Two years ago, you created GoForLess, an app that shows people the cheapest way to travel by bus, train, or air between two cities. Your app was a big success, and now you’ve made enough money to hire additional employees. You’re trying to determine what roles your new employees should have and how they should work together and with you.

How can you give your employees enough freedom to be innovative while maintaining control to ensure that GoForLess stays true to its goals?

Consider specialization. To what extent should your new employees have broad versus narrow job responsibilities? You need people with skills in infrastructure automation, community building, programming, copywriting, data visualization, user experience, business, innovation, analysis, design, testing, and domain knowledge.

Question: Look at the following two organizational designs and indicate which one you would choose.

A. I want my employees to have very narrow job responsibilities. I’ll hire more people with specific experience next year, and each person will form the basis for future departments in my company.

B. I want my employees to have broad job responsibilities. I’ll hire a small group of employees next year that have multiple skills, and ask them to work on anything that will help the company meet its goals.