Organization Design
An organization’s design is the vehicle that carries the strategy forward. A misalignment between strategy and organization can often lead to business failure. A fit for purpose, agile, and high performing operating model can be a critical competitive advantage for any firm, and helps propel the execution of corporate strategy. We find that organizations with fit for purpose operating models outperform their peers by close to 20% across key busines metrics. Although structure and roles are a key piece to any operating model and organization design, our approach to design is much more holistic. We deploy a systems lens to design, looking at the necessary key organizational elements needed to drive the business strategy to include elements such as workflows, incentives, technology, and management systems. By doing so, we help organizations avoid a common pitfall; thinking that changing the organization structure will solve business challenges that are currently faced.
Bridging the gap between strategy and execution revolves heavily around building the right organization as a whole, by moving beyond just lines and boxes
Organization Design Case Studies
Economic Zone Reorganizes to Consolidate Leading Position
With competition on the rise and business landscapes changing, a leading economic zone realized a pressing need to relook at their organization design. Four key challenges were identified after an early assessment that needed to be addressed by the new organization.
Those challenges included being more agile, decision focused, customer centric, and technology driven. 10 organization levers were chosen to guide the redesign and was not limited to only structure.
Leading University Redesigns for High Performance
One of the largest educational institutions in the region was faced with regulatory pressures to become more independent, lean, and economically viable. An assessment was first conducted to highlight key gaps to develop a methodology and design criteria to guide the redesign. The new methodology integrated best practices on organization design to include more focus on workflows, linkages and change management.
Key recommendations to improve the overall approach and redesign were outlined and prioritized to build the roadmap for redesign change.
Large Government Entity’s Operating Model Redesigned for Purpose
A full-scale business transformation was underway for a 5000+ government organization. The first phase involved developing a new vision for the organization and strategic priorities, all of which were translated into more tangible outcomes and cascaded across the organization.
After the strategy was clarified, the operating model was assessed against the new strategy and critical gaps were identified. A more agile and high performing operating model was designed at the group level and then aligned with subsidiaries.
Optimizing Organizational Design at Saudi Industrial Group
With a new strategy in place, a multifaceted industrial group based in the eastern region of KSA, knew that an accompanying change in structure was required.
In addition, many legacy issues from previous management teams remained embedded in the structure and an overhaul was due. Firstly, a gap analysis was conducted comparing the new strategy and current structure, identifying the need to formulate new structures and merge others. Moreover, the new strategy promoted more control leading to some functions being centralized. In addition, processes were also mapped and analyzed for each department, determining areas where structure didn’t support the daily operations of some of the units. With this information along with benchmarks and client feedback a new organization was re-designed and a medium term roadmap was devised to ensure its successful implementation.
