Chapter 6. Organization Structure

This chapter focuses on the structure of the enterprise and provides insights on optimizing it for enhancing agility at its structure and consequently at the enterprise level as well.

The structure of an organization is to a business what a skeleton is to a human body. The structure not only defines the shape and form of the enterprise, but it also determines how flexible a enterprise can be in responding to changing circumstances.

For enterprises to have greater agility, they need a structure that enables cross functional and self-organizing teams to deliver value. The structure must be an enabler for teams to develop and sustain all capabilities that underlie agility, namely, responsiveness, versatility, flexibility, resilience, innovativeness, and adaptability. This is radically opposed to a structure that separates the "thinkers" from the "doers," and which is aimed at optimizing efficiency, predictability, and stability.

The chapter will explore the following...