Leadership
6 min read
Your org chart is a symptom, not a strategy
Restructures are seductive because they feel decisive. They also reliably solve the wrong problem when decision rights are the real issue.
Restructures are seductive because they feel decisive. You can announce one. You can draw it on a slide. It creates the appearance of momentum without requiring anybody to change how they actually work.
The problem is usually decision rights
When a company complains that things move slowly, the cause is rarely the number of layers. It is that nobody can say, for a given decision, who chooses, who must be consulted, and who simply needs to be informed. Ambiguity there produces meetings, and meetings produce delay.
Reorganizing is what companies do when they know something is wrong but have not yet worked out what.
Design around value, then staff it
Start from how value actually reaches a customer and work backwards. Which handoffs are genuinely necessary? Where does accountability have to sit for an outcome to be owned end to end? Structure should follow from those answers rather than lead them.
Plan the transition, not just the destination
The target state is the easy half. The months in between — where two structures coexist, reporting lines are unclear, and your best people are quietly updating their CVs — is where most restructures are actually won or lost.
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Recognize the problem?
If any of this sounds like your business, a short conversation is usually the fastest way to find out what is really going on.