It’s easy to identify technology issues that hurt associations. Maybe it’s a poorly planned website that doesn’t deliver the value members expect—or, worse, creates user-experience frustrations. Or perhaps it’s an outdated association management system that lacks critical features and stifles membership growth. An even bigger threat: weak security within your IT systems, creating risks to your data, legal vulnerabilities, and anxiety and stress for association leaders.

Often, there’s a common theme underpinning all of these issues—ad hoc organizational design. In this context, organizational design refers to the alignment of team structure, roles, and responsibilities with the business objectives of the association.

Due to the rapid pace of change, it is inevitable that the technology-related business needs that existed last year may be different than those that exist today. Changing the technology itself is often straightforward than figuring out the decision-making dynamics and individual responsibilities that must also change as a result.

For example, just a few years ago, websites were far less complex than they are today. Many web teams reported up as part of the IT department. Decisions about the website were largely driven by technology considerations. Even basic tasks required a deeper level of technical knowledge than most staff were expected to have.

Today, we view the website as the single most visible and important public-facing asset. Members, prospective members, and other audiences prefer to engage online. Nearly everyone in the organization has some role to play in delivering content via the website. Given these business changes, does it still make sense for the web team to report as part of IT? Or should they report up through marketing or membership instead?

Every association is going to be different. While there is not always a right answer with organizational design, there are often many wrong ones that can occur. Being pragmatic and intentional will help keep and maintain better results than simply hoping for the best.

A good organizational design has clear lines of communication and well-thought-out areas of responsibility. This helps to underpin good decision-making processes, including the ability to break a tie when two groups of stakeholders collide. It also considers the balance between bandwidth and perfect fit. If leaders will be stretched too thin to be effective, changing the structure may be necessary to maintain visibility and control over technology. Lastly, the roles within teams are unambiguous—job descriptions and career plans reflect the needs of the organization as well as team members’ talents. This ensures that skills align with current and emerging needs before any gaps arise.

Here are a few technology-related consequences of not updating your organizational design:

Loss of Accountability

Organizational design is critical to ensuring decision-making processes work smoothly. It is difficult to foster accountability if there’s no delegated authority and if it’s unclear where decisions should be made within an organization.

Ad hoc technology teams often don’t make good business decisions. If these decisions are made at the lower ranks, there may not be a strong understanding of how changes will affect other team members and stakeholders. If they’re forced upwards, senior leaders can get bogged down, losing their ability to see the bigger picture. Sometimes the wrong structure can even create barriers to the point where no one can decide.

These gaps are often hard to see until something goes wrong. Warning signs would include minor but avoidable system outages, delays in project completion, and IT feeling disconnected from the business. When a serious problem, such as a major IT outage or data breach, everything grinds to a halt, and it becomes obvious that better accountability would have kept everyone on track.

The right organizational design has clear lines of communication and well-thought-out areas of responsibility. This helps to underpin good decision-making processes.

Staff Turnover Increases

Turnover isn’t cheap. The rule of thumb is that turnover costs the equivalent of six to nine months of salary to replace someone. When technology professionals leave, it’s not just an expense walking out the door; critical knowledge and capacity to support your IT platforms goes with them. Losing a key web- or IT-team member can be painful and expensive.

Remember that your staff is always comparing your association to the rest of the market. Do they have opportunities to grow within your team? Do they clearly understand their role and the impact they have on the team? Are they being compensated appropriately in comparison to similar professionals?

Across the country, the job market for IT talent is fiercely competitive. Associations everywhere have difficulty recruiting and retaining the best team members, and those in hot tech markets, like Washington, DC, New York, Boston, and Chicago, should expect their team members to be bombarded with calls from headhunters.

A properly planned organizational design can help retain these professionals. Staff can envision the roles that they may one day fill by seeing how your team is growing. They remain engaged and feel like part of the larger team because their roles are aligned with the business needs and mission of the association. Lastly, with updated job descriptions and a clear understanding of roles, associations can properly benchmark compensation for their staff. Specific skills, particularly for developers, can drive salaries up, making these employees more susceptible to being poached if they’re underpaid.

Shadow IT Spreads

Shadow IT is the deployment of technology services outside of the technology department. Often well-intentioned at first, it can become destructive over time.

Eventually, the services and tools that staff adopt on their own need someone to manage them. Unable or unwilling to turn over projects to the technology team, managers instead may instead create their own quasi-tech teams. Maybe an accountant in the finance department also happens to be a system administrator, or perhaps a membership team member moonlights as a website developer.

Regardless of how it starts, this process always causes the same problems. Uncoordinated efforts and conflicting priorities create friction. Technology standards erode, and the number of platforms grows, creating security risks, brand inconsistency, and other expensive problems. Eventually, the invisible shadow IT budget balloons, and no one has a clear view of how it’s being spent.

Leaders can keep an eye on where IT responsibilities exist in their business by periodically reviewing organizational design. Maintaining the alignment between IT and the rest of the business discourages problems or issues. When they do arise, thoughtful adjustments will help keep everyone on the same page.