Most businesses do not design their organisational structure. They accumulate it. A team forms around a person. A reporting line gets added because someone needed a manager. A new function is created because a problem needed an owner. This works well enough at twenty people. By the time you reach sixty or eighty, the accumulated structure is often actively getting in the way.
The most common structural problems after growth ¶
The first is unclear decision rights. As organisations grow, the question of who can decide what becomes genuinely complicated. Decisions that used to be made by the founder now need to be made by someone else, but the process for making them has not been designed. The result is either decisions being escalated unnecessarily, or decisions being made without the right people involved. Both are expensive.
The span of control problem ¶
Founders and early leaders often end up with direct reports numbering ten, twelve, or more. This is usually a sign that the organisation has grown but the leadership layer has not been properly built out. A span of control that large means each direct report gets very little of their manager's attention, and the manager has no time to think about anything beyond the immediate operational demands. Redesigning the leadership layer is uncomfortable but usually necessary.
When to redesign versus when to adjust ¶
Not every structural problem requires a full redesign. Sometimes the issue is a single reporting line that does not make sense, or a team mandate that has drifted from what the business actually needs. A diagnostic review is usually the right way to establish which situation you are in. A full redesign is a significant undertaking and should not be the default response to organisational friction.
How to approach a redesign without losing momentum ¶
The risk in any restructure is that the organisation spends six months focused on the change rather than on the work. The way to manage this is to be clear about what is being decided and when, to communicate the logic rather than just the outcome, and to keep the implementation timeline as short as is genuinely feasible. Restructures that drag on create more uncertainty than the original structural problem.
The role of outside perspective ¶
One of the reasons organisational design is hard to do internally is that the people doing the design are also inside the structure being designed. They have relationships, histories, and assumptions that make it difficult to see the organisation clearly. An outside perspective is useful not because the consultant knows more about the business, but because they are not carrying the same set of assumptions about what is possible.
If your organisation has grown significantly in the past two to three years and the structure feels like it is not keeping up, it is worth a conversation. Our diagnostic review is usually the right starting point.