Organization Design: Featuring a Case Study

Organization Design is an answer to the question how should the business be structured to contribute to the organization’s mission, vision, strategy and delivery on our value proposition for desires such as high performance, employee satisfaction and key societal values.  We know that customers don’t (and shouldn’t) care who is responsible for what with a business. They care about the way the process impacts them. In short, customers judge us on their total experience with us. We also know that people often treat the customer the way we treat them.  So an effective organization design gives employees a chance to do their best everyday for customers, the business and each other. A solid organization design encourages mission focus, strategic execution, management support, personal responsibility, cross-functional teamwork and pride in one’s work. An effective organization design also includes key social key societal values.

Organization design includes creating vertical and horizontal flows. Vertical flows includes the chain of command, spans of control, various layers, roles, responsibilities, communication and other factors. Horizontal flows include lateral integration, cross-functional teamwork and effective communications. Basic organization designs include functional, customers, process, product, geography, matrix and hybrid. Triggers for organization design interventions include a change in mission, strategies, culture, leadership, finances, internal business processes, technology, poor lateral coordination, service duplication, high unit costs, ineffective roles or unproductive silos. For example, the clarification of organization design and the affirmation of culture can be applied to transform two internal business units that are