1. What are the advantages and disadvantages of Modern Shed's organizational structure?
Modern Shed, based in Seattle, builds paneled dwellings for use as studio spaces, home offices, pool houses, project sheds, guesthouses, and more. Like the sheds, the company is built to be adaptive, scalable, and suited to the needs of the environment.
Modern Shed counts only 12 to 14 full-time employees. But at times, its output rivals that of a large builder, thanks to collaboration with outside sales reps and a dealer network comprised of 35 independent contractors. According to company founder Ryan Smith, the logical process of building sheds from smaller-scale structures to larger ones is a metaphor for how modern organizations should be built.
"You can use the analogy for organizations and people as well as structures," Smith states. "If you go too big you don't understand it; you have to start small."
2. When delegating work, what is the relationship between responsibility, authority, and accountability?
3. How can specialized jobs be modified to eliminate the boredom and low job satisfaction associated with them?
4. What differentiates a mechanistic organization from an organic organization?
5. How do formal workplaces differ from informal workplaces?