Admit it. Sometimes the projects youre working on (school, work, or both) can get pretty boring and monotonous. Wouldnt it be great to have a magic button you could push to get someone else to do that boring, time-consuming stuff? At Pfizer, that magic button is a reality for a large number of employees.

As a global pharmaceutical company, Pfizer is continually looking for ways to help employees be more efficient and effective. The companys senior director of organizational effectiveness found that the Harvard MBA staff we hired to develop strategies and innovate were instead Googling and making Power Points. Indeed, internal studies conducted to find out just how much time its valuable talent was spending on menial tasks was startling. The average Pfizer employee was spending 20 percent to 40 percent of his or her time on support work (creating documents, typing notes, doing research, manipulating data, scheduling meetings) and only 60 percent to 80 percent on knowledge work (strategy, innovation, networking, collaborating, critical thinking). And the problem wasnt just at lower levels. Even the highest-level employees were affected. Take, for instance, David Cain, an executive director for global engineering. He enjoys his jobassessing environmental real estate risks, managing facilities, and controlling a multimillion-dollar budget. But he didnt so much enjoy having to go through spreadsheets and put together Power Points. Now, however, with Pfizers magic button, those tasks are passed off to individuals outside the organization.

Just what is this magic button? Originally called the Office of the Future (OOF), the renamed Pfizer Works allows employees to shift tedious and time-consuming 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 service outsourcing firms. When a request is received, a team member in India calls the Pfizer employee to clarify whats needed and by when. The team member then e-mails back a cost specification for the requested work. If the Pfizer employee decides to proceed, the costs involved are charged to the employees department. About this unique arrangement, Cain said that he relishes working with what he prefers to call his personal consulting organization.The number 66,500 illustrates just how beneficial Pfizer Works has been for the company. Thats the number of work hours estimated to have been saved by employees whove used Pfizer Works. What about Joe Cains experiences? When he gave the Indian 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, Pfizer pays me not to work tactically, but to work strategically

What role do you think organizational structure plays in an organizations efficiency and effectiveness? Explain.