Team structure and org design
Most small company org charts just record who was hired in what order. Org design asks a different question: what seats does this business need to hit next year's plan, who sits in each one, and what does each seat own. We run that exercise with you, produce an accountability chart your team recognises, and sequence the hires and promotions that get you out of the wrong seats.
What you leave with
An accountability chart with every seat, owner and number, and a twelve month plan for the seats that change.
Who it is for
- Owners holding three or four seats who cannot see which to give up first
- Companies about to double headcount and worried about losing control
- Investors restructuring a business after an acquisition
What we deliver
- An accountability chart: seats, owners, responsibilities and one number per seat
- Role descriptions written for the work, not the current person
- A twelve month hiring and promotion sequence with budget
- A RACI for the ten decisions that cause the most friction
- A plan for introducing the structure to the team
How it runs
01Map today
Interviews with you and every manager. We draw the organisation as it works, including the seats you secretly hold.
02Design tomorrow
Seats required by the plan, grouped into functions with sensible spans, tested against real scenarios from last quarter.
03Sequence
Who moves, who is hired, in what order and at what cost, with the owner's exits first.
04Introduce
We help you present it to the team, answer the hard questions and adjust what does not survive contact.
Engagement and fees
A Workshop engagement of two to four weeks, $30K to $80K, produces the chart, roles and sequence. Ongoing support through hiring and the first quarter fits an Advisory Retainer at $8K to $25K per month. Outcome based, never hourly. Every engagement is scoped after a call and confirmed in writing. See consultations and fees.
Seats before people
The discipline is to design the seats the business needs before thinking about who fills them. Otherwise the chart bends around personalities, strong people accumulate unrelated duties and weak spots are hidden. We write each seat with three to five responsibilities and one number it is accountable for. Sometimes the owner discovers they hold five seats. That is the beginning of the plan, not a criticism.
This is where span of control matters: a manager with twelve direct reports is a bottleneck in waiting.
Getting the owner out of the day to day
Each seat the owner holds is ranked by two things: how much it depends on the owner personally and how much it costs the business when the owner is the one doing it. Key account sales may stay for a while. Dispatch, bookkeeping and first line hiring usually go first. The sequence gives each exit a date, a successor and a handover.
We also design the seat the owner moves into, because owners who have nothing defined to do drift back into the old seats.
What to prepare and common mistakes
Your current chart if one exists, a list of everyone with their actual duties, next year's revenue plan and the three decisions that get stuck most often. We interview managers ourselves.
The common mistake is designing a structure for a company twice your size and leaving seats empty for a year. We design for the next twelve months and revisit annually. The second mistake is announcing before the managers have been consulted, which turns a helpful chart into a threat.
Industries where we run this most
Questions about this service
Is this the same as hiring consultants to restructure us?
No. There are no layoffs hidden in this work and no report that sits in a drawer. It is a working session with your managers that ends in a chart you use every week.
What is a healthy span of control?
It depends on the work. Managers of skilled, self directed people can oversee more. Managers of new staff or complex, varied work need fewer. We look at each manager's actual load rather than applying one number.
Do you write job descriptions?
Yes, for every seat on the chart, written around responsibilities and the number the seat owns. They double as hiring briefs and review scorecards. Employment contract terms go to your employment lawyer.
How long does it take?
A Workshop of two to four weeks produces the chart, roles and sequence. Implementation takes as long as the hires do, usually a few quarters, and many clients keep us on retainer through them.
Tell us which seat is empty.
A 30-minute call with Ali about the business and the people running it. You leave knowing which role to fill first and whether fractional, outsourced or a hire is the right answer, whether or not we work together.