BCG’s approach to organization design starts with a single premise: changing a company’s performance requires changing the organizational context in which its employees perform.
What happens in a company is not simply a matter of organization structure and design, processes, and systems but also one of behavior—that is, how people act, interact, and make decisions. To address this underlying driver of performance, BCG applies a set of levers that transform individual behaviors, encourage new ways of working, and create a purpose-driven organizational culture.
By using this organization design approach, BCG recently ranked as best among market leaders on organization strategy consulting, earning top scores for depth of capabilities, breadth of capabilities, and client impact, according to ALM Intelligence.
BCG’s approach to transforming an organization’s structure and design, which we call Smart Design for Performance, has demonstrated great success in boosting company performance, mastering complexity, and enhancing employee engagement. The organization design approach involves three main steps:
Define the purpose of the reorganization. Clearly identify the company’s performance shortfall—that is, the gap between its current and target performance. Determine the precise aims of the reorganization effort—with regard to competitive advantage, strategic priorities, and the organization’s pain points.
Define the target behaviors and design the organization accordingly. Determine the behaviors that will support the purpose of the reorganization. Design the organization to promote those behaviors, using a broad range of leading organization design elements, including organization structure, roles and responsibilities, individual talent, and organization enablers.
Make it happen. Establish the right context throughout the organization and enhance the capabilities of leaders and top talent through distributed design, rigorous program management with multilayered communication, and capability building.
The Smart Design for Performance approach, paired with our robust set of tools, puts companies on a path to becoming a flexible, high-performing, and modern organization.
Learn more about OrgBuilder by BCG X, BCG’s proprietary software tool that supports organizational transformations.
OrgBuilder by BCG X helps clients actively resolve complexity and avoid bureaucracy to ensure the successful implementation of any organization structure and design change.
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Our OrgVantage solution allows our organization design consulting teams to perform a holistic organization diagnostic that evaluates performance against 12 context levers.
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These are a few of BCG’s experts from around the globe who lead our organization design consulting teams:
