A New Kind of Structure Topic: 1iiiir'ouai assistants Admit it. Somemes the projects you're working on (school, work, or both) can get pretty boring and monotonous. Wouldn't it be great to have a magic button you could push to get someone else to do that boring, timeconsuming stuE? At Pzer, that "magic button" is a realityr for a large number of employees. As a global pharmaceutical company, Pzer is continually looking for ways to help employees be more eicient and effective. The company's senior director of organizational effectiveness found that the "Harvard MBA staff we hired to develop strategies and innovate were instead Googling and making PowerPoints." Indeed, internal studies conducted to nd out just how much time its valuable talent was spending on menial tasks was startling. The average Pzer employee was spending 20 percent to 4i] percent of his or her time on support work (creang documents, typing notes, doing research, manipulating data, scheduling meetings} and only t} percent to BE] percent on knowledge work (strategy, innovation, networking, collaborating, critical thinking}. And the problem wasn't just at lower levels. Even the highestlevel employees were affected. Take, for instance, lChaz, an executive director for global engineering. He enjoys his jobassessing environmental real estate risks, managing facilities, and controlling a mulrnillion-dollar budget. But he didn't so much enjoy having to go through spreadsheets and put together PowerPoints. Now, however, with Pzer's "magic button,'r those tasks are passed off to individuals outside the organization. 1iii-foulncln't you like a MAGIC BUTTON D you could push to get someone else to do all your tedious and boring work??? just what is this "magic button"? Originally called the Dice of the Future {00F}, the renamed PzerWorks allows employees to shift tedious and meconsuming tasks with the click of a single button on their computer desktop. They describe what they need on an online form, which is then sent to one of two Indian serviceoutsourcing rms. Tvii'hen a request is received, a team member in India calls the Pzer employee to clarify what's needed and by when. The team member then e mails back a cost specication for the requested work. If the Pzer employee decides to proceed, the costs involved are charged to the employee's department. About this unique arrangement, Cain said that he relishes working with what he prefers to call his \"personal consulng organization." The number 66,500 illustrates just how benecial PzerWorks has been for the company. That's the number of work hours estimated to have been saved by employees who've used PzerWorks. Other outcomes include: a reduction in projectrelated costs, employee productivity increased, turnaround time for projects reduced, and wide acceptance by Pzer employees. \"Phat about Chaz's experiences? 1When he gave the Virtual assistant company team a complex project researching strategic actions that worked when consolidating company facilities, the team put the report together in a month, something that would have taken him six months to do alone. He says, "Pzer pays me not to work tactically, but to work strategically.'r Discussion Questions 8-23 Describe and evaluate what Pzer is doing with its PzerWorks. 3-24 What structural implicationsgood and baddoes this approach have? (Think in terms of the six organizational design elements]I 3-25 Do you think this arrangement would work for other types of organizations? Vth or why not? What types of organizations might it also work for? 8-26 What role do you think organizational structure plays in an organization's eciency and effectiveness? Working together with your assigned group, discuss this