EXECUTIVE ADVISORY
Reporting structures, spans of control, role clarity, and restructuring — designed for companies navigating growth, post-acquisition integration, or strategic pivots where the organization’s structure hasn’t kept pace with the business.
When the org chart becomes the bottleneck
You’ve grown fast — but the structure that worked at 80 people doesn’t work at 250. Decisions that should take hours take weeks because nobody’s sure who owns them. Managers have 15 direct reports and can’t develop any of them. Two teams are doing overlapping work and neither knows it. After an acquisition, you have duplicate roles, conflicting reporting lines, and people waiting to be told where they fit. These aren’t people problems — they’re design problems. And they don’t fix themselves.
Who This Is For
- Companies growing past 100–200 employees where the org chart hasn’t kept up with the business
- Post-acquisition organizations integrating teams, eliminating redundancies, or clarifying roles across legacy entities
- Companies where spans of control are too wide (or too narrow) and decision-making has stalled
- Leadership teams considering a restructure but unsure how to sequence it without disrupting operations
- PE portfolio companies needing organizational clarity as part of a value creation plan
- Organizations adding new functions, divisions, or geographies and needing a structure that scales
What We Evaluate
Every org design engagement starts with understanding how the organization actually works — not just how the org chart says it works. We assess:
- Reporting structure: Who reports to whom, and does it make sense for how work actually flows?
- Spans of control: Are managers overloaded or underleveraged? Where are the bottlenecks?
- Role clarity: Do people know what they own? Where are the overlaps and gaps?
- Decision rights: Where do decisions get stuck? Who has authority vs. who should?
- Layers and levels: Is the hierarchy too flat, too deep, or inconsistent across functions?
- Scalability: Will this structure support the next stage of growth — or break under it?
Packages
Org Design Review — $10,000–$15,000
A focused assessment of 1–2 functions or departments. Best for companies that know where the structural problems are and need expert analysis and recommendations.
What you get: Current-state org analysis, spans and layers review, role clarity assessment, stakeholder interviews with key leaders, findings report with specific restructuring recommendations, and a 90-minute executive presentation of findings.
Timeline: 3–4 weeks typical.
Org Restructuring Project — $28,000–$50,000
A full organizational redesign across multiple levels and functions. Best for companies undergoing significant change — post-acquisition integration, rapid growth, strategic pivots, or enterprise-wide restructuring.
What you get: Everything in the Org Design Review, plus: future-state organizational design with multiple scenario options, transition planning with sequenced implementation roadmap, role mapping (current roles to future-state roles), communication strategy for announcing changes, leader talking points and FAQ documents, and 90-day implementation support with check-in calls.
Timeline: 6–10 weeks typical, depending on scope and number of functions involved.
How It Works
Discovery Call
A free 30-minute conversation to understand your situation — what’s driving the need for org design work, what’s already been tried, and what a successful outcome looks like. We’ll recommend the right package or scope.
Data Gathering
We review your current org charts, role descriptions, headcount data, and any relevant context (strategic plans, acquisition documents, prior restructuring attempts). We conduct stakeholder interviews with key leaders to understand how work actually flows — not just how it’s drawn on paper.
Analysis & Design
We analyze spans, layers, reporting relationships, role clarity, and decision rights. For Restructuring Projects, we develop future-state design options with trade-off analysis for each scenario.
Recommendations & Implementation
We present findings and recommendations to your leadership team. For Restructuring Projects, we deliver the full implementation package — transition plan, communication strategy, role mapping, and ongoing support through the change.
Frequently Combined With
Org design work rarely happens in isolation. Clients frequently pair it with:
- Change Management Consulting — When the restructure is significant enough that you need a structured change plan, communication strategy, and adoption support beyond what’s included in the Restructuring Project.
- Talent Management Consulting — When the restructure surfaces questions about who belongs in which roles, where your bench strength gaps are, and who’s ready for expanded responsibilities.
- Fractional CPO & HR Advisory — When org design is one piece of a broader need for ongoing strategic HR leadership. Many Fractional CPO clients engage org design as a project within the advisory relationship.
[Placeholder: Add a testimonial from an org design or restructuring engagement. Focus on the clarity it brought — clearer accountability, faster decisions, smoother integration.]
Common Questions
How do you handle the people side of a restructure?
Carefully. Org design is a structural exercise, but it affects real people — their roles, their reporting relationships, sometimes their jobs. We design the transition plan with that in mind: sequenced communication, leader preparation, clear timelines, and support for affected employees. When the change is large enough to warrant dedicated change management support, we’ll recommend adding that as a companion engagement.
We just completed an acquisition. When should we start org design work?
As soon as the deal closes — ideally before. The first 90 days post-acquisition are when organizational confusion does the most damage: key people leave because they don’t see a path, customers experience service disruptions, and decision-making stalls while everyone waits for clarity. If you’re in the due diligence phase, we can start the structural analysis before Day 1.
Do you implement the restructure or just recommend it?
The Org Design Review delivers recommendations. The Org Restructuring Project includes implementation support — transition planning, communication strategy, role mapping, and 90-day follow-up. For organizations that need someone embedded to drive the implementation over several months, our Fractional CPO service provides that ongoing leadership.
What if we only need help with one department?
That’s exactly what the Org Design Review is for. It’s scoped to 1–2 functions or departments. We often start with the area causing the most pain and expand from there if the analysis reveals broader structural issues.