Guide to Organisation Design: Creating high-performing and adaptable enterprises

Business failure is not limited to start ups. In America alone between 1990 and 2000, there were over 6.3 million business start-ups and over 5.7 million business shut-downs.

Risk of failure can be greatly reduced through effective organisational design that encourages high performance and adaptability to changing circumstances.  Organisation design is a straightforward business process but curiously managers rarely talk about it and even more rarely take steps to consciously design or redesign their business for success. This new Economist guide explores the five principles of effective organisation design, which are that it must be:

• driven by the business strategy and the operating context (not by a new IT system,  a new leader wanting  to make an impact, or some other non-business reason).
• involve holistic thinking about the organisation
• be for the future rather than for now
• not to be undertaken lightly—it is resource intensive even when going well
• be seen as a fundamental process not a repair job. (Racing cars are designed and built. They are then kept in good repair.)

Naomi Stanford is an organisation design consultant based in San Francisco, CA.  Before moving to America, she worked as a senior organisational development consultant for companies such as M&S, BA, Xerox, PwC and Prudential.