Design the Organization Your Customer Wants.

Your company is about to experience big change.  I know what you’re thinking: “What a great opportunity to improve your organization design! Should we stick with a functional structure or experiment with a matrix? Hmm…”

Well, maybe not. But maybe you should! A change is a great chance to examine your organization’s structure. If you’re thinking about a new model, consider reverse-engineering your design. Start with the customer’s perspective.

• What would your customers recommend? Do you know?
• What is your customer experience journey? Do you know where you deliver excitement, confidence, trust, or other kinds of value?
• What problems do your customers experience? How adept are your teams at solving them?

Chances are, you don’t have the answers to all of these questions. But if you like this approach to organization design, here are the steps I suggest:

1. Map your customer journey, include emotional peaks and common problems (by frequency and type).
2. Get the right talent, skills and knowledge to deliver delighters, and eliminate or solve problems. That means building new job descriptions and recruiting differently.
3. Define the performance management system you need to drive the right behaviors.
4. Create supporting business rules and processes.
5. Empower your customer-facing work teams to meet customer needs and enable the outcomes they want.
6. Follow the same steps to redesign your support functions. They must serve your customer-facing teams – their internal customers.

Organization design shouldn’t be about boxes on charts or what makes sense historically.  Focus on what delivers value, and you’ll build the optimal structure.