Org Structure Isn’t Everything in Org Design

If you concentrate on org structure alone, you can fix whole class problems by tweaking the culture or changing the incentive system. Every solution to an organizational design problem requires restructuring. There will always be problems in a newly formed organization, just because you haven't discovered or experienced them yet, but that's the big... See more

It probably gives you an idea of context discovery when doing organization design in a large corporation. To understand what might need to change and why Microsoft's CEO Steve Sinofsky had to go through 'three months of 100 meetings. Windows leadership had to balance incentives with the structure for the organizational change to be successful. Sino... See more

It has been cited that Apple's unusual organizational structure has enabled it to innovate over the years. Organization design is taught through the lens of organizational structure in most MBA programs. For decades, there has been a recurring debate over functional vs unit organizations. A company's organizational structure is one of the most legi... See more

It makes sense to him to look at organizational design from a more practical perspective by referring to it as 'searching for form-context fit.' You can make small changes to your team or observe how changes percolate throughout the entire company. You just have to watch, try things out, and then reflect on what happens if you want to learn how to ... See more

When shaping an organization in practice, your work decomposes into manipulating three levers: structure, incentives, and culture. Organization designers know they must consider the interplay between all three elements. For example, companies organized into business units tend to have different cultures at the unit level, but strong company culture... See more