We know the joke: consultants use way too many frameworks. But these are our favorites. Rooted in Jay Galbraith’s methodology and refined over years of practice, these are the essential models we rely on to guide our clients.
Charts below use Human Resources as the illustrative example function.
Every HR capability sits centrally, with no dedicated presence in the business lines.
Dedicated HR leads sit with each business line but still report back to the center.
Some HR capabilities stay central; others report solidly into the business line itself.
Each business line runs its own full HR team, with no central function at all.
Once the enterprise operating model is set, every corporate function faces its own positioning question: how much sits in the center versus in the business lines? There are four classic options along a spectrum. Each option strikes a different balance between centralized control and freedom in the business lines, and the same function can be positioned differently across companies, or shift over time as the business changes.
The starting point is the operating framework: how closely or loosely held the company is designed to be should drive how its functions are positioned, since a loosely held portfolio with heavily centralized functions (or the reverse) creates constant friction. From there, we work capability by capability rather than treating the function as one block, because the right answer often differs across the work: policy and transactional services may belong in the center while advisory roles embed in the business. The framework gives leaders a shared vocabulary for a debate that otherwise becomes a tug-of-war between corporate and the business lines.