Core organization design frameworks.
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.
Policy, compliance, critical centers of expertise, and selected shared services
Span-breaking, supervisory layer
Meeting local needs efficiently
Example: a large industrial company seeking a more integrated (closely related) operating model.
More integrated model: centers of expertise sit at the corporate layer, with little or no duplication of expertise in the business units.
Loosely related model: functions are embedded within diverse businesses, with a very thin, compliance-oriented corporate layer.
The function-layering blueprint guides where each functional group and capability should sit in the vertical structure of the company: the corporate layer, the business unit layers, and the geographic layers. It clarifies where to pursue global leverage and scale, and where to preserve local responsiveness and proximity to the customer and front line. The business configuration shapes the layers: the more integrated the company, the more work shifts up into the corporate layer.
We often draw the as-is version first. It reveals duplication and over-layering of common work, and it sparks an immediate debate among functional and business leaders that is well worth having. We then pressure-test each placement in the future state and look for one design pattern across functions. While each function needs to be fit for purpose, the blueprint is most powerful when all functions are viewed side by side against a common logic, which is why that effort has to be led by the CEO.