Lead Essay
Two Camps
If you've ever been reorg'd and thought "this is bullshit," guess what? You were probably right.
In a 2013 McKinsey survey of 2,063 executives, 1,534 had experienced a redesign at their current organization. Among respondents personally involved in one, 21% said the new structure had been fully implemented, met its initial objectives very or extremely well, and improved performance.[1]
That does not mean that the remaining 79% are a dumpster fire. Still: only 21% cleared all three bars. That is bad! Especially for something that absorbs months of senior attention, a lot of consulting fees, and an otherworldly quantity of PowerPoint slides.
The challenge is that the market for organization design has split one problem set into separate practices. One group gets hired to design the formal organization: reporting lines, roles, decision rights, resources, governance. Another gets hired to work on the lived organization: trust, habits, informal networks, conflict, participation, and how work actually gets done. The first usually has a clear executive sponsor and a transformation budget. The second often follows the first one's design work, and helps it actually work, but at a lower rate with lighter formal endorsement.
Two questions:
- What is being designed? Formal architecture or lived behavior and informal organization?
- Who
