Job Architecture

10How Taxonomies Enable Organizational Success

We saw in Chapter 9 that investors can use taxonomies to diagnose or understand problems or challenges within a company. HR managers are the flip side of this equation: They use taxonomies to understand and execute on the treatment. If an investor sees that a company is underinvesting in its sales team, for example, then the HR team can use the data collected and analyzed through taxonomies to execute on how to fill this gap and strengthen the company.

Taxonomies can be—and in many places, already are—a part of every single HR project within a firm. Anything that involves human resources requires taxonomies. Because a company is nothing without its people, anything a company does will require a deliberate and robust analysis of its people. Any analysis of people will require segmentation and breaking a workforce into groups, which requires some level of categorization and labeling, which is another way to say taxonomies. Taxonomies should not just be relevant for HR but for sales, products, marketing, or any other function within the firm. Everyone within a company should be concerned about analyzing people and, therefore, should be concerned about taxonomies.

All management is fundamentally work transformation. When there is an issue within a team or a new directive from company leadership, the only way to respond is by having employees do more of one activity and less of another. If a sales target is missed or a competitor starts ...