HBR Guide to Executing Your Strategy

CHAPTER 8

Design Your Organization to Match Your Strategy

by Ron Carucci and Jarrod Shappell

Strategy execution is commonly fraught with failure. Having worked with hundreds of organizations, we’ve observed one consistent misstep when leaders attempt to translate strategy into results: the failure to align strategy with the organization’s design.

Research suggests that only 10% of organizations are successful at aligning their strategy with their organization design.¹ Some of the problem is a gross misunderstanding of what the word alignment actually means in this context. Most leaders naively assume that it means having rigid processes that cascade goals from top to bottom, launching intense communication campaigns that promote top priorities, ...