Organizational design consulting is the work of shaping structure, decision rights and the operating model around the demand a company intends to own, rather than around the product categories it happens to have grown out of. It covers how the organization is divided, who decides what, where accountability sits, and how the parts that need each other coordinate. Vivaldi has worked on strategy and organization since 1999, from ten offices on four continents.
- Since 1999strategy and organization work
- 200+published case studies
- 10 officeson four continents
- 5xWirtschaftsWoche Best of Consulting, Strategy and Innovation
When companies bring us in
Organizational design is usually bought by a CEO, COO or business unit president who already has a growth strategy they believe in and cannot work out why it is not moving. The trigger is almost never the planning calendar.
- The growth the strategy depends on has no owner. The opportunity sits across two or three divisions, so it appears in nobody’s plan, nobody’s budget and nobody’s bonus. It gets discussed every quarter and pursued by no one.
- After growth by acquisition. Several businesses serve overlapping customers from separate structures, and the combined capability the deal was justified on has no mechanism to appear.
- Decisions take longer than the market allows. Everything escalates, committees multiply, and the people closest to the information have the least authority to act on it.
- A previous reorganization moved the boxes and changed nothing. The chart was implemented on schedule. Decision rights stayed where they were, and so did the behavior.
- A new strategy asks for work the current structure cannot route. A shift to services, platforms or direct customer relationships rarely fits a structure built around product lines.
Why most reorganizations do not deliver
Most companies are organized around their product categories, because that is how the business grew and how the P&L is reported. The logic is sound and it is also the problem.
Customers do not have product categories. They have situations they are trying to resolve, and the situations worth owning usually cut across two or three of the company’s internal divisions. When that happens the opportunity has no owner, and an opportunity with no owner is not a strategy problem. It is a structural one.
Reorganizations fail to fix this for three reliable reasons.
- They are designed by analogy. Peer org charts get benchmarked and the company ends up designing for conformity rather than for the demand it intends to win. Your structure should be legible to your customers, not to your competitors’ HR function.
- Decision rights do not move. If the same people approve the same things after the change, the boxes changed and the company did not. This is the single most common outcome, and it is measurable within a quarter.
- Nobody owns the new seams. Every structure creates boundaries, and every boundary creates work that falls between two owners. A design that has not named who owns the seams has relocated the problem rather than solved it.
The diagnostic is quick and it is uncomfortable. Take the three growth opportunities your company says matter most and ask who owns each one. If the honest answer for any of them is a committee, or nobody, structure is at least part of your constraint.
What our organizational design consulting services include
Five bodies of work. Each can be engaged on its own, and most companies need three.
1. Establishing what the structure has to serve
Structure is a means. Before anything is redrawn we establish what it is meant to produce, described as customer situations rather than as product categories, and we test which of those situations currently has a named owner.
Opportunity crosses internal boundaries
Opportunity has a single named owner
2. Designing the operating model
The structure is the boxes. The operating model is how work actually flows through them, and changing the first without the second is the most common reason this work disappoints.
- What must be common across the organization and what should deliberately vary, decided explicitly rather than inherited from whichever unit was loudest
- How planning, budgeting and resource allocation have to change, since a structure that cuts across the P&L and a budget that does not will resolve in favor of the budget
- The handoffs between units that the new design depends on, specified at the level of who sends what to whom and when
3. Placing decision rights and accountability
We move decisions to where the information is, which is almost always lower in the organization than where they currently sit, and we attach a single name to each outcome.
- Which decisions move, who holds them afterward, and what the previous holder stops approving
- Accountability that survives contact with a matrix, meaning one name per outcome rather than a shared responsibility that resolves to none
- Ownership for the opportunities that cross internal boundaries, which is often a named owner with a budget line rather than a redrawn chart
4. Choosing the smallest intervention that works
A full restructure is expensive, slow and disruptive, and it is frequently the wrong instrument. We work the options in order of cost before recommending the largest one.
- Whether naming an owner and granting a decision right resolves the problem without touching the chart, which it often does
- Where a coordination mechanism, a shared target or a joint budget achieves what a merger of units would, at a fraction of the disruption
- Where the structure genuinely blocks the strategy and a redesign is warranted, stated with the costs attached rather than as an assumption
5. Sequencing the transition and measuring it
Moving boxes is fast. Changing how people work is not, and the organization still has to hit the current year’s numbers while it happens.
- A sequence that does not ask the company to change everything at once, with the order driven by dependency rather than by enthusiasm
- The specific behaviors that have to be different once the lines move, because structure changes permission and does not by itself change practice
- Measurement on whether decisions now get made faster and by whom, rather than on whether the new chart was implemented on schedule
Not sure whether structure is actually your constraint?
Start with a working session with one of our partners. We will take your three most important growth opportunities and establish, on the record, who owns each one.
How an organizational design engagement works
- Establish the demand. What the company intends to own, described as customer situations, and which of those the current structure can route. The output is a map of opportunities against owners, including the ones with none.
- Diagnose the structure. Where decisions are actually made against where the information sits, what the existing design does well, and which constraints are structural rather than behavioral. We name what is working, because most reorganizations break it.
- Design the model. Structure, decision rights, accountability and the coordination mechanisms for whatever crosses the new lines, with the smallest intervention that delivers the outcome recommended ahead of the largest.
- Sequence and instrument. The transition plan, the behaviors that have to change alongside the chart, and the measures that will show within two quarters whether decisions are moving differently.
Why companies choose Vivaldi for organizational design
Three reasons come up repeatedly in the briefs we win.
- We design from demand, not from a benchmark. We are a strategy firm, so the structure we propose is derived from the growth the company intends to capture. A design that starts from peer org charts optimizes for looking normal.
- We argue against restructuring when it is not needed. Naming an owner and moving a decision right resolves a surprising share of these problems. A firm whose answer is always a restructure is describing its business model rather than your situation.
- We stay for the seams. The opportunities that cross the new boundaries are where the value is and where designs fail. We specify who owns them before the structure goes live, not after someone notices.
How to evaluate an organizational design consultant
Worth asking of anyone on your shortlist, including us.
- Ask what the structure is meant to serve. A firm that opens with peer benchmarking is designing for conformity. The first question should be about the demand you intend to own.
- Ask whether a reorganization is actually required. A good answer includes the cheaper options and why they were ruled out. A firm that always arrives at a restructure is selling one.
- Ask where decision rights will move. If the answer is nowhere, you are buying a new chart. Ask specifically what each layer stops approving.
- Ask who owns the new seams. Every design creates boundaries. If nobody is named for the work that falls between them, the problem has been moved rather than solved.
- Ask how they measure success. Implementation of the chart is a project milestone. Faster decisions, with clearer ownership, against the growth the design was built for, is an outcome.
Organizational design consultancy, restructuring practice or HR operating model team?
| Criterion | Organizational design consultancy | Restructuring and cost practice | HR operating model team |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starting question | What demand is the structure supposed to serve, and who owns it today | What does the organization cost, and where is the duplication | How are roles, levels and reporting lines defined and administered |
| Typical deliverables | Target structure, operating model, decision rights map, ownership for cross-boundary growth, transition sequence | Span and layer analysis, headcount model, cost case, severance and transition plan | Job architecture, grading, role descriptions, HR process design |
| Who owns it | CEO or business unit president, with the COO and CHRO | CFO, usually with a board or investor mandate | CHRO and the HR function |
| How success is measured | Decision speed, clear ownership, and the growth the design was built to capture | Cost taken out, against plan and on date | Consistency, compliance and administrative efficiency |
| Best when | The strategy is agreed and the organization cannot route the work it requires | The cost base is the problem and the mandate is explicit | The design is settled and it has to be made operable |
These are frequently bought as substitutes for one another. A cost mandate will produce a smaller version of the structure you already have, which is a legitimate outcome and not the same as a design. Our view on organizational change management and on the operating model a strategy actually requires sets out where each one stops.
Related work
Organizational design is one of five capabilities in this group, and the boundaries between them matter when you are scoping.
- Organizational enablement when the structure is broadly right and the constraint is capability rather than design.
- Change management when the design is decided and one specific change has to land, with an end state and a date.
- Cultural transformation when the structure is not the issue and what gets rewarded is. Design sets who decides. Culture sets what gets promoted, funded and forgiven, and the two fail in different ways.
- Leadership development when the new structure asks leaders to work in a way they have not had to before.
- Capability development when the roles the design creates require skills the organization does not currently hold.
This work sits inside our People, Culture & Capabilities practice at Vivaldi, the strategy firm behind the Demand Landscape and the Interaction Field. Further reading: what organizational change management actually involves.
Organizational design consulting in the US and worldwide
Our organization work runs out of ten offices on four continents, with the US team in New York. Multi-market designs carry a specific complication: a decision right that is genuinely devolved in one country is treated as provisional in another, and a global model applied without translation produces a structure that is formally identical and operationally different in every market. We specify decision rights at the level of the decision rather than the title, which travels better. German and Swiss engagements run from our Dusseldorf, Hamburg, Munich and Zurich offices.
Start with who owns your best growth
One working session on your three most important growth opportunities and whether any of them currently has a single named owner. You leave with a view of whether this is a structure problem or an assignment problem, and what the smaller intervention would be.