Designing Your Organization

What it’s about

Building on the Star Model developed over thirty years by Jay Galbraith, this book equips leaders and organization design practitioners to solve the five most vexing design challenges facing modern firms: organizing around customers, operating across borders, making a matrix work, resolving the centralization-decentralization dilemma, and organizing for innovation. Rather than offering fads or one-size-fits-all templates, the authors ground every recommendation in contingency and complementary-systems theory: strategy dictates the organizational capabilities a firm must excel at, and those capabilities become the criteria for choosing among complementary sets of structures, processes, metrics, rewards, and people practices. With rich company examples (Cemex, IBM, Procter & Gamble, MeadWestvaco, Northwest Guaranty), assessment tools, and clear step-wise reasoning, the book teaches leaders to manage complexity deliberately, use lateral connections as strategic levers, and treat organization design as an ongoing process rather than a periodic reorganization event.

The through-line

Who it’s for

A business leader or organization design/HR practitioner who wants to build an organization capable of executing a complex, third-generation strategy and gaining competitive advantage.

The problem

Their current organization is a barrier rather than an enabler to executing complex strategies involving customers, geographies, matrices, scale, and innovation. They feel overwhelmed by organizational complexity, frustrated by silos and politics, and uncertain whether to centralize, matrix, or reorganize.

The plan

1. Articulate strategy and translate it into no more than five differentiating organizational capabilities as design criteria.
2. Diagnose which of the five challenges you face and how far along the relevant spectrum your strategy requires you to be.
3. Choose complementary structures, processes, lateral connections, rewards, and people practices aligned to those capabilities.
4. Build lateral capability by evolving from networks to teams to integrative roles to matrix, using the lightest touch needed.
5. Treat the change as a project with a decision framework, goals, milestones, transition management, and participative change management.

The payoff

An organization that is an enabler, not a barrier, so employees can easily make the right decisions and focus energy on customers and innovation. · The ability to reconfigure quickly around opportunities and threats, gaining competitive advantage over slower rivals. · Successful execution of complex strategies—customer solutions, global coordination, matrix integration, balanced centralization, and organic growth.

See our guide

• Study People And Organizations With Scientific Rigor →
• The Behavioral Science Underneath It All →
• Build A People Analytics Function →
• Design The Organization And Change It →
• Do Research That Holds Up →
• Design Surveys People Answer Honestly →
• Understand What Drives Individual Performance →

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• Applied Multivariate Stats Social Sciences Stevens →
• Assessing Change in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy of Children and Adolescents (Psychology, Psychoanalysis & Psychotherapy) →
• Basics Qualitative Research Grounded Theory Corbin Strauss →
• Bayesian Multilevel Models for Repeated Measures dаta A Conceptual and Practical Introduction in R →
• Beyond Hr Boudreau Ramstad →
• Compensating Your Employees Fairly →

Additional reading

• Designing the Customer-Centric Organization · Jay R. Galbraith

  The book is cited as the source for more in-depth examples and discussion on customer-centric design, the core topic of Chapter Two.

• Designing the Global Corporation · Jay R. Galbraith

  The book is referenced as a more comprehensive examination of organizing internationally, the core topic of Chapter Three.

• Managing Across Borders: The Transnational Solution · C. Bartlett and S. Ghoshal

  Cited as a key source for understanding the advanced 'transnational' organizational model discussed in the chapter on organizing across borders.

Featured in these guides

• The Behavioral Science Underneath It All →Cited source
• Build A People Analytics Function →Cited source
• Design The Organization And Change It →Cited source
• Study People And Organizations With Scientific Rigor →Cited source
• Do Research That Holds Up →Cited source
• Design Surveys People Answer Honestly →Cited source
• Understand What Drives Individual Performance →Cited source