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.
Types of decisions and how to approach each.
Operational Choices
Examples
Sales targets, functional priorities, business performance management, internal service delivery standards.
Tools to use
Keep it simple. Give decision rights based on ownership of the work and delegated level of authority.
Risk of wrong approach
Too much complexity, too many people involved in every decision.
Decisions are the way work gets done in any organization, so ambiguity around who makes them will immediately stall execution. Different approaches are needed depending on the type of decision being made. An everyday operational task and a strategic enterprise bet call for entirely different tools, governance, and stakeholder involvement. Recognizing this will keep you from moving too slowly on simple choices or acting recklessly on complex ones.
How we use it with clients
In redesigns we use this framework to build the governance model: mapping which decisions live where, which forums exist for the recurring tension areas, and which decision rights need to be explicit.