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A new edition of this practical guide on how to structure a
business to support strategy and maximise efficiency.

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Thousands of established businesses fail every year because of the way they are organised, or re-organised. Business survival can depend not only on whether its structures and reporting lines meet the needs of the market, but also whether they can adapt in the face of a rapidly changing business environment.

Yet managers seldom talk coherently about structuring or restructuring their operations, let alone take a systematic approach to this vital issue. Too often, companies are restructured for the wrong reasons - for example, because a new CEO wants to make an impact, or to work around a new IT system.

This revised and updated Economist Guide shows how leaders should think about and implement the design of a company, using five easy-to-use guiding principles:

- Design a company around its strategy and the operating context, not for ulterior or non-business reasons;
- Think holistically - don´t restructure just one division without taking into account other operations;
- Consider future markets, customers and trends, not just what works best now;
- Invest time and resources: - a redesign can be complicated to implement and must be done without disrupting daily activities; and
- Go back to the basics of how the company operates and its market position; this is not a repair job to fix a short-term problem.

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Praise for the first edition:

´Risk of failure can be greatly reduced through effective organisational design that encourages high performance and adaptability to changing circumstances
Personnel Today

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Stanford, Naomi
Naomi Stanford is an organisation design consultant based outside Washington DC. Before moving to America, she worked as a senior organisational development consultant for companies such as M&S, BA, Xerox, PwC and Prudential.

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