance Manager at our SU, which is a bit of a unique position, but my department handles all admin operations and governance tasks (HR, IT, Referendum, etc).
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We have an executive director (me!) and I’m supported by an executive assistant. I’m responsible for the operations side of the house, and I report to the board of directors collectively. I have overall responsibility and accountability for the organization’s operations. The president leads the board’s collective role of “supervising management” but the president, individually, doesn’t have any independent authority over me nor can they overturn my operational decisions without a board vote.
That being said, in practice, a good working relationship between the president and the executive director, including deep conversation about what the president and the board are hearing from students, can help to ensure that those disagreements can be “negotiated” before they become an issue. If I can tell that a disagreement is approaching an impasse, and there’s agreement that the president and the board will own the consequences, I’d say that it’s good practice to defer to elected leadership unless there’s a major risk or compliance issue that’s complicating things.
Attaching a graphic of our accountability structure (CUPE 1004 is our staff union, for context).
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