Strategic Organizational Design
Strategic Organization Design
The Need:
Senior organizational leaders are constantly facing the need to restructure their organizations. Changes in leadership, a shift in strategy, or changing factors within an organization often create the need for reorganizing. Organization design is one of the most potent tools available to senior managers for shaping the direction of their organizations. It can be a key leverage point for directing attention and energy to certain critical activities in an organization.
Organizational leaders, however, often lack the tools necessary to help them in making decisions about how to structure their organizations. Efforts at restructuring are often uneven and unsystematic. Decisions to reorganize are often made with insufficient information and without a clear process to guide the effort. The result is that reorganizations often fail to produce the desired effects, leading instead to further confusion or problems within the organization.
The Process:
Strategic Organization Design is a four-phase participative process intended to provide senior leaders with a systematic, step-by-step method for examining the structure of their organizations. The four-phases are as follows:
p Preliminary Analysis p Strategic Design p Operational Design p Implementation
The preliminary analysis involves the collection of information necessary for making design decisions. Structured interviews are conducted focusing on the strategy of the organization, the key tasks being performed and current strengths and weaknesses of the organization. Operational design involves the structuring of supervisory roles, information flows, and jobs within the context of the strategic design decisions. Implementation involves managing the transition from the current design to a new design.
Page 2
Strategic Organization Design
The key restructuring decisions are made during the
The Need:
Senior organizational leaders are constantly facing the need to restructure their organizations. Changes in leadership, a shift in strategy, or changing factors within an organization often create the need for reorganizing. Organization design is one of the most potent tools available to senior managers for shaping the direction of their organizations. It can be a key leverage point for directing attention and energy to certain critical activities in an organization.
Organizational leaders, however, often lack the tools necessary to help them in making decisions about how to structure their organizations. Efforts at restructuring are often uneven and unsystematic. Decisions to reorganize are often made with insufficient information and without a clear process to guide the effort. The result is that reorganizations often fail to produce the desired effects, leading instead to further confusion or problems within the organization.
The Process:
Strategic Organization Design is a four-phase participative process intended to provide senior leaders with a systematic, step-by-step method for examining the structure of their organizations. The four-phases are as follows:
p Preliminary Analysis p Strategic Design p Operational Design p Implementation
The preliminary analysis involves the collection of information necessary for making design decisions. Structured interviews are conducted focusing on the strategy of the organization, the key tasks being performed and current strengths and weaknesses of the organization. Operational design involves the structuring of supervisory roles, information flows, and jobs within the context of the strategic design decisions. Implementation involves managing the transition from the current design to a new design.
Page 2
Strategic Organization Design
The key restructuring decisions are made during the