Over the past two years, there's been a cluster of major, rhyming reorgs. L3Harris, a major defense contractor, collapsed four defense segments into three—Space & Mission Systems, Communications & Spectrum Dominance, and Missile Solutions. Nokia restructured into two: Network Infrastructure and Mobile Infrastructure. Ubisoft announced "five Creative Houses," including one called Vantage Studios for its mega-franchises, as part of a major organizational reset to reclaim creative leadership. Aspiring global health-and-wellness CPG Kimberly-Clark went to three global segments (who knows what newly acquired Kenvue will do here): North America, International Personal Care, and International Family Care & Professional. Unilever spun off Ice Cream as The Magnum Ice Cream Company. (I also wrote about the early days of this here.)
What’s happening
- Titles are getting specific. Less “President, Operations” but President, Space & Mission Systems or EVP, Ice Cream. Not necessarily “not functions” but also not not functions. Specific sources of advantage.
- P&L accountability is unmistakable. Each of these new units is supposed to own outcomes end-to-end.
- The center is shrinking. Fewer generic corporate leaders, thinner HQ, strategy living in the businesses rather than above them.
My former coworker Michael Cata’s research from 2018–2020 comes to mind here. He found that firms with specialized, strategy-specific leadership roles outperformed peers by roughly 1–2 percentage points in net margin. That sounds modest, but in public markets that delta is the difference between “well-run” and “category leader.” (Michael, if you're reading this, I can't find a place to link to for this work. HMU.)
Generally speaking the trend is NOT toward this design—titles are becoming more generic over time, not less, likely out of some kind of uncoordinated but secular trend toward inter-firm transferability—so it’s interesting to see these edge cases.
The org design angle
As with yesterday’s bit about the unbundling of the CFO, this is Domains, Assets & Standards playing out at the executive layer. This pattern asks leaders What do you own? In more generic-leaning top teams, the answer can be accordingly vague: shared accountability, escalations, passive-voice performance explanations rather than ownership.
There’s a second pattern underneath: Lean Teams. The companies making this move are shrinking the center as they create these new operating units, with smaller rooms, clearer interfaces, less coordination cost, and decisions that happen closer to the market. Whether this stays true (it probably won't) is another question entirely, but it's a good idea that these firms should stick to if they can.
What’s unresolved
The obvious failure mode is creating “presidents” without real authority, or layering them on top of unchanged corporate functions, which just adds cost and confusion.
Ubisoft may be a cautionary case here—their Creative Houses have “full financial ownership” but haven’t named the leaders yet. The structure is announced, but the accountability is TBD. Unless presidents get true control over capital and talent, I’d see this as rebranding rather than redesign. We’ll see!
What to watch
- Change cadence. Whether the new leaders get installed quickly, or the announcement runs ahead of the reality. I assume that markets prefer KO’s approach here, where long-tenured leaders are announced with meaningful structure changes.
- Corporate shrinkage. Whether functional EVP roles are actually being downleveled into the business units, or being recreated as shadow units off the side of the C-suite.
- Margin lift. Whether these companies show the Cata-predicted 1–2 point improvement the research predicts in 18–24 months.
- Industry diffusion. Whether this spreads beyond these examples—tech is conspicuously absent from these examples.