Organization Design

Integrate structure, process, and people for holistic impact

Organization redesign is inevitable—half of organizations have gone through a redesign in the last two years and the other half expect to in the next two years. The benefits of a successful redesign are clear: faster growth, better decision making, and greater efficiency. But fewer than a quarter of redesign efforts actually improve performance. Small structural changes or off-the-shelf approaches for de-layering rarely result in lasting value.

Successful redesigns don’t just fix pain points, they go beyond “boxes and lines” to deliver on a holistic set of design imperatives. We assess strengths and opportunities unique to each business to design a more effective operating model by linking to strategy, ensuring accountability, enabling enterprise-wide collaboration, and addressing behavior change and other barriers holding people back. And we use tech-enabled approaches that deliver more value in up to half the time.

What we do

We approach operating model design holistically, with strategy at the center:

Create the structure to enable the strategy

Establish effective structures, governance, and roles guided by a set of design principles aligned with the strategic priorities of the business.

Build processes that unlock performance

Codify performance management goals with rigor and instill efficient decision making; ensure systems and technology enable—rather than constrain—success.

Empower people to do their best work

Support informal networks and foster a culture of continuous improvement; ensure the right talent and skills thrive within a workforce prepared for the future.

Featured capabilities

Complementary to our expertise and knowledge, we offer analytics-powered digital solutions and realistic simulations to make redesign efforts more efficient and successful.

Decision Making Simulation: Identifies ways to improve decision making by immersing teams in a collaborative simulation to address a real business problem, supported by expert guidance

OrgLab: Unlocks hidden insights from human resources data, visualizes organization design scenarios, and empowers effective decisions as leaders adapt the operating model – structure, processes, and people – to align with business strategy

O360 Survey: Maps and benchmarks the current operating model against best practices to identify and evaluate strengths and weaknesses across levers

Organizational Health Index: Applies analytical rigor to organizational health management by offering quantitative diagnostics and proven recipes for success, enabling the factors required to sustain long-term performance

Examples of our work

Reorganizing for sales growth

For a power retailer seeking major revenue growth, a new organizational design supported by strategy transformed the sales model, eliminating non-value-added activities and strengthening top management’s role as “super coaches” to the sales team. Profits grew by 25 percent in a year.

Reducing complexity to better serve the customer

A global consumer goods manufacturer eliminated complexity in several regions and functions, halving the time required to make decisions in critical processes. This helped the company bring products to market faster in response to changing customer needs.

Remaking operations for efficiency and savings

At a global consumer goods company, a new CEO reduced the corporate center by 50 percent, redesigned key human resources and finance processes for efficiency, and consolidated fragmented supply chain functions. Savings totaled $500 million over three years.

Featured experts

Featured insights

A circle of chairs in various styles creates an ideal setting for collaboration.

Article

Returning to the office? Focus more on practices and less on the policy

February 14, 2025 -

The working model is far less important than the work environment leaders create. Five core practices can help organizations implement a policy that best fits their culture.