These are some examples of organisational efficiency which we have recently encountered and addressed:

The company not getting ‘full value’ from its staff:

People being promoted too quickly
Overbearing senior management: middle managers not being allowed to manage
Managers being asked to operate without adequate managerial training

Senior management structure not correctly streamlined:

Too much filtering up to the MD: this created decision-making bottlenecks and a decision-making process that caused work to be lost or unnecessary cost incurred
Senior management encouraged to compete with each other due to a poorly designed reward structure

Lack of corporate vision and focus

Ambiguity surrounding company direction and individual responsibility
Senior managers all had different ideas of “what the company is here to do”
This had cascaded to their teams, leading to company activities aiming in different and sometimes conflicting directions
Business growth, combined with this organisational structure, was creating stresses and inefficiency in the operations of the business
Led to poor morale and lack of personal sense of “why I’m here” and “why I’m valuable”

Endemic “fire-fighting”

Nobody has time to do their job properly: impact on job satisfaction
Impact on the efficiency (and cost-effectiveness!) of the management team

Lack of clear rules for handling customers/clients

No guidelines to servicing teams, to help them say “no” or “the implications of what you are saying are...” to the client
No clear criteria to rush a client request through or assess the potential detriment to other work or to quality

Lack of clarity among senior managers (which cascaded further down the organisation):

The clear sense of who does what
No articulation of the collective and individual responsibility of the management team
No sense of where does the buck stop, on specific areas of company activity