Organisational design diagnostic
When an organisation isn't working as well as it should, the instinct is to look at the people. Often the real answer is in the design - how it's structured, how decisions flow, how the parts fit together. A design diagnostic gives you a clear read on whether your organisation is set up to do what you're asking of it.
Signs a design diagnostic would help
Most people arrive here with a problem that won't quite resolve - growth that's getting harder to manage, decisions that take too long, teams that keep tripping over each other. Often the cause isn't effort or talent; it's the way the organisation is put together. Here are the situations we're asked into most often. If one sounds like yours, a diagnostic is a good place to start.
The situation | How a diagnostic helps |
|---|---|
You've grown, and the structure hasn't kept up | Shows you where the old shape is now getting in the way, so you redesign on evidence rather than instinct |
Decisions are slow or unclear | Pinpoints where accountability has blurred, so you can see why things stall and where to fix it |
Teams keep tripping over each other | Surfaces the overlaps, gaps and handovers causing the friction, rather than blaming the people in them |
You're planning a restructure | Gives you an honest read of the current design before you commit to a new one |
The operating model feels off, but you can't say why | Turns a vague sense that something's not right into a clear picture of what and where |
You want to know if you're set up to scale | A maturity read on whether your design can carry where you're heading, before the strain shows |
You've grown, and the structure hasn't kept up
Most organisations are designed for the size they were, not the size they've become. What worked at thirty people starts to creak at a hundred, and the structure that once felt natural begins to get in the way without anyone quite noticing when it tipped over. A diagnostic shows you where the old shape is now costing you, so you can redesign on evidence rather than on a hunch.
Signs this is you
- You've grown quickly, and the way you're organised hasn't been rethought to match.
- Things that used to be simple - a decision, a handover, a piece of coordination - now take more effort than they should.
- The structure made sense once, but no one's looked at it deliberately in a while.
- People are working around the org chart rather than through it.
What we'd look at, and what you'd get
We'd look at how your current design holds up against what you're now asking of it - where the structure supports the work and where it's quietly fighting it. Growth tends to expose specific seams: spans of control that have stretched too wide, roles that have accumulated bits of everything, layers that were added in a hurry and never revisited.
You'd get a clear read on where your structure has fallen behind your size, which strains matter most, and a sense of the design changes that would do the most to relieve them.
Decisions are slow or unclear
When decisions drag, it's rarely because people can't decide - it's because it isn't clear who should. Accountability blurs as an organisation grows: more people have a stake, fewer have a clear remit, and things that should take a day take a month. A diagnostic pinpoints where the decision-making has gone foggy, so you can see why things stall and put the clarity back.
Signs this is you
- Decisions take longer than they should, and it's not always clear why.
- The same questions keep coming back up because nobody's sure who owns them.
- People are reluctant to decide without checking, because the lines of authority are fuzzy.
- Things fall between roles, or several people think they own the same thing.
What we'd look at, and what you'd get
We'd look at how decisions actually get made across the organisation - who's accountable for what, where authority sits versus where it's assumed to sit, and where the gaps and overlaps are. Slow decisions usually trace back to a design issue: accountability that was never clearly assigned, or that got diluted as things grew.
You'd get a clear map of where decision-making is blurred, the points causing the most drag, and a practical view of how to sharpen accountability without adding bureaucracy.
Teams keep tripping over each other
When teams are constantly stepping on each other's toes - duplicating work, fighting over the same patch, dropping things in the gaps between them - it looks like a people problem. Usually it's a design one. The boundaries between teams, and the handovers across them, were never set up cleanly. A diagnostic surfaces where the friction is actually coming from, so you fix the design rather than blame the people caught in it.
Signs this is you
- Teams duplicate effort, or argue over who owns what.
- Work falls through the cracks between teams, and no one's quite responsible.
- Handovers between functions are a regular source of friction.
- The same coordination problems keep recurring, whoever's in the roles.
What we'd look at, and what you'd get
We'd look at how your teams and functions are bounded and how they connect - where responsibilities overlap, where they leave gaps, and where the handovers between them break down. Recurring friction between capable teams is almost always a sign that the design is setting them up to collide, not that the people are difficult.
You'd get a clear picture of where the boundaries and handovers are causing trouble, which ones matter most, and a sense of how to redraw them so teams work with each other rather than against.
You're planning a restructure
A restructure is a big, costly, disruptive thing to get wrong - and the most common way to get it wrong is to redesign without first understanding what you've got. A diagnostic gives you an honest read of the current design before you commit to a new one, so the restructure solves the real problems rather than reshuffling them.
Signs this is you
- A restructure is on the table, or already being planned.
- You want to be sure you're solving the actual problem, not just moving boxes around.
- You've seen restructures before that created as many problems as they fixed.
- You'd rather go in with a clear diagnosis than a strong opinion.
What we'd look at, and what you'd get
We'd give you a clear-eyed read of the current design first - what's genuinely working and worth keeping, and what's actually causing the problems a restructure is meant to fix. A lot of restructures fail because they're built on assumptions about the current state that don't hold up; the diagnostic tests those before you've spent the money and the goodwill.
You'd get an honest assessment of your current design, a clear view of what the restructure actually needs to address, and a firmer foundation to design the new shape on.
The operating model feels off, but you can't say why
Sometimes there's no single broken thing - just a persistent sense that the organisation isn't running as cleanly as it should. The operating model feels off, but it's hard to put a finger on what or where. A diagnostic turns that vague unease into a clear picture, so you're working on something specific rather than a feeling.
Signs this is you
- Something about how the organisation runs isn't right, but you can't name it precisely.
- You've got a general sense of drag or friction without an obvious source.
- Different people would describe the problem differently, which makes it hard to act.
- You want clarity on what's actually going on before deciding what to do.
What we'd look at, and what you'd get
We'd look across the whole operating model - how the structure, the way work flows, the decision-making and the capabilities fit together - to find where the misalignment actually sits. A vague sense that something's off is usually several small design mismatches adding up; the diagnostic locates them and tells you which ones matter.
You'd get a clear, specific picture of what's not aligned and where, the few mismatches doing the most damage, and a sense of what would bring the model back into shape.
You want to know if you're set up to scale
Growth has a way of finding the weak points in how an organisation is built. A design that copes fine today can buckle under twice the size, and the strain usually shows up at the worst possible moment. A maturity read on your design tells you whether it can carry where you're heading - so you can strengthen it before the growth tests it, not after.
Signs this is you
- You're growing, or about to, and want to know your design can take it.
- You'd rather find the weak points now than discover them under pressure.
- You're not sure whether what works at today's size will hold at tomorrow's.
- You want a clear read on how mature and robust your current setup actually is.
What we'd look at, and what you'd get
We'd assess how mature and scalable your current design is - how well the structure, processes, decision-making and capabilities would hold up as you grow. This is the maturity-assessment view: less about a specific problem today, more about whether the foundations are solid enough for where you're going.
You'd get an honest read on how ready your design is to scale, the points most likely to strain first, and a sense of what to strengthen ahead of the growth rather than during it.
How we run a design diagnostic
There's no single fixed package here, because what a diagnostic needs to do depends on why you're doing it. A restructure needs a different read from a scale-readiness check. But the shape is consistent, and it's built around one idea: a design diagnostic should show you clearly whether your organisation is set up to do what you're asking of it, and where it isn't. Here's how that works in practice.
It starts with a real conversation, not a template
Before anything is assessed, we talk. We want to understand what's prompting the diagnostic, what you already suspect, what's at stake, and what a useful answer would look like for you. A design problem and a scale-readiness question need different reads, and that conversation is what tells us which one you've actually got - so the diagnostic answers your question, not a generic one.
We look at how the organisation actually works
A design diagnostic isn't a look at the org chart - it's a look at how the organisation really runs. We pay attention to how the parts fit together: how the structure is set up, how work flows across it, how decisions get made and by whom, how information moves, and how capability is distributed. We gather this through a mix that fits your organisation - conversations and interviews, a look at how things work in practice, and your existing data. The methods flex; the aim doesn't.
We make sense of it through our own way of seeing
Turning a lot of observation into a clear diagnosis is the part that takes experience. We have our own process for reading how an organisation is designed, built up over years of doing this work - and it's grounded in a wide range of well-tested approaches we've drawn on along the way. The Galbraith Star Model, for instance, is good for checking that the different elements of a design - structure, processes, rewards, people - actually line up with each other and with the strategy; an organisational maturity model is good for gauging how developed and robust a setup is, and where it sits on the path from ad-hoc to well-established. We know these and many others well, and that grounding has shaped how we look. But we're not running one model at you and reading off the result. The value is the judgement that comes from having used them for a long time, across a lot of different organisations - knowing where designs tend to fail, and what a given symptom usually points to.
We give it back to you straight
The point of a diagnostic is the clarity at the end, so we put real care into how we hand it over. You get an honest assessment of your design - what's genuinely working and worth keeping, as much as what's getting in the way. We don't dress it up, and we don't deliver a verdict and leave. We talk it through with you, so the findings land as something you understand and can act on, not a report that gets read once and filed.
Then you know what to do next
A diagnosis that tells you what's wrong but not what to do about it hasn't finished the job. So we end on the practical: the design changes that would make the most difference, and a realistic sense of what acting on them would involve. Whether the next step is a redesign, a focused piece of work, or something you take forward yourselves, you'll leave with a clear head about it - including an honest view if what you need is lighter than you feared.
What you'd come away with
By the end, you'd have:
- A clear, honest read on your organisation's design - how it actually works, not how the org chart says it should.
- The parts that are working - because a diagnostic that only finds faults isn't telling you the whole truth.
- Where the design is getting in the way - named plainly, with a sense of why.
- A practical view of what to do next - the changes that would matter most, and what they'd take.
- A firmer foundation to decide on - whether that's a restructure, a focused fix, or holding steady for now.
Some organisations take the diagnosis and act on it themselves. Others decide they'd like us alongside them for the redesign. Either is a good outcome - the diagnostic has done its job when you can see clearly and decide well.
If you'd like a broader, more continuous read on your organisation's health - not a one-off diagnostic, but an ongoing picture you can track over time - we also run States of Vitality, a managed organisational health assessment platform we built ourselves. It measures eight dimensions of how an organisation is doing through an interactive dashboard, and design is one part of that wider picture. It's a natural fit if you want to keep an eye on the whole organisation rather than diagnose one aspect - otherwise, a focused design diagnostic does exactly what it says.
Organisations we've worked with
We've diagnosed and redesigned organisations across housing, charity, public sector and corporate settings. Every organisation is different, so every diagnostic is shaped around how yours actually works - but the common thread is the same: an honest read, given straight, that leaves you better placed to act.
A design diagnostic is the first step in how we approach organisational design. For the full picture - including how we co-design and put a new design into practice once you know where you stand - visit our main Organisational Design page.
Thinking about a design diagnostic?
The best place to start is a conversation. Tell us what's prompting it and what you're hoping to understand, and we'll talk honestly about whether a diagnostic is the right move - and if so, what it would need to look like for you.