What Is Organization Design? Types, Principles & More

With this in mind, here are the basic steps to organizational design: 1. Figure out what needs to be communicated. Start by listing the most important knowledge and who needs to have it. For example, knowledge of the product architecture must be understood by engineering, QA, product management, marketing, and sales. 2. Figure out what needs to be

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In order to implement strategy, an organization needs to integrate structure, processes, and people. A successful redesign will focus the company's resources on its strategic priorities and reduce costs. An example of a typical motivation for a redesign is a company that decided to expand outside of its US home base.

As a consultant focused on the org design of design orgs, I work across a variety of contexts—established businesses (banks, retail); software as a service (enterprise software); scale-ups (pre-IPO and growing); start-ups. And repeatedly over the past couple of years, I’ve found myself drawing some variation of the following generic digital product... See more

There's a lot of organizational flux in most companies, according to McKinsey's research. Less than a quarter of organizational redesign efforts succeed, according to McKinsey. Redesigns that work pay off in more motivated employees and more decisiveness.

Seeing design as part of a living system applies equally to more subtle design tasks, like the “design” of guiding ideas. “Organization design is widely misconstrued as moving around boxes and lines,” Bill O’Brien used to say. “The first task of organizational design concerns designing the governing ideas—the purpose, vision, and core values by whi

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Seeing design as part of a living system applies equally to more subtle design tasks, like the “design” of guiding ideas. “Organization design is widely misconstrued as moving around boxes and lines,” Bill O’Brien used to say. “The first task of organizational design concerns designing the governing ideas—the purpose, vision, and core values by whi

... 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