A geographical organizational structure organizes people within an organization by geographic location. This structure creates specific divisions for each location. Each division acts as if it is its own company, combining different types of personnel for various business functions. For example, each division may have its own marketing department, production department, sales department, distribution department and more. Geographic organizational structures often provide local divisions with the autonomy to operate as they would like. Divisions can understand and respond to local preferences and demand but still follow the overall business policy. Businesses with these structures are often better equipped to develop efficient regional, national and international operations.

A geographical organisational structure suits businesses that have offices or units in different regions or geographical areas. This form of structure enables businesses to have a reporting and functional system across multiple locations. Amazon’s organizational structure  incorporates geographic divisions. The company establishes groups on their physical geographic locations and related business goals. It’s the best example of geographic organization.

Amazon is particular about its organizational structure. They were the very first type of organizational structure and most big businesses still use them today, especially those with a global reach. In Amazon.com, the hierarchy is expressed in terms of a global system of clear lines of authority that heavily influence the firm’s operations.

For example, Jeff Bezos sits at the top exercising ultimate control over all senior executives and managers, who in turn apply directives through the sectors under their control either at their own discretion or at the direction of Jeff Bezos. These directives impact all relevant offices of the company all over the world.  

It is central hierarchies like this that enable complete managerial control over entire organizations, even where there are multiple product lines, services, and divisions.

The strongest part of Amazon’s org structure is its function-based global groups. Each major business function has its own dedicated group that is headed by an executive-level manager, such as a CEO or SVP. By structuring the company in this way, Amazon can efficiently and successfully manage its e-commerce operations throughout the entire organization. This structure also enables Amazon to more easily establish operations in new and emerging markets.

Geographic divisions and their sub-divisions

A geographic group company bases groups on their physical geographic locations and related business goals. For example, Amazon.com Inc., the e-commerce arm of the company, uses these divisions to make it easier to manage the e-commerce business based on the distinctions of these regions, their regulatory framework, and any challenges such as logistics. The strategic advantage of splitting elements of the company into geographic divisions is that it enables Amazon to better and more accurately address issues or problems relevant to each region, and to do so efficiently, considering the regional markets themselves. Despite Amazon’s size, however, the company only has two geographic divisions: 1) North America and 2) International.

Amazon’s org structure works because it is highly effective at supporting international growth in a variety of different markets. The company’s continued success in expanding and growing its many areas of operation are testament to it working well. close communication with local customers, Amazon has been successful in creating strong collaborative teams at each location and the company can better serve local needs and tailor their approach to the local market.

The major advantage to Amazon of its overall hierarchical structure is that it enables Amazon.com, Inc. to quickly and effectively address and implement directives from senior managers, executives, and stakeholders’ business extensively. At the same time, global and geographic divisions are advantageous in supporting the focus on different the many different facets of the business and geographic locations come with their own challenges and economic conditions which Jeff Bezos handles efficiently. The culture of employees is respected by the management. In my opinion the key to success of geographic structure of organization is respect the local culture. 

Strong leadership is when you can encourage, motivate, inspire and challenge your team to produce their best work. Strong leadership connects a team together through a common purpose and builds relationships in the workplace that allow for effective communication, more creativity and better problem-solving skills.

Geographic organizational structures work best with strong leadership. The leader needs to be a visionary and good in decision making. Geographic organizations are far and wide therefore the entire organization sharing the same vision is most important. Daimler AG, for instance, has its headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany, and has manufacturing facilities in several European locations, and has sales divisions all over the world. Daimler AG promotes equal opportunities and a culture of appreciation and respect. They believe that people are more motivated and productive when they can bring their whole selves to work

A geographical structure can offer several operational and strategic advantages, including close communication with local customers, strong collaborative teams at each location and the ability to better serve local needs and tailor their approach to the local market.

Mission Statement

A mission statement describes the overall purpose of an organization. A mission statement should be brief and answer key questions about the business of organization. Questions such as what are the basic objectives of the firm? Who are the target audience? These points should be mentioned in the mission statement. A mission statement describes what an organization hopes to achieve.

Vision Statements

Vision statements mention aspirations of the organization; they lay out the most important primary goals for a company. A vision statement is a company’s road map, indicating both what the company wants to become and guiding transformational initiatives by setting a defined direction for the company’s growth.

The top management in organizations spend a lot of time drafting, designing words, and redrafting vision statements, mission statements, values statements, goals and objectives so on and forth.

And somewhere in the course of the organization’s journey, many of its actions don’t align with the well drafted vision and mission statements. Also, in the absence of a well drafted, or a poorly written vision and mission statements organizations lose good number of opportunities in attracting and engaging talented human resource, building organizational culture, and increasing productivity while leveraging all resources to successfully implement a strategic plan.

Organizational success is often linked to inspiring vision, clear mission, and strong values. But without employee buy-in, these concepts are worthless. Employee engagement is essential to an organization’s success, and alignment is arguably even more important.

Do you know that the founders of great and stable organizations like Hewlett-Packard, 3M, and Johnson & Johnson did not have a vision statement when they started out? They began with a set of strong personal core values and a relentless drive for progress and yet had an amazing ability to translate these into concrete mechanisms. 3M Corporation always had a sense of its core values in place such as support innovation, protecting the creative individual, solving problems in a way that makes people’s lives better. These core values gave it its soul. But what really set 3M apart was the ability of its leadership over the years to create mechanisms that bring these principles to life and translate them into action. For example, 3M allows scientists to spend 15 percent of their time working on whatever interests them, requires divisions to generate 30 percent of their revenues from new products introduced in the past four years, has an active internal venture capital fund to support promising new ventures, preserves a dual career track to encourage innovators to remain innovators rather than become managers, grants prestigious awards for innovations and entrepreneurial success, and so on.

Change is constant and needs to be taken into account as it is an essential component of strategic planning. So many changes take place in organizations. Change in manpower, change in business processes, change in product portfolio, change in infrastructure so and forth. This involves moving the organization or program forward or backward to create or change something. Some plans are created out of the need for the organization to move in a certain direction, and other plans develop organically. At such times, mission and vision statements need little tweaking, rephrasing, redesigning – little change and they are important to help communicate the goals of the plan to employees and the public.

Often companies modify their vision to fit the current environment; the changes internally or externally require a revision of in its mission or vision. To identify misalignments organizations require looking around internally as well as externally, talking to people, getting inputs, and finding out whether their core values align with their business philosophies. The misalignments arise because years of ad hoc policies and practices which are incomprehensible with the organization’s underlying values. When organizations don’t mean what they have signed off as vision and mission, at some point, the employees in the organization begin to grumble about the organization’s complex sign-off process, recognizing its inconsistency with the notion of respect and trust for the individual. The first task for leaders, then, is to create an environment and a process that facilitate people to safely identify and eliminate these misalignments.

Let’s take a look at Nestlé’s vision: “to be a leading, competitive, nutrition, health and Wellness Company delivering improved shareholder value by being a preferred corporate citizen preferred employer preferred supplier selling preferred products.”

Nestlé web site includes both a “mission statement” and a “vision and values” statement. Although the company is known for Nestlé Crunch chocolate bars and other snack foods, these statements emphasize nutrition, wellness, and good corporate citizenship.

The Swiss company’s “vision and values” statement is quoted above. Its “mission statement” is: “Nestlé is…the world’s leading nutrition, health and wellness company. Our mission of ‘Good Food, Good Life’ is to provide consumers with the best tasting, most nutritious choices in a wide range of food and beverage categories and eating occasions, from morning to night.”

These statements mirror the company’s long-term business strategy. In keeping with its claimed promise to nutrition, Nestlé has invested in scientific research on nutritional aspects of the kinds of products it sells. For example, it has studied the effects of chocolate on metabolism and gut bacteria. The Economist describes this as a potentially risky strategy; by investing in research and development, the company is “playing a long game,” in contrast to the short-term strategies of some of its competitors.

Nestlé has also made an effort to practice “corporate citizenship.” It has been involved in a number of efforts to promote good agricultural and environmental practices, such as the World Cocoa Foundation, which is “committed to creating a sustainable cocoa economy by putting farmers first – promoting agricultural and environmental stewardship, and strengthening development in cocoa-growing communities.”

This article emphasizes not only being consistent with vision and mission but true alignment.

Identifying core values

In describing the alignment process, it is assumed that an organization’s core values are already clearly defined. It is important that people must be predisposed to holding them, and it is important to attract and then retain these people. Every organization has to wrestle with a niggling question: what should change and what should never change? Can policies or strategies change at a particular time? Can its core value change? Can cultural values change? Remember, undying core values should never change. But, operating practices and cultural norms should never stop changing. Because business environmental changes are constant and organization needs to change according to the environmental changes.

It’s always a good practice to review the vision and mission because in the organization’s lifecycle lot of changes takes place.  The sector in which it operates changes economically, socially, or politically; if the top management in organization such as the CEO, VP or General Manager changes their philosophy and ideas change; if the  product or service line has become obsolete due to regulation, or replacement for example cigarettes, or full service gas stations there is an immediate change in the business; sometimes the current product version is being replaced by another (iPods, for example being included into iPhones); if an organization  acquires another firm it needs to change its entire philosophy. As an organization evolves, to explain its foundation its vision and mission need the changes.

Guava also commonly known as Peru is a tropical fruit that’s subtly acidic sweet in taste that intensifies as you eat your way to the center. Its scientific name is Psidium Guajava.

It is available throughout the year but found scarcely in summer season. Being very resilient, it gives a guaranteed crop even with very little care.  It requires little amount of fertilizer, little irrigation and plant protection. It grows well in the backyard of home. Further its nutritive value is very high.  Therefore, it is an ideal fruit for the nutritional security.  In India, the best quality guavas are produced in Uttar Pradesh, particularly in Allahabad region.

This somewhat round or pear-shaped, light green, yellow, or maroon in color fruit is very tasty, very yummy. It’s appetizing; it has white or maroon flesh and lots of small hard seeds enveloped in very soft, sweet pulp. Eat it raw by sprinkling little salt and chili powder on its pieces. Oh it’s mouthwatering.

The health benefits of guavas are unlimited. This popular fruit is a source of power of nutrients. If the traditional adage says that “An apple a day keeps the doctor away” in Europe and Americas, the phrase is probably changed to “A few guavas in the season keeps the doctor away for the whole year”. Naturopaths advise eating guavas regularly.

Guava is very helpful for those who want to lose weight without compromising their intake of proteins, vitamins and fiber. It is very high in roughage and rich in vitamins, proteins and minerals, but it has no cholesterol and a low number of digestible carbohydrates. It is a very filling snack and satisfies the appetite very easily. In a related benefit to blood pressure mentioned above, an intake of guava can also help those patients who suffer from diabetes.  The high level of dietary fiber in guava helps to regulate the absorption of sugar by the body, which decreases the chances of major spikes and drops in insulin and glucose in the body.

Guavas are extremely good sources of vitamin-A, which is well known as a booster for vision health.  It can help slow down the appearance of cataracts, macular degeneration, and general health of the eyes. It can not only prevent degradation of eyesight, but even an improvement in eyesight once it has begun to degrade.

One of the most important benefits of guava is – its ability to inhibit the growth and metastasis of cancerous cells. There have been numerous studies done in recent years on guava’s effects primarily on prostrate cancer, breast cancer and oral cancers. Guava leaf oil is extremely successful as an anti-proliferative substance, and has actually been shown to be more effective than some leading modern medicines in reducing cancerous growth. Guavas are also rich in lycopene, a powerful antioxidant that has been shown to be wildly successful in reducing prostate cancer risk.

Guavas have the naturally high levels of vitamin C in them, which are four times higher than the levels found in an orange (the traditional vitamin C powerhouse) which boosts the immune system with its antioxidants. These are the major lines of defense against the proliferation of free radicals in the body, which are one of the main causes of serious conditions like cancer and heart disease. Therefore, adding guava to your diet has numerous ways in which it helps you stay health and cancer-free. They are helpful to curb diarrhea, dysentery, constipation, cough, cold, skin care, high blood pressure, and scurvy. It has a good source of copper in it and therefore it helps balancing the thyroids as well. I suggest all of you to eat guavas in raw form to get the maximum benefit of it.

Raita:

Ripened Guava – 2

Ripened Bananas – 2

1 small spoon mustard (mohari) powder

1 small spoon cumin (jeera) powder

Chopped coriander leaves

Pinch of Salt and 2 spoons of sugar for taste

Cut guavas and bananas into small pieces (after removing skin of bananas) add mustard powder, cumin powder, and little salt and 2 spoons of sugar together. Garnish the raita with coriander leaves and delicious raita is ready.

What are you waiting for? Go, get some guavas and enjoy eating them.