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Guide to Organisation Design

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Guide to Organisation Design

Profile Books,

15 min read
10 take-aways
Audio & text

What's inside?

Align your organizational design with your business strategy to unleash its power.

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Editorial Rating

6

Qualities

  • Well Structured
  • Concrete Examples
  • For Beginners

Recommendation

Naomi Stanford believes that executives pay too little attention to changing their companies’ organizational designs, perhaps because such initiatives don’t promise high-profile careers. Yet, updating your organization’s structure is a vital process that can make your company stronger by unleashing its energy and using its resources more aggressively. This handy publication covers material you might study in a college-level organizational design course. However, it isn’t a textbook. Think of this manual as a survey of the subject, with many helpful suggestions and thought-provoking ideas. The writing is compact, a little dry and somewhat jargon-laden. However, if you want to examine what your company needs to consider in a design change project, getAbstract recommends this solid resource.

Summary

Designing Your Organization

Nearly every big organization originated as a small start-up with a few people doing almost everything that needed to be done. Perhaps your company began the same way, and when it was small, organizational design was not a problem. As your firm grew, it was easy to believe your organization was set up perfectly. Hence, you didn’t feel a pressing need to shape a new organizational structure.

Then, things started to go wrong. You were too busy trying to fix the company to worry about its organizational design. You promised yourself that once you got out of this mess, you would fix your company’s structure. But, if you don’t confront a problem while the sun is still shining, you’ll be too tied up to fix it when the storm comes. Thus, you’re likely to be in trouble.

Generally speaking, executives seem to neglect organizational design change because they don’t receive credit for it. Fame goes to the bold new initiatives and increased revenues. Building a bridge will get your name on a plaque. Maintaining an existing one earns only headaches when citizens get caught in traffic jams. As soon as your organization grows to a certain size, take...

About the Author

Naomi Stanford, Ph.D., is a consultant on organizational design and is the author of many articles on the design of organizations. She has worked as a senior manager with several major international companies. She is also the author of Organization Design: The Collaborative Approach.

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