Being a manager is one of the most difficult – and potentially one of the most rewarding – jobs anyone can have in an organization. A successful manager must continually improve their systems and processes to make them more efficient, more effective and less costly. Because the business environment is constantly changing (new employees, new technologies, new sources of supply, new competitors), managers must always be attentive to the need to restructure their organization to remain competitive in the market. For better organization, make sure to consider the following factors. Division of Labor The very first step in organizational design is to assign specific employees to specific tasks, called division of labor. In a one-person organization, such as a home-based public relations agency, only one person completes all the work that needs to be done. The business owner types letters, answers phones, places advertisements for their business, designs promotional materials for clients, writes press releases, schedules clients for media interviews and radio appearances and on television, does the accounting, pays the bills and even underwrites the trash! Once the PR agency owner hires an employee, she can then make her operation more efficient through effective division of labor. The new employee may take on tasks that the owner is not very good at or that require a lot of work but do not generate income – such as typing letters and answering phones. This way, the owner can focus his efforts on the things that he is best at and that give him a better cash return on the investment of his time. In his book Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith very clearly defended the division of labor. As an example, he cites the case of a pin production factory. “One man pulls the thread, another straightens it, a third cuts it, a fourth points it, a fifth sharpens it at the top to receive the head; making the head requires two or three distinct operations; putting it on is a special matter, whitening the pins is another; it is even a job in itself to put them on paper; in this manner divided into about eighteen distinct operations, which in some manufactures are all performed by distinct hands, although in others the same man sometimes performs two or three..