Leading in Times of Crisis: Navigating Through Complexity, Diversity, and Uncertainty to Save Your Business

CENTRALIZATION AND DECENTRALIZATION

Over the last ten years the move to decentralize and simplify large organizations has been proposed as the best way to overcome the delays and complexity of approval and coordination processes stretched across thousands of miles. From Percy Barnevik’s legendary decentralization of ABB into twenty-five hundred different businesses, each with its own P&L, to attempts today to push decisions down as far as possible toward the customer, leaders have looked for ways to speed decisions critical to market competitiveness.

At the same time, such moves have their parallel problems—too much decentralization can result in a lack of consistency and quality that can threaten global brands. The classic difficulties ...