Principle-based Organizational Structure: a handbook to help you engineer entrepreneurial thinking and teamwork into organizations of any size

by N. Dean Meyer

Look at any organization chart and know who's fighting with whom, who's not making objectives, and who has ulcers!

Organizational structure is not a matter of intuition, fads, or simplistic models. And it shouldn't be based on today's projects, or the personalities and careers of senior leaders. Structure is an engineering science, with firm principles and constructs.

This is the definitive book on that practical science of organizational structure, the culmination of over 30 years of study and practical experiences implementing restructurings in dozens of diverse organizations.

Far beyond the traditional HR literature, this book is based on the "business-within-a-business" paradigm, where every manager thinks and acts like an entrepreneur running a small business within large organizations. An organization designed around internal lines of business (not traditional roles and responsibilities) induces innovation, accountability, cost control, customer focus, and great teamwork.

The book describes clear principles for the design of organization charts, and it's chock full of stories and case studies that bring those principles to life.

It also explains how to build explicit, yet flexible, cross-boundary teamwork, the antidote to a "silo" mentality.

And it describes a step-by-step change-management process to implement structural change in an open, participative way.

This book is a rare combination of vision and practicality, solid science and pragmatic guidance. This book

Genres: Business, Management

448 pages, Hardcover

Published March 24, 2017

Reviews

[Mindaugas Mozūras · Rating 4 out of 5]

Most managers focus on operating a poorly designed machine rather than stepping back and redesigning the machine.

I mostly enjoyed reading "Principle-based Organizational Structure". I was surprised by the depth of the analysis and by how practical the book is. The author explains why the organisational structure is not a matter of intuition and provides principles and methods to create functional structures.

The author believes that every organization is made of good people. That matches my belief that most people are good and that the system is usually the thing that requires adjustments. I liked that the book is focused on providing ways to systematically solve problems.

But the list of people I would recommend it to is not long. The topic is very specific and the book is quite practical. If the problems and challenges discussed in the book are not your day-to-day live, you might not enjoy it.

The book is not perfect, here are a couple of things I've disliked:
- the Kindle edition has minor spacing errors every other page
- the language in the book is a bit enterprisey - meaning that simple things are sometimes said in not as simple ways
- the author misunderstands Lean - probably because, in big enterprises, a different kind of Lean is sold to organizations
- the author criticizes Microsoft's CEO Satya Nadella (the book was written in 2017), under who Microsoft grew significantly in the last 5 years

[Sahar Azari · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although the principles described in this book are universal to all ranges of organisations including small firms, the book’s main focus is IT businesses. As a small business owner, I am sure I can use some of the valuable insights of this book into the design of my own business structure. I would have preferred to see more examples in other business sectors or even a chapter on how to apply this when your organisation is yet very small but you plan to scale it further.

[Nacho Bassino · Rating 3 out of 5]

Extensive actionable guide oriented to top leadership, arguably in small/medium sized organizations.