Stuck creating and organization structure . . . . Try developing an organization model first

Struggling to complete an Organization Design at the Organization Structure step, try creating an Organization Model first. 

An Organization Model is a diagram or picture that will allow your design team to agree on concepts and principles before getting to boxes, functions, and people. It critical step in a highly contested design, a team that is not working well together when many of the individuals involved in the process stand to lose authority, power or even a position. 

The example/diagrams below were a 3,000 person IT organization. The original organization structure was decentralized with four separate CIO’s, in each Division, and one at Corporate. All the Divison CIO’s has a loose dotted line report to the Corporate CIO. The separate IT organizations did not leverage cost, tools, software, best practices; each acted mostly independently of the other groups. 

The design principles of the Organization Design were:

1. IT Governance – Set and enforces measurable standards and processes
2. Role Definition - Organization has clear roles, and responsibilities with defined handoffs between functions/people, with checks and balances
3. Seamless to Business – Identified point of contact to business providing services to meet needs of the Business partner needs, deliverable versus headcount driven
4. Agile – Fast, flexible organization able to respond to changes quickly
5. Balance BU Priorities – Able to manage all work priorities with business involvement in a communicated, quick, involved, transparent method.
6. IT as Valued Partner – Able to add value to Business and end customer.
7. One IT – All IT organizations are working as one.
8. Quality Oriented – Robust IT process that creates high quality
9. Vendor Management – Effectively manage vendors
10. Resource Management – Define and develop IT skills, career development, and common language

We spent a day on designing the organizational structure and it difficult. The team would not / did not get agreement on any issue. Going back to the drawing board we added an additional step in creating an organization model. The organization model was higher level and broad enough that the team was able to agree on a model. The next step of an organizational structure based on the organization model was completed.

The design team did not include the CIO’s but their direct reports. The organization structure below was a step one structure; step two was a future consolidation and reduction of direct reports to the CIO. This may not always be needed but in this instance, a stepped approach was needed to assist in the transition.

Organization Model

Organization Structure